PNW SUMMER ISSUE by Lena Palladina

volume i, issue i

PNW

CONTENTS ZEPHYRS PAGE 4

HAUSU PAGE 20

U PAGE 8

ZARIA VETTER PAGE 12

HIBOU

KENTA MURAKAMI PAGE 22

CLOSING PAGE 32

PAGE 18

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ZEPH

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HYRS

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PNW: WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED THE BAND, YOU WENT BY TRADEWINDS FOR ZEPHYR. WHAT INSPIRED THE NAME CHANGE?

CAMERON CASE, DRUMS: Tradewinds was hardly even a band, we played three or four shows under that name. After that we had a mild stylistic change and the name was a mouthful.

PIERCE ADLER, GUITAR/VOCALS: (laughs) It sounded kinda dorky, and too science-fiction-y PNW: WHAT MADE YOU BE IN A BAND TOGETHER?

PA: We played on the same baseball team in seventh grade, and only really started hanging out in eighth grade CC: He used to come to me with metal bands [that he liked] and we compared music. I was into Neutral Milk Hotel and he was really into like, Trivium.

PA: But the firehouse (Old Firehouse Teen Center in Redmond) booked me to play a show and I wanted Cam to just play the backing drums so we were going to record the drums and I was going to play them on my iPod during the show. But then Casey Catherwood (booking manager for the OFH) was like, “Hope Cam is going to play with you at the show!”, so it wasn’t a conscious starting of a band, it just kind of happened. PNW: DO YOU THINK YOU’VE INFLUENCED EACH OTHER’S STYLE?

PA: Yeah, when we started I was really into myself, and now I think I’m into myself less and have a better sense of humor... I’m not an anarchist yet. [laughs]

CC: We’ve grown really really close, I love the man to death, he’s one of my best friends ever. PNW: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW RECORD COMING OUT, WHAT’S THAT LIKE?

PA: We started recording it in March 2010, and it was going to be a series of three small tapes, and also a 7”. We wanted to finish with our ‘old style’ and switch to our ‘new style’

CC: And it was recorded in two places, this little shack called the Chophouse in Seattle, and half the tape sounds like it’s recorded in a cave for that reason. The other half was recorded in a really nice ProTools studio at the Old Firehouse.

PA: It was three songs at the Chophouse and four songs at the Firehouse, so you can definitely hear the contrast.

CC: We’ve got some ambient soundscapes in this one, none of the songs sound really alike. I’m excited to see where it takes us.

PNW: HOW HAS YOUR BURST IN FAME (MTV AD, PLAYING WITH THE SMITH WESTERNS, ETC.) AFFECTED YOU?

PA: We’re still staying true to who we are, not succumbing to any peer pressure, definitely not selling out.

CC: We don’t plan on being on a major label, ever, I

think that we’re very much in touch with independent labels and the DIY aesthetic to a certain extent.

Photos by Lena Palladina

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PNW: WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO PLAY YOUR RESPECTIVE INSTRUMENTS?

CC: I’ve only been drumming for about two years, and I’ve become really into bringing the drums into

the forefront of the music. [I’m inspired by] the drummer of the Minutemen (George Hurley) and a lot of African music as well.

PA: My dad used to play guitar to me when I was really young, and I was really into classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, and I had some solo projects and my acoustic project just merged into this thing with Cam.

PNW: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR SONGWRITING PROCESS

CC: Pierce is definitely the principal songwriter, I throw in lyrics here and there.

PA: It usually starts with me writing the guitar part, and he’ll send me lyrics and I fit them to the vocal line. PNW: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE TRACK OFF THE NEW ALBUM?

PA: “Twins”, because it was originally written as two songs, and then we merged them together, and I kind of like it. My parents like it, which is cool.

CC: “Fort Worden”, we’ve been playing it live for some time and it sounds like a metal song. It’s a metal song with a jangle-pop kind of feel. That’s my favorite and it’s also the longest track on the record. PNW: DESCRIBE YOUR RECORD IN 3 WORDS CC: Huge, emo, mess

PA: Summer, fun, jams

To hear more, go to: http://zephyrsband.bandcamp.com, http://twitter.com/#!/zephyrsboys http://facebook.com/pages/ZEPHYRS

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U is a band that veils itself in a light shroud of secrecy, allowing their unique music to speak for itself, and it speaks volumes. Their hard, noisy sound, while at time chaotic, also carries a line of tranquility. The bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two members, Travis Coster and Jeff Johnson have a lot to say about their music, their words brimming with enthusiasm, a sharp contrast to their very focused, almost harsh on-stage auras. I sat down with the duo to talk about music, their creative process and Britney Spears.

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At first listen, U tends to shock. The chords and progressions are heavy, but the melody line can be light and airy – in fact, a lot of the band’s music acts as a complete contrast to itself. Their live shows showcase a museum of pedals, soundboards and pedals, all housed on oriental rugs that Johnson and Coster sit on for the duration of the performance. It’s hard to imagine, when listening to U’s tape or seeing their live shows how they write their music and you tend to wonder if there is any sense of organization to their process. As far as live shows go, Johnson says “some parts are really clean but there’s this one part where I have to give this pedal to Travis [and it’s chaotic]. As far as songs go, they’re noisy, so by that nature they’re kind of improvised.” Coster says, “We’ve got a lot of cues, music cues, or Jeff will have to wait for me to make my transition. Sometimes I’ll be a little bit behind [in changing pedals]”. The hardest thing about playing live shows? “Remembering settings, transitions”, says Coster. “It’s a lot more like a math test than playing music”. The two bandmates, who launched their band into full swing last summer when they formed and immediately embarked on a U.S. tour, put a lot of pride into sounding unique but aren’t too worried about pleasing their listeners. “ I’m kind of into being a band that not everyone would like”, says Coster, noting that Seattleites are “pretty passive” about disliking something like music. Johnson’s favorite thing about playing music is “having someone come up and say ‘oh, that was really cool’, it feels good to have pleased one person.”

As time has passed, U’s writing process has developed and matured. “[After we realized] that our songwriting locks into a pattern of sorts, our process has been changing slowly.” , says Coster. “We try to jam and play around with things, try to let go of any desire to make a perfect song. We’ll jam for an hour or two and then find something that would be cool for 30 seconds.” He also notes, “Jeff does a lot of research and development.”, and Johnson attests that he plays on his own and tries to “harness something and reproduce it in a really sustainable way.”

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Coster and Johnson have a theory about input; “the more types of sounds that you listen to, the bigger your palette is”, says Johnson. “Your creative output is really dependent on your creative input”. That being said, they pride themselves on listening to lots of different music as inspiration. Johnson mentions the comparisons they’ve been getting to Black Dice, but sticks to the opinion that U is less noise, more pop. To illustrate that idea, Coster brings up the teen dream of pop. “Have you heard the new Britney Spears single? Till the world ends? That’s kinda where we’re going”, he laughs. The cloud of secrecy that surrounds U, what with the name that makes google searches nearly impossible, and the music that is hard to classify into one genre, is not a new idea to Coster. His other project, Naomi Punk, is known for not releasing any personal info to the public. “I really wanted people to listen to it without thinking about who was making it and what they looked like, what their gender was, or what their age was. [It] kinda got out of control, people thought my name was Naomi [and] I had people writing me emails that I would write back to as Naomi”, says Coster. U keeps fans more in the loop. Coster and Johnson create collages and posters that they sell at their shows, are friendly to fans, and hope to release a book accompanying a future album release. Currently, they’re working on a 7” record, set to release in the fall, are working with Seattle band Secret Colors to release a split record and, according to the band, their excitement is building with experience. “We feel like we started with a conceptual art idea and the further we go, the more it’s becoming realized. It’s getting bigger, like realizing a room you are trying to describe is actually the atmosphere.”

To hear more, visit www.myspace.com/usireal

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ZARIA

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ZARIA VETTER Zaria Vetter is an 18-year old Seattleite whose interests include Beyonce, the night, and Iceland She has been photographing for as long as she can remember and a spires to attend an art university. To see more work, visit www.flickr.com/photos/zariamarie

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HIBOU

Photo by Mia Terry

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Hibou, the summer-fun project fronted by Peter Michel and Jack Smith had

humble beginnings. “I met Jack in French class, he was a senior and I was a

freshman”, says guitarist Peter. It makes sense then, that their band name draws inspiration from the romance language; Hibou is French for owl.

Before it was Hibou Jack and Peter had solo projects, and at first would only

meet in the music room at lunch to jam. The jam sessions evolved into their first collaboration, Bomtsskah, and later, with the help of musician friend Mia Terry, evolved into the band as it is now. The band is currently on hiatus as Michel

and Smith tour with the acclaimed band Craft Spells, but plan to finish the EP as soon as they return. Says Smith, “A very big part of us being on tour together is that we continue to write music for Hibou, exchange ideas”.

Sounds n’ sounds The band’s music is jangly and poppy, just begging to be

played in the car on the way to the beach. On their first single, “Shaii”, Michel croons “our favorite season, with all good reason”, a perfect homage to the

band’s favorite time of year. The song opens with a child’s laugh, and the shim-

mery chorus of oohs and ahhs inspires a flurry of sing-a-longs and foot bopping that carries on long after summer’s over.

Keeping it friendly Michel and Smith like to include their friends in their live shows - they have recruited the help of violinists and celloists for their live

shows, and hope to keep including more instruments in their live shows in the future.

Sounds of Summer When I asked the band to describe their EP, their answers

were unsurprisingly similar. “The mood of our new EP is like this lonely yeti who wanders the woods and eats innocent hikers”, says bassist Terry, while Michel

counters with “super super super summer and nostalgia.” The admittedly sassy band is a pleasure to listen to on a sunny day, and even more so on a grey cloud-filled one.

Listen to Shaii at http://hibou1.bandcamp.com and find out more at www.facebook.com/pages/Hibou

Photos by Zaria Vetter

HAUSU

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Hausu

takes its name from a horror film about a house that consumes its in habitants, but this is

no campy movie tribute band.

The four-member band composed of Reed students Carl Hedman, Santi Alex Maguire make post-punk that manifests itself in a very upbeat, ac-

Leyba, Ben Funkhouser and cessible way. The melody lines

are clean and sharp to counterbalance the somewhat unintelligible

lyrics that funkhouser booms through the microphone.

music is filled with raw emotion, which

12” coming out in October and a slot at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party. I former Herr jazz member and singer/guitarist for Hausu, Ben Funkhouser, about the

will lend itself to a chatted with

The

band’s future endeavors

PNW: How has the Portland music scene affected your style as a musician? Ben Funkhouser, singer/guitarist: Not a lot, but a lot of value in Portland is placed on serious musicianship. So I guess in that sense, without really knowing it, I’ve become a lot more serious and focused on performance and quality of output. PNW: Do

you think it’s a postive or negative thing for a band to be so closely associated with a col-

Reed? BF: Negative, I think. We try to distance ourselves, partially because of the stigma that exists in Portland about Reed students, but partially because we want to be identified and treated as adult professional musicians. I’d like to be treated as a musician rather than a college student. People have this perception of Reed students that they are really weird, rich kids who exist in the periphery of Portland and are kind of stuck up. There are people like that, but I don’t feel like that’s a fair or accurate representation of Reeds as a whole. lege scene as you are with

PNW: Your band name is an homage to Japanese horror film Hausu, what about that film inpsired you? BF: Not only is it extremely chaotic and absurd, there are parts of it that are extremely beautiful and the moments of cheesy, ethereal feelingthat you get from watching the movie is reflected in Hausu the band .It’s almost preemptive because we chose the band name before we wrote material, but everything always seems to make sense, there’s logic in everything.

usuah

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PNW: Describe Hausu’s sound BF: Kate Bush, Bruce Springsteen, post-swag. PNW: The EP

you released on your bandcamp page recently ran out of free downloads, are you

excited about all the attention you’ve been getting?

BF: Yeah, it’s really nice. Instead of sending ourselves to people, we’ve just been putting ourselves out for people to take if they want and people have been taking and it’s really nice. We’re putting out a 12” on Seattle label Highfives and Handshakes in October, and just got an email from a Portugese label that wants us to do a 7” . PNW: Can you tell me about how you recorded the EP? BF: We recorded the EP at The Mine in Ballard, with Jose [Rohena]. Our friend Justin from Craft Spells recorded our first track in our practice space and we decided to get a hold of someone more professional to finish it out, and it was fully worth it. We’ve got four songs that I feel very proud of. The process was really nice, we tracked all night. PNW: What kind of sound are you trying to achieve with the 12”? BF: We’re writing a whole new set for the 12”. I wrote a piece today in my dad’s room, which is weird because I sat down and I wrote maybe one of my best guitar compositions yet. It’s going to be really polished, not in the studio sense, but in the sense that nothing is not there for a reason. We’re taking this as an opportunity to motivate ourselves to put out a record that we’re truly one hundred percent behind. [We want to accomplish] a kind of coherency and general beauty, a sense of power but also a prettiness to it that encompasses a lot of emotion. I want the songs to feel sharp, really sharp, like a Cure song or an Orange Juice track.

To hear more:

http://hausu.bandcamp.com http://hausuboys.tumblr.com http://facebook.com/hausuboys Background photo by Genevieve Dash

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KENTA

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KENTA MURAKAMI Kenta Murakami started taking pictures in eight grade with a Target-bought Polaroid 600, an experience that he attributes to being the start to his artistic endeavours. In ninth grade, the world of Flickr and his dad’s used Pentax DSLR opened new doors for the budding artist.

Although a native of Washington, Murakami moved to Japan with his family in December, and

almost immediately began working with Model Agency Friday as a model and a test photogra-

pher. He shoots with a Canon XSI, but is still “obsessed” with Polaroids, the instant photos that started it all.

To see more, visit www.flickr.com/photos/kenta-kun

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FIN

This first issue of PNW magazine was made with love as part of my culminating project for my

senior year of high school. The hours I poured into the conception, preparation and execution of

this project were hours of love and curiosity. I chose to create a magazine not because it was an easy task or something that I knew would get me a passing grade - in fact the challenges I had

almost overshadow the successes. On one fateful day, my laptop shut itself down and after four agonizing hours on the phone with customer support, it became clear that there was no saving

the progress I had made on the layout of the magazine (or anything else that was stored on my

computer). A fresh start, although a hard blow to my generally optimistic views about the maga-

zine, did me a world of good. I saw things from a new perspective, re-read articles I wrote with a different set of eyes and caught errors that I might have not seen the first time around.

My desire to create this magazine was simple: I wanted to create something so fundamentally

different than the other nationally-published, youth-oriented magazines. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t interested in seeing Justin Beibers or Kirsten Stewarts on the cover, nor did I ever enjoy the flurry of over-hyped

musicians that appeared in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;arts and musicâ&#x20AC;? spreads of those publications. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest and personally knowing so many musicians and artists made me realize that

there was a real lack of exposure for local youth talent. Instead of waiting around for a small music blog or arts column to name drop a band that I liked, I took matters into my own hands.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The issue you are holding in your hands (or, more likely, digitally reading on your digital me-

dia provider of choice), is just a modest sample of all the talent that is blooming in Washington,

Oregon, even British Columbia. I call this not only the inaugural issue but also the Summer issue. I hope reading this has opened your eyes to a handful of musicians and photographers that truly deserved every bit of your attention. Here come the thank you’s:

First off, a huge thank you to my project mentor Casey Catherwood, who was a columnist for

The Stranger and offered me invaluable advice on how to interview everyone (even the moodi-

est of rockstars) as well as copious amounts of life advice. The second largest thank you goes to my project panel, Ms. Linda Thompson and Mr. Steve Jones, for working with me through all my difficulties and making sure I was staying on track to completion. An obvious, but often forgotten

thank you goes to my family for being so supportive in my quest to make this magazine a reality.

Of course, a thank you goes to all the friends who I blew off to pursue an interview opportunity or to finish out a layout.

Special thanks to Cameron Case and Pierce Adler for accomodating, respectively, my very first interview, and my very last interview. Thank you to Travis Coster and Jeff Johnson for chatting with me at their least favorite coffee establishment. Thank you to Zaria Vetter for providing her

photos and an easygoing personality. Thanks also to Jack Smith and Peter Michel for answering my questions while busy on tour, and to Mia Terry for providing copious moral support.

Thank you Ben Funkhouser for bearing the frigid cold winds of Ballard to chat with me after a

show, and thank you to Kenta Murakami for sending me his work all the way from Japan! Thank you “Thunderpanda” for the Barlow font that I used as the headers for each page and a special thank you to Kayla Willoughby for reviewing and editing my content at all hours of the night. I truly could not have done it without all of you!

As far as the future goes, expect quartely publications filled with more musicians and artists, known and unknown, and possibly some special guest columns!

Thank you, once more, for taking the time to read the baby that I have cradled to maturity, my pride and joy, PNW.

Until next time,

LENA Palladina