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The
Sensualists' songs "Dips and Peaks" and "Hello Mello" are
available for download from the Audio Dregs Web site: www.teleport.
com/~erock/
Sensualists.html
Asa
Metric plays drums in the free-jazz group JaJa Quartet.
Anna Fidler used to play guitar in the rock band Backsimba.
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The
Sensualists CD Release
with
Papillon and La Rue
Beulahland, 118 NE 28th Ave., 235-2794
9 pm Saturday, Sept. 11
Free
A sound grows in Brooklyn.
It grows, that is, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Southeast
Portland, in a rambling, comfortably lived-in house, down
in the basement. That's where the Sensualists--Anna Fidler,
Philip Cooper, Roy Kettler and Asa Metric--keep the Gadgets.
The Sensualists' practice space is strangely neat and well
organized by the standard of band lairs, which is to say
it's still a riot of amps, cords and stray drumsticks. This
standard-issue clutter fades into the background, though,
beside the group's arsenal of weird keyboards, retrofitted
noise contraptions and meticulously placed processor pedals.
Sitting silent and unmanned, the Gadgets are pregnant with
promise, all chrome-colored plastic and early '60s space-race
élan. They're artifacts from the never-realized Jetsons
future we were all cheated out of when our best and brightest
switched from cool rocket ships to stupid computers. Salvaged
from yard sales, thrift stores and your grandma's musty
rec room, the Gadgets live again in the Sensualists' roly-poly
pop.
Meet the Gadgets: There's the Fun Machine, a keyboard that
more than lives up to its name with echoing laser-battle
sounds; the ConnElectricband, a similarly zany keyboard;
the single Technics turntable Metric scratches on; the Farfisa
organ, a classic rock and soul accoutrement; and, most impressive
of all, the Bass Machine, the remains of a blown Hammond
organ Cooper rescued from New Orleans and rebuilt inside
the body of an old Victrola radio, the source of imposing
low-end chords recalling the Bach fugue Captain Nemo rocked
in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Now, meet the Sensualists: On a perfectly muggy August
evening, Cooper, Fidler and Metric drink Gato Negro on the
porch and talk about how they came to play some of Portland's
most beguiling homemade non-rock. (Kettler, who keeps the
band grounded in some version of reality on a sparse drum
kit, has decamped for a New York vacation.) It seems the
band, which celebrates the release of its self-titled debut
album on local boy Eric Mast's Audio Dregs Records this
week, springs from a shared affair with strange sounds and
weird movies.
"We started here, up in the attic with a four-track, just
me and Anna," Cooper says. "We were recording music for
films I was making."
"I played the title role in Swamp Thing," Fidler
says. "I had to dive into Oaks Bottom in scuba gear and
a sort of reptilian mask."
"And then you killed a small child at the end," Cooper
adds.
A somewhat sinister birth for a basically ebullient band,
to be sure. The arrival of Kettler on drums inspired them
to play live, and the addition of Metric, a transplant from
that other Brooklyn, on bass and single steel wheel completed
the push beyond the homebody-wizards-with-a-4-track stage.
"We started out playing film shows, gallery openings, stuff
like that," Cooper says of the band's growth into a jumpy
live act. "We're just now starting to get into the rock
club thing."
The Sensualists' live show, often augmented by movies projected
onto mirrors mounted on a spinning old turntable, is pretty
spry for a band that refuses to pick up a guitar. Fidler
and Cooper's keyboards drive forward on a backbeat fusion
of Kettler's live drums and beats built by Metric. It's
enough to inspire actual dancing in a scene that has the
detached head-bob down to a science.
The new disc captures some of that energy--"By the law
of psychic sound," Fidler chants at one point, "the keyboard
knows how to get down!"--but mainly allows the Sensualists
to find their softer side. With ample analog electric keys
lapping against each other, the Sensualists stir a warm
bath of millennial lullaby in between the more athletic
numbers. Live and recorded, the band plays around in the
junkyard of 20th-century musical inventions, turning everything
from the time-tested drum kit to the so-now turntable to
its own ends.
Of course, Portland is pretty much a city built on rock
and roll, but the Sensualists say they're finding more and
more fellow travelers as Rose City fans discover life beyond
the six-string. In fact, the rootsy leanings of the old-line
local scene helps the band by providing a steady stream
of discarded hardware--the source of all Gadgets.
"When I moved out here, at first I was actually really
disappointed by what was going on," Cooper says. "This was
a few years ago, and it seemed like there was roots rock,
experimental noise and not a lot in between. So I just started
picking up these cheap old instruments where I could--there
are a lot out there. I'd been dreaming of playing the Moog
since I was 12, so when I actually came across one here,
it suddenly seemed like a natural thing to do."
So who's in control, man or Gadget?
"Each new instrument seems to define a song or two," Fidler
says. "When the Fun Machine came along, all of a sudden
there were some Fun Machine songs, but now we're basically
in a human-working-with-machine mode."
"Although," Cooper adds, "the machines did used
to be a lot more powerful. We're slowly gaining control."
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 8,
1999
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