Portland’s little music scene continues to make strange bedfellows. The newest collaboration to watch out for is Beam & Baker, a shameless pure pop extravaganza from Jeff Beam (Specter) and Kurt Baker (THE Leftovers). They’ve posted “Your Mother Should Know,” influenced by “the Beatles and Beach Boys and nothing else,” on their MySpace page, and one can only hope there’s more syrupy doo-wop vocals and bouncy guitar chords where that came from.
Dreadnaught’s Bob Lord continues to be in demand as a producer. He’ll travel to Bratislava, Slovakia, later this month to do a week’s worth of orchestral recording sessions with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Grammy-winning clarinetist Richard Stoltzman is onboard), using a number of different composers. Great work if you can get it.
Composer Tim Janis (he’s worked with Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and Ray Charles, among others) really digs Ogunquit. So, he’s created a piano album called Ogunquit, A Beautiful Place by the Sea, with help from the Ogunquit Chamber of Commerce. It even comes with a poster, featuring Ogunquit shots by Katherine MacDonald. This makes us think we’ve been missing something about Ogunquit.
There’s a new veteran voice on the Portland map: Olivia Cornell, who’s playing out with a backing band called the Precious and plays a nice brand of girly rock, like the Breeders if they read lots of Tolkien. They played Geno’s last weekend and they’ve already been in the Studio with Jim Begley, working on a full-length. But this isn’t Cornell’s first rodeo. She’s been in the NYC scene and released a pair of discs there, working with Danny Kadar (Chris Whitley, Iggy Pop) and getting written up in the Voice and CMJ. The “Sibilance” staff is highly in favor of more chicks in town who rock out.
Make sure you surf the Internet on over to Vik44’s new release, Panic Attack!, which can be dowloaded for free through www.ihatebreakcore.com (just use the search function and follow the links). It’s techno to get the heart racing, crisp and digital. The eight tracks are a pure thrill ride and more proof of the talent this city can produce (also surf over to www.wepushbuttons.com for similar stuff created here). Check Vik44 out with Caspian, Constants, and Battlefields at Geno’s, May 14. We’re thinking that’ll be a Red Bull and vodka kind of night.
