Weekend! Nightlife: On the Rocks

Apparently, Someday's time has come

By anne marie distefano

The Portland Tribune, Oct 6, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

DENISE FARWELL / PORTLAND TRIBUNE

Jessie Smith of Dead Bird Movement performs at a recent St. Vitus Dance Club event, a regular Friday happening that features electronic dance music and much more.

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Is it karaoke? Is it a band? A man in black is pacing the dance floor, microphone in hand.

Behind him on the stage is another man, in combat boots, working the controls of a complicated electronic setup. A mysterious collection of sounds washes over the room.

This is Dirty Deed, which actually wasn’t scheduled to play tonight, according to promoter Noah Mickens. Another performer failed to show, but fortunately, all of Dirty Deed’s music just happened to be loaded onto the computer belonging to the headliners, Fraqtured Sound.

This could only happen in the world of electronic music.

Standing outside the new Someday Lounge, Mickens is tossing around terms like “Illbient Dub” and “Industrial EBM.” These are some of the subgenres of beat-oriented electronic dance music that is featured every Friday night at an event called St. Vitus Dance Club, one of a number of recurring events that Mickens plans to host – or already is hosting – at the Old Town venue.

Right now he’s trying to remember what EBM stands for. He asks the doorman and several passers-by (he seems to know everyone), but no one can remember.

That’s OK, because Mickens doesn’t like to pigeonhole, anyway. “I want to really cover stuff that’s outside the system of genres of electronic music but is still danceable,” he says.

Old arts shine in a new light

Around 11 p.m., RuDement takes the stage. The act consists of a dreadlocked man and his machines, playing ambient hip-hop, creating music out of prerecorded snippets of his own original music.

No one is dancing, which bothers Mickens a bit. He was hoping for a better turnout tonight, but he remains philosophical. “They can’t all be blockbusters,” he says.

Fifteen or 20 people cluster around the bar at the front of the club. The space, carved out of an old warehouse, is dark and industrial but smells incongruously of freshly cut lumber.

The low ceiling over the bar doubles as a platform for light and sound technicians. Beyond billowing gauze curtains is the performance space, with high ceilings, a concrete floor and a new stage backed with crimson drapes.

A young man and woman begin assembling a portable platform in the middle of the dance floor. The woman wraps herself in a voluminous skirt and situates herself atop a small box with a glowing light inside.

This is Jessie Smith, performing as Dead Bird Movement. She uses her skirt to gradually reveal beams of light, then chucks the whole apparatus (skirt included) and performs a jerky, strangely mesmerizing dance for the small crowd.

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