Monday at Valentine’s, Portland’s past present future of dance music was on full display. One man electro-banditry is reinventing our conceptions of what it means to explore retro-centric sounds and feelings, all to a bass stomping groove that defies time as a referent. Suffice to say, without nostalgia for previous era’s explorations of electronic music, we wouldn’t have the authentically digital analogue harkening sounds and technical simulations of Onuinu and Jeffery Jerusalem. As Onuinu, Dorian Duvall steps into a neon time capsule to take his audience through a synth-laden technoscape, his lyrics serving as a message back those stuck in the modern age. His new song debut seemed to pay tribute to another techno-futurist, Gary Newman, with a stabbing synth chorus and a New Wave punch. Jeffrey Brodsky’s alter-ego Jeffrey Jerusalem is the guy in your home videos whose dance moves everyone innocuously seems to copy. Jerusalem creates a party your parents might have reluctantly described on the topic of your conception, with tom tom interludes and Human League-esque vocals. Together, these two artists are taking what it means to be a front man in a digital age, and combining it with the technical wizardry to become auteurs of a indefinable craft. –Wyatt Schaffner
