A new electronica act with a cleverly celestial nome de guerre and a handful of digital tracks, Spesus Christ comes home… well, the Oakland/Portland-based trio returns to Portland from their other Bay Area locale for a "homecoming" show this Saturday at "what used to be the Funky Church on Tamarack (just north of Division)," according to producer/mixer Cameron Spies.
Filling out the bill are the seriously jamming synth-pop duo Adventures! With Might, electro-ambient Soap Collectors (which also features Spesus Christ’s Lizzy Ellison), stomach-friendly folk from Leviticus Appleton, and mournful beatmasters Your Canvas.
Behind the moans and machines, Spesus Christ pulsates an unclassifiable twinkling and tapping of beats with stream of consciousness raps. Right Cameron?
"Our sound is a mixture of analog and electronic instrumentation. It includes elements of down-tempo hip-hop, rock music, indie, and smatterings of about everything else we like listening to. It’s sort of problematic to try to describe our music using genre titles like we’ve just done, so I suggest that you just listen to our stuff."
Take the man’s advice and download the simplistically titled yet multitudinously layered EP 1. Evolving so rapidly, their concert poster can’t even keep up with them – the $2 cover has been nixed, the show is donation-based.
And gushing with new material, Cameron says, "We are planning to release an EP every month for the next six."
But until the first is mixed (possibly by next week!), Soap Collectors also celebrate a tape release but remind you that "Soap Collectors are people who gather together varieties of soap and compulsively log and organize them into neat piles."
Save me Spesus.
– Chris Young