Beats Per Week

Portland's Best Dance Music Options, July 10-16

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DJ Krush plays Rotture on Tuesday, July 15.

In this column, WW music calendar editor and contributing writer Mitch Lillie helps the discerning club-goer put together their weekly calendar by compiling Portland's best dance-music options for the next seven days. Turn up, tune in, drop the bass.

This Friday at East End marks the return of an important monthly. Elbo Room—it’s fine by me if the name is a rip-off of the Mission District club of the same name—brings Om Records’ J Boogie to Portland. His style ranges from the soulful to the twerkful shades of house. (9 pm, $5, 21+)

Though he calls the ATL his hometown, you won’t catch an ounce of Atlanta on Friday at Fez: No crunk, no trap, not even Miami bass. Le Castle Vania’s style—especially on the freshly-dropped EP Feels Like Fire—is like he pared the chainsaws in Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” into whirring surgical saws. (10 pm, $10-15, 21+)

Please, hurry up and get on TWRK’s big-room trap bandwagon before the whole thing derails into a -step suffixed, female objectifying train wreck. Hey, ladies get in free on Friday at Whiskey Bar! (10 pm, $10, 21+)

I didn’t go to the original X Marks the Spot—it was out in the forest sometime last year—but Friday’s edition of mainstream EDM fed through local underground producers is one of the summer’s only chances to rave on the Portland Spirit. (10:45 pm, $20 advance, $30 day of show, 18+)

Back in January, I predicted that Quarry—aka Cory Haynes, founder of Internet label STYLSS—was an artist to watch. Now STYLSS labelmates Cestladore, Portland’s Gang$ign$ and transcontinental producer Eastghost—among many others—are taking over Verified at Holocene on Saturday. It’ll be a little like hip-hop on opiates and a dope pu-erh. (10 pm, free before 11 pm with RSVP, $5, 21+)

No offense to Massive Attack and Portishead, but the finest trip-hop album comes not from Bristol but from Japan. DJ Krush’s 1996 collaboration with avant-garde trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, Ki-Oku, coolly carves its way through Krush’s moonlit beats and Kondo’s fluttery-eyed solos. Since then he’s maintained a tour schedule apropos of the 51-year-old icon he is—Pay your respects on Tuesday at Rotture. (9 pm, $17, 21+)