travel light

“bleep-bloop music”

[ELECTRONIC DANCE FUN] Generally, a techno show is a techno show is a techno show. But an Atole show is a different beast, with the Portland electronic pop collective acting more like a rock band than the short-lived old model of electronic dance performance (a dude holding down CTRL and Z on his keyboard). But I ain’t here to hate, I appreciate! Atole is so much fun that even a performance-centric old-schooler like myself uses it as a gateway drug to get into other bleep-bloop music. El Ten Eleven fits that bill, playing Ratatat-style dance rock with a decidedly more 8-bit feel, and Portland New Wave outcasts Flaspar give dance fiends and aural obsessives alike something to bond over. And I’ll finally say it: It’s getting increasingly hard not to notice a “Portland Sound” developing out of high-energy electronic pop.