Reptaliens, Okey Dokey, Shy Boys, Minden at Mississippi Studios

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Save the date! On June 16th 2018, CymaSpace will be making history. The Northwest Deaf Arts Festival (NWDAF) will bring together top national Deaf artists who share a vision for an inclusive & innovative multi-sensory cultural extravaganza made equally accessible for Deaf & Hearing Allies.

http://www.nwdeafartsfest.com/

For the first time in recent times, Portland Oregon will be placed on the map as a premiere destination for national and emerging local Deaf talent who will perform live on stage, backed by the latest sound visualization and tactile technologies.

The festival line up includes nationally renowned Deaf hip-hop artist Sean Forbes (Deaf & Loud/DPAN), and dance sensation Antoine Hunter and his Urban Jazz Dance troupe. More artists will be announced in the coming weeks.

NWDAF is produced by CymaSpace, a Portland based nonprofit consisting of passionate Deaf & hearing community advocates who volunteer year-round to facilitate cultural events inclusive of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. CymaSpace engineers & artists lend their skills to develop a variety of art installations and stage sets that synergize sound, light, and vibration. The work of CymaSpace has been featured nationally on Jimmy Kimmel Live, as well as at festivals like What The Fest?, PDX Winter Light Festival, Kentucky DeaFestival and in prominent local institutions such as Portland Art Museum and Oregon Museum of Science & Industry (OMSI).

We can't wait to show you what the Deaf World can do! For more information, check our our NWDAF webpage. Ticket information is coming soon. Be sure to include our name on our mailing list so we can keep you up to date: http://www.nwdeafartsfest.com/

#allthesenses #cymaspace #nwdaf #deafartsfestival #seanforbes #antoinehunter #raymondluzcak

CymaSpace wants to thank our generous sponsors:
https://racc.org/
http://culturaltrust.org/
http://www.oregonartscommission.org/
http://www.randallcharitabletrust.org/

Reptaliens at Mississippi Studios

Bambi and Cole met on a basketball court, filming a music video for a band that didn?t have any music. After dating for six months, the two married under a blanket of smoke from the season?s forest fires.

Reptaliens quickly evolved from a conceptual collage of ideas into the bedroom recording project for the duo, captured with analog synthesizers, electric guitars, and melodic bass lines, and tape delayed vocals telling stories of science fiction, obsession, and transhumanism.

As long time, active participants in the Portland music scene, Bambi and Cole call on a number of talented musicians to guest on songs throughout the entirety of Reptaliens? recordings and live performances. The band embraces the captivity of their audience with their sincere and theatrical performances.

Nels Cline And Scott Amendola Are Stretch Woven at Mississippi Studios

The Year was 1994. The Place: The Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica, California. A connection was made, one that has endured, expanded, and enveloped nearly two-and-a-half decades.An intertwined musical bond that has bent, twisted, exploded, oozed, congealed, and coalesced. From the super-popular and über-fragrant L. Stinkbug, the throbbing and atmospheric CRATER, to the totally mercurial and capacious Nels Cline Singers, and the metamorphic and multi-directional Scott Amendola Band, their musical adventures have never been stagnant nor easily categorizeable. Enter Stretch Woven -a natural step for Nels Cline and Scott Amendola.All systems are a go for this exciting duo. Grab a beverage, put on some 3D glasses, maybe some slippers or jack boots, and get ready for a voyage that marries the somewhat familiar to the farther far out. We?ll see you out there...

Guitar explorer NELS CLINE is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career -spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental -is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader.Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 "new guitar gods" and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

Cline's most recent release, Lovers, out now on Blue Note Records, is a collection of "mood music" over 20 years in the making.

Beyond Wilco, he performs in a duo project with jazz guitar prodigy Julian Lage in addition toa quartet, The Nels Cline 4 (that includes Lage plus bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey), plays with CUP, a duo with wife and musical collaborator Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Scott Amendola, bassist Trevor Dunn and Cyro Baptista), and plays with Stained Radiance (an improvisational live project with performance painter Norton Wisdom).

A few of the other musicians with whom he has performed and/or recorded include: Black Walnuts Yonder (Mike Watt, Nick Reinhart, and Greg Saunier), Yoko Ono, Jeff Gauthier, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, Vinny Golia, Marc Ribot, Tinariwen, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Lydia Lunch and Lee Ranaldo.

Carla Bozulich, Vinny Golia, Marc Ribot, Tinariwen, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Lydia Lunch and Lee Ranaldo.For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn?t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world?s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.

No project better displays Amendola?s big ears and musical ambitions than ?Fade To Orange?, an orchestral piece commissioned as part of the Oakland East Bay Symphony?s Irvine Foundation-funded New Visions/New Vistas initiative. The roiling work premiered to critical acclaim at Oakland?s Paramount Theater on April 15, 2011.

As a sideman, Amendola has performed and recorded with a vast, stylistically varied roster of artists, including Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Mondo Cane, John Scofield, Cibo Matto, John Dieterich from Deerhoof, Wadada Leo Smith, Bruce Cockburn, Madeleine Peyroux, Joan Osborne, Jacky Terrasson, Shweta Jhaveri, Phil Lesh, Sex Mob, Kelly Joe Phelps, Larry Klein, Carla Bozulich, Wayne Horvitz, Johnny Griffin, Julian Priester, SonnySimmons, Pat Martino, Jim Campilongo, Bobby Black, Larry Goldings, Paul McCandless, Rebecca Pidgeon, and the Joe Goode Dance Group.

Over a career spanning more than three decades, Amendola has forged deep ties across the country, and throughout the world. As an ambitious composer, savvy bandleader, electronics explorer, first-call accompanist, and capaciously creative foil for some of the world?s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. He?s never more than one degree away from a powerful musical hook-up.

New York Night Train's Soul Clap And Dance Off with DJ Jonathan Toubin at Mississippi Studios

Jonathan Toubin
Juxtaposing raw, wild, and uncommon original 7-inch vinyl sides by unsung artists on the beat for today?s dance floor, Jonathan Toubin and his New York Night Train party machine?s persistent nightly work has carved out a unique space in contemporary culture and influenced scores of DJs and parties everywhere. While best known for throwing the world?s most popular and prolific soul party, the Soul Clap and Dance-Off, and NYC?s biggest and longest-running weekly rock?n?roll dance, Shakin? All Over Under Sideways Down!, he?s also spent the last decade turning over 2000 gigs at hundreds of nightclubs, art spaces, all-ages warehouses, afterhours, rock concerts, and dozens of major music festivals on five continents ? from Bonnaroo to Benicassim, from Tasmania to Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, back in the States, reimagining the map, creating its own continental circuit for a new demographic, and hitting it hard over a decade, Thee Clap broke barriers coast to coast to become America?s only touring 21st Century soul shindig. The low-fi spectacle is also the first DJ party with its own entire night at Lincoln Center?s Midsummer Night?s Swing and the first DJ party with an entire night of official South By Southwest showcases - and has remained the conference?s official closing party for six years. New York Night Train?s Soul Proprietor is also the first 45 DJ with Burger Records cassettes and the first living DJ with compilations on the legendary Norton Records - with five Souvenirs of the Soul Clap LPs released internationally the last couple of years. 2017 is off to a roaring start with the Soul Clap and Dance-Off celebrating its 10th Anniversary weekly in metropolises around North America and Europe and an all-live version of the dance party featuring Irma Thomas, Archie Bell, Joe Bataan, David Johansen, Maxine Brown, King Khan, Young Jessie, Baby Washington, Jon Batiste, Nick Waterhouse, Ural Thomas, and a 12-piece all-star band performing the DJ?s favorite tracks.

?This 45 hoarder made soul music fun again with his Soul Clap & Dance Off parties, where five-hour sets of rare grooves and B-sides provided a fleshy alternative to the club scene?s industrial snarl. Instead of bucking the trends of American pop music for some underground alternative, Toubin has made his name by embracing pop?s connective tissue, tracing the rhythm and blues, soul, and rock and roll of the nineteen-fifties and sixties.? (The New Yorker, 2016)

Jonathan Toubin was awarded ?BEST DJ? in the Village Voice 60th anniversary ?BEST OF NYC?: ?We might live in an EDM world, but Jonathan Toubin has no truck with today?s musical whims. Since 2007, Toubin?s Soul Clap and Dance-Off has brought throwback pizzazz and retro cool to New York?s late-night underground. Culled from an endless array of long-forgotten Sixties soul singles, Soul Clap is pure musical dynamite, the kind of after-hours party that exposes today?s iTunes-bred, press-play DJs for their relative lack of roots and ingenuity. No fist-bumps or atomic bass drops here; instead, Toubin lovingly crafts five-hour sets that bring lost chestnuts from the likes of Vernon Harrell and the Blendells into clearer focus for a new generation of dance enthusiasts. You can try to put your moves to better use, but you?ll be hard-pressed to find more cathartic, sweatier fun elsewhere in the city.? (The Village Voice, 2015)

?Jonathan is pretty much the only DJ we actually like.? (VICE Magazine, 2014)

?Particularly chic? one of the most popular spinners in Williamsburg and the founder of the New York Night Train dance parties. His fare is already cleaner and more appreciative of American pop music history than much of the rest.? (NY Times, 2013)

?The most-liked man in the soul music scene? (Rolling Stone, 2012)

Sparta at Mississippi Studios

Quintron And Miss Pussycat at Mississippi Studios

Quintron and Miss Pussycat have been making genre-defying noise and hard rocking dance music in
New Orleans for over fifteen years. The majority of their 14 full-length albums have the psychedelic
soul of traditional New Orleans party music filtered through a tough distorted Hammond B-3 and a
cache of self-made electronic instruments.

MISS PUSSYCAT plays maracas and sings, as well as entertaining all age groups with her highly
amusing technicolor puppet shows.

Hers are complex puppet shows beautifully crafted for success in intimate venues of late night
drinking and dancing: tactile, idiosyncratic characters, pithy dialogue, electronically pixilated
soundtracks, and trippy black light effects create a visual and engaging overture/finale to Quintron
and Miss Pussycat?s music sets. Quintron aids in puppet manipulation and voicing. Miss Pussycat, in
turn, sings lead and back-up and plays maracas during Quintron?s performances.

Quintron has released strange soundscapes based on inner-city field recordings of frogs and
neighborhood ambiance as well as holing himself up in THE NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART for three
months to create the epic ?Sucre Du Sauvage? (Goner, 2011). In addition to his own recordings,
Quintron has played organ on a number of other records, most notably THE OBLIVIONS ?9 Songs? and
STEVE RILEY AND THE MAMOU PLAYBOYS ?Grand Isle? which was nominated for a Grammy in 2012
and featured the Quintron penned song ?Chatterbox?. Most recently Quintron has been releasing
albums under the name ?WEATHER WARLOCK?, a project which features his mammoth weather
controlled analog synthesizer. He and Miss Pusscyat were the chosen to be resident artists at
the ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION and it was there that he conceived and completed that
project while Miss Pussycat perfected the art of the inflatable puppet theater.

Quintron regards his most significant creation to be a patented instrument called THE DRUM BUDDY,
a light activated analog synthesizer which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns. Notable
DRUM BUDDY clients include performers Nels Cline of Wilco, Laurie Anderson, Fred Armisen, and DJ
Mr. Dibbs.

The Quintron / Miss Pussycat experience is one of barely controlled electronic chaos, ?Swamp-Tech?
dance beats, small explosions, incredible clothes, and entertaining puppet stories. You can see them
perform regularly at the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans, Louisiana or on one of their many tours
around the world. This act somehow has equal relevance in sleazy nightclubs, pizza restaurants, and
university lecture halls.?
Miss Pussycat has a new puppet show soundtrack album out on Terror Vision called
?Anthropomorphizer? and Quintron (as Weather Warlock) is about to release ?Sympathetic Magic?,
an album recorded live in Abu Dhabi with mostly Middle Eastern improvisers.

Joan Shelley at Mississippi Studios

The stunning, self-titled fourth album from the Kentucky singer, songwriter, and guitarist Joan Shelley began, surprisingly, with a fiddle.

In the summer of 2014, Shelley fell for ?Hog of the Forsaken,? a bowed rollick at the end of Michael Hurley?s wayward folk circus, Long Journey, then nearly forty years old. Hurley?s voice, it seemed to Shelley, clung to the fiddle?s melody, dipping where it dipped and climbing where it climbed. This was a small, significant revelation, prompting the guitarist to trade temporarily six strings for four and, as she puts it, ?try to play like Michael.? That is, she wanted to sing what she played, to play what she sang. She tried it, for a spell, with the fiddle.

?Turns out, I wasn?t very good at fiddle,? remembers Shelley, chuckling. ?But I took that idea back to the guitar and tried that same method. I did it as a game to make these songs, a way to find another access point.?

But that wasn?t the end of the trials. After collaborating and touring with ace guitarist Nathan Salsburg for so many years, Shelley decided to put her entire guitar approach to the test, too. Each day, she would twist and turn into a different tuning, letting her fingers fumble along the strings until the start of a tune began to emerge. After playing the songs of her phenomenal third album, the acclaimed Over and Even, so many nights during so many shows, the trick pushed her hands out of her habits and into a short, productive span that yielded most of Joan Shelley.

It?s fitting that the set is self-titled. These are, after all, Shelley?s most assured and complete thoughts to date, with lyrics as subtle and sensitive as her peerless voice and a band that offers support through restraint and nuance. In eleven songs, this is the sound of Joan Shelley emerging as one of music?s most expressive emotional syndicates.

To get there, Shelley had a little more help than usual. In December 2016, she headed a few hours north to Chicago, where she and Salsburg joined Jeff Tweedy in Wilco?s Loft studio for five days. Spencer Tweedy, home from college, joined on drums, while James Elkington (a collaborator to both Tweedy and Salsburg) shifted between piano and resonator guitar. Jeff added electric accents and some bass, but mostly, he helped the band stay out of its own way. ?He was protecting the songs. He was stopping us before we went too far.? she says.

The Loft proved essential for that approach, as it was wired to capture every musical moment, so no take was lost. If, for instance, some magic happened while Spencer Tweedy added drums to a tune he?d never heard, or while Elkington tinkered behind a piano, the tape was rolling. Indeed, half of these songs are first takes.

?The first time is always the best. That?s when everyone?s on the edge of their seats, listening to not mess it up,? Shelley says. ?They?re depending on each other to get through it.?

Shelley?s music has never been experimental, at least in some bleeding- edge sense of the word. And she?s comfortable with that, proud of the fact that her simple songs are attempts to express complex emotion and address difficult question about life, love, lust, and existence itself. During ?The Push and Pull,? for instance, she precisely captures the emotional tug of war as two people struggle to codify a relationship, her voice perking up and slinking down to illustrate the idea. For ?Go Wild,? she wrestles with principles of independence and dependence, forgiveness and freedom, her tone luxuriating inside the waltz as though this were a permanent state of being. These are classic ideas, rendered brilliantly anew.

But in their own personal way, these songs are experimental and risky, built with methods that pushed Shelley out of the comfort zone she?s established on a string of records defined by a mesmerizing sort of grace and clarity. The shifts are not so much major as they are marked, suggestive of the same steady curiosity and rumination that you find in the pastoral pining of ?If the Storms Never Came? or the subtle romance of ?Even Though.? From genesis through gestation and on to execution, then, these songs document transitions to destinations unknown.

?I don?t have a concept, and I don?t know the meaning until much later. Whatever I am soaking up or absorbing from the world, there will be songs that reflect all those thoughts,? Shelley says. ?I keep my songwriting alive and sustainable by trying to be honest about how it came out?these are all its jagged edges, and that?s what it is to be human.?

HAUX at Mississippi Studios

Haux is the multimedia silhouette of photographer-turned musician Woodson Black. Every word, recording, photo, video and visual from his 2016 debut EP All We?ve Known were carefully curated over the course of a year from his quiet home in the Berkshires.

Despite ? or perhaps because of ? his highly individualistic approach, Black?s cross-platform art experiment quickly built an audience throughout the globe. By the end of 2017, Haux had been streamed over 60 million times with sold out performances on multiple continents.

Haux sophomore EP Something To Remember will be released March 30th, with a companion short film to follow. Once again Black is at the helm of every recording and wrote and directed all of the footage, while fans have come to recognize his distinct photography that serves as album art.