When these crashing waves of ecstatic sound wash over, it may be more tempting to visualize a radiating sun falling past a vast oceanic horizon – rather than the robust, unending foliage of America’s Pacific Northwest. However, to truly explore the layers of distortion, rhythm and electronic shamanism within, it’s paramount to return to the home of those channeling it. Read More...
When these crashing waves of ecstatic sound wash over, it may be more tempting to visualize a radiating sun falling past a vast oceanic horizon – rather than the robust, unending foliage of America’s Pacific Northwest. However, to truly explore the layers of distortion, rhythm and electronic shamanism within, it’s paramount to return to the home of those channeling it.
“Portland is an amazing city and a great place to have a band. We have lived here for almost ten years and the music scene has just been growing and changing the whole time. It was much smaller and weirder when we first moved here, with fewer bands and venues and a lot more freaky punk, noise and experimental psychedelic stuff, but lots of new bands have moved here and new clubs have opened and the scene just keeps evolving as time goes on.”
Nice Nice are from Portland, Oregon. Jason Buehler and Mark Shirazi have been using their guitars, drums, voices, electronics and lots of other stuff to create their “post-everything modern music” for nearly a decade. By playing countless kinetic live shows around the US, they’ve honed their unorthodox craft.
Beholding the sonic leviathan that is a Nice Nice live experience can leave an observer dazed. They build complex loops in real time, constructing, sculpting, bending and fragmenting their songs without warning – a process that ensures consistently unique performances and potentially thrilling mistakes. Not only engaging for the audience, the band exhibit a very specific link to each other, having developed near-telepathic abilities allowing them to anticipate each other’s next action at any moment.
Extra Wow is an extremely apt title for an album that presents itself as a constantly unfolding collection of kaleidoscopic musical sediments. Each song effectively builds on the one before it to create the effect of an album-length crescendo that encompasses everything from forward-reaching psychedelia and neo-primitive electronic experiments to dub rhythms and learned lessons from the pillars of krautrock. From the acid-punk opening of “One Hit” it’s apparent that establishing your equilibrium within the world of Nice Nice will not be easy.
“We have listened to and played a lot of noisy/experimental music and rhythmic/tribal music and komische/motorik influenced music but, honestly, we have listened to and tried to play just about every style of music that we have come across. We are complete musical omnivores and love a really wide range of styles and sounds without shame- too much music to possibly list.”
With precision motorik propulsion and synesthesistic textures, tracks like “Everything Falling Apart” and “A Vibration” drive Extra Wow along at a pace that demands a commitment from the listener. A rewarding and mindbending journey, this album should be the first step in building a legion of fans for these future heroes.
