Let’s Go Outside Friday, Dec. 5

[December 3rd, 2008]

[OPTIMAL BPM] Recently, Steve Schieberl has taken to walking nearly six miles from his Southeast Portland house to his work at an animation and interactive studio in Old Town. It gives him time to think, reflect and get a little exercise. But today he took the bus. “I’m pretty sore from dancing all night,” the 31-year-old says. “I can’t really stay out and only sleep three hours anymore.”

For the past three years, Schieberl has recorded and performed electronic dance music under the name Let’s Go Outside (a saying inspired by his penchant for skydiving, base jumping and picnics) with the intent to get people to dance. “I know a lot of people who make dance music that have never danced before in their lives—and it shows in their music and their tempo selection,” Schieberl says, laughing. “For me it’s always been about 130-133 [beats per minute]—if you are right in that range you can keep people dancing all night without losing breath and stressing their bodies.”

Tempo aside, Let’s Go Outside’s music is malleable and shifting—ranging from hard, Detroit-inspired techno to dub and even ambient pieces. It’s among the city’s best electronic music, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing the dude. He rarely plays here.

Instead, Schieberl (who was born in Italy and moved to the States after grade school) has shifted most of his focus to Europe, a continent that really appreciates dance culture. There, the music is free from the negative connotation and stigma that bogs down stateside shows (it’s all drugs and raves!), and it’s not uncommon for thousands of people to cram into a sweaty building at 2 am to hear a DJ’s set. Let’s Go Outside found a home on Glasgow’s Soma Records after randomly sending a demo their way, and spent three months in early 2008 playing dance parties all over Europe—from London’s famed Fabric club to a converted church in Brussels. “You don’t really realize how strange it is to make this kind of music until you go somewhere and you see so many people that are into it,” Schieberl says. “It’s basically the way that people attend rock shows over there. It’s a normal thing to go dancing all night.”

Schieberl is working hard to keep the party going. In January, he released his debut record, A Picnic With the Hunters, and this fall he has made three DJ mixes, a handful of new tracks and is readying his own label, Slant Records, for a February debut. The hard part is getting Portland to dance.