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1 week ago | 
portlandmercury.com | Robert Ham
To truly appreciate the art of elijah jamal asani, it helps to slow down and match his pace. The music released by the young ambient artist is patient, measured, and beautifulâlike watching grainy super-8 footage of a flower opening to the sun, played back in slow motion.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Every Deerhoof performance feels like a surprise. There are elements that fans have come to expect. The group generally sets themselves up onstage in a line, with guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich sandwiched between bassist-vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki and drummer Greg Saunier. And chances are, it will be difficult to pull one’s attention from Saunier as it often looks as though he’s trying to keep a steady beat while his four limbs attempt to escape from his body.
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2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
2–5: Cowboy JazzSounds like: A tumbleweed rolling through a downtown jazz club. Guitarist Ryan Meagher and saxophonist Bryan Smith know how goofy their band’s name sounds. That’s half the reason they chose it. “By itself, Cowboy Jazz has a lot of playfulness to it,” Smith says, sitting outside The 1905 after the quartet’s recent performance, “and it can be seen as, the music is going to be cheap.” “Two words that don’t really fit together,” Meagher interjects.
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2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
The last thing I expected to do upon reading the first poem in Cornfry (Buckman Publishing, 80 pages, $12), the first collection of verse by Rich Perin, was laugh out loud. But how could I not when the opening salvo in the book, titled “Social Stigma of Singular,” is this: You should be allowed to marry yourselfI think“Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah,” Perin exclaims when I mention how I reacted to several pieces in the book with laughter. “Damn right my poetry has got a lot of humor in it. It’s life.
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2 weeks ago | 
thestranger.com | Robert Ham
This review originally appeared in the Portland Mercury. David Cronenberg’s chief cinematic obsession has long been the human body and all the painful, pleasurable, and generally fucked up things that people do with their corporeal forms.
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3 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
I would have never laid odds on the success of Fontaines D.C. The Irish quintet’s post-punk sound always seemed too artful and spiky to crack through the public consciousness in any marked fashion. Much to my surprise and delight, the group has broken big in the wake of their fourth studio album, Romance, headlining stadium gigs in the U.K. and, closer to home, selling out the Roseland Theater on Saturday night.
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3 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Super-Electric Records owner Bob Ham notes what’s been in heavy rotation on the shop’s turntable in April. Crystal Quartez Erospace (self-released)After years of producing consciousness-expanding ambient music, local artist Crystal Quartez has decided to shift their musical focus a little farther south. Erospace is an unashamedly sexy record, tender in its assessment of the body and heated in its desire for sensation.
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3 weeks ago | 
portlandmercury.com | Robert Ham
David Cronenberg’s chief cinematic obsession has long been the human body and all the painful, pleasurable, and generally fucked up things that people do with their corporeal forms. But in every case—from the 1970 Crimes of the Future to the 2022 Crimes of the Future (which was not a remake of the 1970 film), the beings at the center of his work deal with unusual growths, wild physical transformations, or the hunger to be penetrated in any number of ways.
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4 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
About two decades ago, Norma Fraser, the legendary reggae vocalist responsible for classic cuts like her soulful take on Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut Is the Deepest” and the 1963 skip jumping ska tune “Come On Pretty Baby,” played a concert in Eugene. She fell instantly in love with the college town. “I’d never seen so many white rastas in all my life!” Fraser says. “They embraced the reggae music and knew so much about it.
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1 month ago | 
wweek.com | Robert Ham
Now more than ever, we city dwellers could use some time getting lost in the natural world. Ideally, that would mean a long trek within a far-flung locale—but we’ve got bountiful options here in town. Maybe you’re new to Portland, or have been too glued to your office desk to get out, but if you need a quick hit of greenspace, we’ve put together a beginner’s list of some of our favorite immersive natural areas in town (or a stone’s throw away).
