“Only electrons from here to your eardrum,” is a line from local duo Dat’r’s new LP, Turn Up the Ghosts.
While there may be only electrons from here to your eardrum (we can argue physics and chemistry later), Dat’r likes to fill each of those electrons with danceable, looping, pounding beats, bleeps, blips, percussion slams, joystick toggles and keyboard wails that all become a direct extension of the willing dancer’s shaking booty.
The duo was born out the divergent paths taken by the Binary Dolls, a group helmed by Nick Jaina, which fused hyper-literate vocals, electronics and indie rock. After releasing only one album, Jaina went the route of folk rabble-rouser. And what was left of the Binary Dolls? Matt Dabrowiak and Paul Alcott, Siamese twins that had an idea.
What the two young men took with them from the erstwhile Dolls was a concentration on songwriting and, for Paul, the added element of the drums.
Circular rhythms and swirling vocals repeat and repeat and repeat in Dat’r’s songs until the band throws all the shit at the fan and the storm of percussion comes into an all out melee of dance energy. It would be easy to be just a band that runs beats through a computer and writes words around the beats.
Many a hip-hop artist thrive on these principles alone. But add in live percussion (drums, cymbals, shakers) and videogame joysticks that allow the duo to control their sounds and mess with them live, and you’ve got yourself a concept. And quite a concept at that.
Not being as educated in dance/electronic music as they would like does not stop the boys of Dat’r from making music that they love and the kind of music that an upstanding citizen on ecstasy would kill for.
Dat’r has performed everywhere around Portland from living rooms to rock clubs. The group is at their best in a house show setting, at a party or a tightly packed dance floor. This is what their music screams for.
Sweaty bodies exchanging appropriate amounts of sweat for beats.
So, it may come as a surprise that Dat’r is signed to a label like Hush Records. Hush, when you look at their roster of talent, has traditionally leaned towards (bear with me now) a hushed sound. Housing such local folk greats as Norfolk and Western, Loch Lomond, Laura Gibson and, for a time, everyone’s favorite shanty kids, The Decemberists. Even their old partner in crime Nick Jaina is on the roster. But conventions aside, Dat’r seems to have found a great home in Hush.
Dat’r just released their debut LP, Turn Up the Ghosts, and will be playing at Boy Eats Drum Machine’s CD-release party at the Holocene this Thursday. Expect an evening of frenzied electronics in keeping with the obsessive bleeping that has defined the group so far.
Dat’rw/ Boy Eats Drum MachineHolocene, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. $621-plus