SHXCXCHCXSH didn’t exactly make it easy for themselves — just look at their name. Yet this isn’t the first time we’ve seen unpronounceable names in electronic music. The witch house movement of the early ’10s was full of vowelless or symbol-filed monikers, from (///▲▲▲\\\) to †‡†.  Those acts adopted a similarly dark image to SHXCXCHCXSH, and likewise cloaked their identities behind a veil of photo blur and Internet mystique. But the sound of witch house has long outlived its aesthetic mischief, and for a group in 2014 to bring the latter back takes balls.

That they’re not actually playing witch house music helps, though they might have been saddled with that term had it not been previously used to describe a form of music with very little to do with house. SHXCXCHCXSH play a form of warped dance music with traces of dub and industrial music that wouldn’t be inaccurate to categorize as “house.” Unlike the slow-paced genre that is witch house, SHXCXCHCXSH’s music thuds along pretty standardly in the 120-130 BPM range, occasionally dropping the beat entirely and taking on the guise of straight-up ambient.

Unlike witch house, there’s nothing explicitly scary about SHXCXCHCXSH or the songs on their new full-length Linear S Decoded. They seem like goofy people with a healthy love of trolling their audience — if their “explanation” of how to pronounce their name is any indication. Furthermore, their music is hard-edged but never deliberately difficult or jarring. There’s little melody but a lot of mystery, and they wield implacable synth and drum sounds with the atmosphere-conjuring wizardry of ambient artists. You’re never quite sure if you’re listening to something diurnal or nocturnal, organic or mechanical.

Though this can make for intriguing listening at times, it also makes it difficult to gauge the ideal situation for putting on Linear S Decoded. The fact that a number of other genre-bending dance albums of a similar ilk have been made recently means listeners might be tempted to put on any number of those in its stead. Untold’s Black Light Spiral is more terrifying, while Actress’s four albums are more stoner-friendly and the band’s dub-techno antecedents Basic Channel and Loscil are better for explicitly ambient listening.

At the moment, SHXCXCHCXSH’s purpose and direction doesn’t seem clear beyond their aesthetic. Luckily, the duo’s appeal isn’t entirely tied to their name and image, and Linear S Decoded is a promising introduction an electronic duo with a profound mastery of sound and texture. Yet promising is the keyword here, and if SHXCXCHCXSH has anything insightful to add to the current electronic music conversation, we’ll likely have to wait a while before we hear it.

The alpha male pop star is dead for the moment; Sam Smith — the most recent major male pop star to emerge in the Anglophone world — seems to be the perfect caulk to fill in the gap left by last year’s Robin Thickes and Justin Timberlakes. He’s a shy, emotional dude with a lot of pain in his heart and a preference for commitment over casual sex. The cover of his debut album, In The Lonely Hour, says everything you need to know about him in a single image — enough so that it’s not necessary to actually listen to the record to get what he’s all about.

On most of these songs, he’s obsessing over someone else, but there’s little depth to his feelings. Adele, the pop star he is most often compared to, filled her vocal performances with complex, often conflicting emotions; look at Someone Like You, on which she wishes her ex-lover well in a voice so full of venom it could sour milk. Smith, on the other hand, always maintains a steady tone, keeping his voice at an affected sob. He talks about “demons,” exclaims “Lord” every now and again, and always goes out of his way to add pained little croaks to his words. This is “soul” as a preset, befitting his former career as a hired-gun vocalist for dance producers like Disclosure and Naughty Boy.

It’s thus fitting that the variations in quality between the tracks on In The Lonely Hour have largely to do with the production. The piano is the dominant instrument here, but it’s mostly playing basic triads and uninteresting chord progressions; only on the almost Beatlesque I’m Not The Only One and the closing Lay Me Down does it do anything interesting. (It’s no coincidence those two songs are the best on the record.) The other two best songs here, Stay With Me and Good Thing, are both aided by cute little production flourishes — a gospel choir on the former and a sumptuous string section on the latter — and would flounder without them.

The bland production on this album may have been a concession to Smith’s voice, but given that Smith is largely doing the same thing on every track, it didn’t exactly work.  As In The Lonely Hour clearly shows, Smith is just as dependent on his producers as the protagonist of his songs is on a lover.

Since forming a quarter of a century ago, Atmosphere has remained one of underground hip hop’s most revered and restless creative juggernauts. They’re a band marked by continual growth, from their hard-hitting ’90s work to the more introspective songs they’re known for today. Though they hail from Minneapolis, they’re regulars in the Northwest, and they’ll play the McDonald Theater on September 11, as part of their “North Of Hell Tour.”

I had the opportunity to speak to Slug, the rapping half of the duo (the other being DJ/producer Ant), about Eugene, Minneapolis and the mad genius of Kanye West — the namesake of one of the best songs on their new album Southsiders.

I’ve noticed a massive number of Atmosphere fans in Eugene — just about everyone I know here is crazy about y’all. What reason could you think for this? Have y’all played in Eugene previously, or do you have a particular Northwest connection?

Yeah we’ve been in Eugene a lot. We started out in the WOW Hall back in 2000 with Eyedea & Abilities. Since then we’ve been back a lot of times. We’ve played the McDonald, the weird outdoor place out in the park. I’ve had the opportunity to hang out in Eugene a decent amount.

I find it interesting that your album is called Southsiders, but your tour is called “North Of Hell.” Is that dichotomy (north/south) on purpose? 

Yeah, I guess we wanted a tour name that was cute. A lot of times we shoot for something that’s kind of cute, and we thought it was a cute play off the Slayer album South Of Heaven. But, it also references the album, and someone who’s thinking too hard might connect the dots between Southsiders and “North Of Hell.”

I wasn’t trying to create a dichotomy between north and south, but with “south side” I was trying to imply the “other side,” the flip-side. This record is still based in my world, my experiences, but I wanted to convey the flip side of that. I mean shit, I’m 41, about to turn 42, and in rap music, if you look at my contemporaries who are a similar age, a lot of them don’t really want to explore what life is like in your forties, through their raps. A lot of them still talk about the same things they’ve talked about their whole careers, and I don’t want to end up like that. I want my music and my life to stay parallel.

When you’re in your forties, you start questioning life, death, mortality, what’s it all about, what’s the struggle, how are you going to continue to have a positive effect on your surroundings? The record wasn’t necessarily created to have a positive impact on my surroundings, but it does document where I’m at, the impact I’m trying to make myself, as a human being.

You’ve been writing songs titled after celebrities for a while.  A lot of rappers are comparing themselves or their accomplishments to the celebrities in those songs. How do your songs tie in to their namesakes?  

A lot of the times they don’t, but when they do it’s usually using our conception of that celebrity to personify a particular idea. With Felt we named a song “Rick James” because the song was about just not giving a fuck. For a song like “Kanye West” (from Southsiders), it’s about giving too much of a fuck.  There was another song called “Marvin Gaye,” because that song was about the subtleties and the nuance of being able to hide a message within what might, on the surface, just sound pretty.  Instead of trying to compare myself to celebrities, I’m more likely to use that celebrity’s name to describe a particular feeling.

You’ve said on Kanye West (the rapper, not the song) that a lot of rappers remind you of Madonna, and he doesn’t. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

I was more talking about rappers than pop artists. But I feel a lot of pop artists don’t really want to rock the boat, they just want to sit atop their pop-art throne. They’ll be careful what they say, who they might offend. Even Eminem will offend people with his art, but he doesn’t speak out outside his own art that often. But Kanye has always spoken his mind regardless of how the media might portray him. That’s something we need more of, not just in hip hop but in the pop culture landscape — people who aren’t necessarily afraid of what kind of reaction the rest of the world will have if they just speak their mind.

People like Bono and George Clooney always have something to say, but the media doesn’t really go in on them. People dis the shit out of Kanye, and do you know why that is? It’s because he’s coming from hip hop, and there’s this stigma around the music we make. People need to stop and realize that this music we make has an amazing power to inform.

Kanye does things that risk losing fans. A lot of pop stars are too scared to do that. That’s why I compare them to Madonna. Madonna use to do things like “Like A Virgin,” pissing off a bunch of Christians, but let’s be real — it won her more fans than it lost her. It was all an agenda. Kanye does exactly what the media doesn’t want him to do, and I think that’s important. That’s why as big as he gets, I will always see him as an amazing representative of hip hop culture.

* * *

Doors open at 7 p.m. All ages. DJ Fundo, deM atlaS, and Prof. open. Tickets $25 advance, $30 day of the show.

The school year’s almost over, and as people head home, the parties will inevitably begin to die down.  But for those staying in town looking for something to do, there are plenty of concerts in town — including the first-ever Eugene appearance of the rising Santa Cruz band Coffis Brothers & Mountain Men, who will play Cozmic Pizza on Tuesday, June 17.

Unlike the Ramones, the White Stripes, the Flying Burrito Brothers and so many countless others, the Coffis Brothers are actually siblings, raised together on a steady diet of classic rock records.

But unusually for two musicians who’ve spent so much extra-musical time together, Jamie and Kellen Coffis don’t really collaborate a whole lot.

“We don’t usually write songs together,” Kellen Coffis said on their collaboration.  “We write songs on our own, then we show the other person, then we show the band and there’s more collaboration.”

The Coffises were raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California.  Though they grew up on much of the same music–mostly classic rock like Tom Petty, the Beatles, Neil Young and Electric Light Orchestra–they didn’t start writing songs until Kellen was in high school and Jamie in college.

“Tom Petty got us both into songwriting,” Kellen recalls.  “When we made our album we listened to tracks from his albums to hear what he was doing with guitar sounds and drum sounds and used that as a reference.”

The “band” is the Mountain Men, a revolving cast of collaborators that back up the Coffises.  Adding subtle touches like electric piano and steel guitar, the Mountain Men act as a substitute for the great session bands that backed up the classic rock bands of yore.

This, along with the band’s backward-looking production, gives the group a characteristically vintage sound.  Their self-titled debut, Coffis Brothers & Mountain Men, had the live-in-a-room grit of early Beatles and the plaintive vibe of ’70s heartland rock.  Their latest album, Wrong Side Of The Road, is more polished, with cushy drums and lots of acoustic-electric interplay.

The San Francisco Chronicle described this approach as “a sound that has an easy rock vibe that’s actually hip.”  Though the band uses this as a press quote, Kellen describes it as “one of those backhanded compliments” and believes the reviewer might simply be ripping into them for their pop chops.

“We’re just trying to write songs that are catchy,” Kellen said.  “A lot of times that gets called ‘pop,’ which is fine with us, but I think a lot of people who are scared to be put in that box try to make things that are way out there.  That’s not really what we’re going for.  I’d like to think that’s what he was talking about.”

This pop approach befits the Coffis Brothers’ strong relationship with their fans.  They funded Wrong Side Of The Road through Kickstarter, leading fans to pledge over 150% what the band neaded.  They tour relentlessly, having played as far north as Alaska, where they’re scheduled to make their second appearance at the Salmonstock festival at the end of their current tour.  And they’ve found new fans as they touch down in each town — likely including Eugene, where their rootsy style is sure to be welcome.

The Coffis Brothers & Mountain Men play Cozmic at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 17. Kokobola open.  All ages.  $7.

Eugene residents might know Patrick Stutz from his gig at Kampus Barber Shop — he’s the barber with the messy, dyed-blond hair and impressive tuft of beard. Yet for the last decade, he’s lead a dual life as an MC under the name SelfEsteem BoatWillie. Stutz was an active figure on the Eugene hip-hop scene in the latter half of the 2000s, releasing three albums and gigging with the groups Antidope and Clowns of Class.

He hasn’t released a mixtape or album since 2008, having taken time off to focus on his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend and her two kids. But he’s fresh off his first gig in eighteen months, a gig supporting Nashville rapper Spoken Nerd at Springfield’s Goodfellas Lounge. With his upcoming fourth album potentially slated for August, he’s slowly working his way back into the game.

“The show gave me a hunger to get back into (hip-hop),” Stutz said. “The reception was so positive. Even with minimal practice I was so confident in my performance.”

Born in 1982, Stutz started out as a punk rocker before his friends started taking him to cyphers, or freestyle rap gatherings. His roots made the transition to hip-hop difficult at first.

“At first I was reluctant because a lot of the time there’s that punk rock attitude where you like what you think is ‘cool,” Stutz says. “But once I got into hip-hop, I was really inspired by it.”

He took on his name, based on an imagined junkie version of Mickey Mouse, in 2004. Though he was content on the cypher circuit at first, he began to gain more exposure after meeting the prolific Eugene musician Unkle Nancy at a show in 2005.

“When he was on stage, I was blown away,” Stutz recalls. “I spit him a verse and he was like, ‘come over this Sunday, let’s record.’”

The two formed Antidope, a group representing “the satirical side of hip-hop,” in 2005. They released two albums and played several shows at the WOW Hall alongside smaller venues like the Black Forest.

“Punk kids loved us, but hip-hop kids hated us,” Stutz recalled.

In 2007, Stutz became part of the short-lived supergroup Clowns of Class with his fellows in Antidope. The group recorded their sole album First Period in a month before breaking up. He’s rolled solo since then, releasing three albums — Patty Predicts the Present, Big Brother, and Patrick Makes Perfect.  Though his infrequent output sometimes leads to pressure about staying relevant, he’s developed a positive attitude.

“A lot of times I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Stutz said. “At times you feel like you’re wasting your time if you’re not doing anything with it. But after a while I realized the reason I make music first and foremost is therapy. If I get that out on paper I can look back on it and see I made something positive out of it.”

Though Stutz may make music chiefly for himself, friends and fans can attest to his passion for his music.

“His music is as approachable as he is in the barbershop,” said Nathan “Spoken Nerd” Conrad, whom he supported at his Goodfellas gig.

“Whenever he plays his music he’s always very enthusiastic,” says Jason Kadderly, a friend and neighbor of Stutz’s. “That’s a very respectable trait to have as an artist.”

The Campus Block Party didn’t start out looking like much of a party, but as more people began to arrive, the event began to blossom into a full-on rager. Though so many campus-oriented events end up devolving into tedium in their efforts to keep everything squeaky-clean, the Campus Block Party did a remarkable job of simulating an actual party while keeping the risk of a drunken riot to a minimum.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the event was more wild than it was. Partiers spilled out the door of the student domicile on the corner. About a third of the crowd was shirtless; some were practically nude. Getting wet was inevitable, whether by water balloon, water bottle, squirt gun, kiddie pool or dunk tank. A frat boy upended a table very much on purpose, and students were hit by empty beer boxes on two unrelated occasions.

At certain points, I was reminded of Woodstock; at other points, I was reminded of “Spring Breakers.”  But, of course, there weren’t as many drugs or sex as either one. There was a bit of an uncanny valley effect in how close the event came to debauchery without falling headfirst into it. I haven’t seen a campus event come as close to transcending its school-approved trappings as this one.

The order of the bands could not have been better-suited to the way in which the event progressed. Pluto the Planet opened the show with its summery indie pop while the sun was still oppressively hot and students were still trying to vibe with the event. Next came a nameless cover band assembled last-minute for the event, who played alt-pop classics like Weezer’s “The Sweater Song” and MGMT’s “Time to Pretend” that served to get the crowd in the spirit of dancing and singing along.

If those bands laid down the powder, Face For Radio lit the fuse. With two singers screaming on top of each other and an abundance of covers and jokes, they soundtracked the event’s daytime climax, when security tightened and beer bottles stacked up high in front of the corner houses. They were incredibly entertaining, especially when followed by the charismatic rapper Wavy Jones, who presented a welcome break from the event’s rock-oriented musical palate.

The Zendeavors continued the high-energy trend with an unusually fiery set that found singer Andrew Rogers screaming at the top of his lungs like he was condemning the partygoers to hell. Dirty Man & the Chiefs, a Eugene band whose music I had not previously heard but who sounded like a more manic version of Hall & Oates, gave the audience a nice change of pace before the nightfall brought on the second stage of the event — the DJs.

Unlike at the Willamette Valley Music Festival, at which crowds ten times the size of the day’s entire prior attendance came streaming onto campus after dark for the Campus DJ competition, the arrival of the DJs didn’t cause much crowd turnover. Not many more people than usual came or left during Carzinger or Good Vibes.

Things started to stir up a bit more after the arrival of Sokko & Lyons. The Campus DJ winners have become UO icons at this point, with their music and moniker becoming increasingly ubiquitous. The rapid shift in the size and density of the audience they brought on proves that they’re a valuable resource, a stamp of prestige on any event with enough clout to host them.

I doubt they’ll become the next Prefontaines and live on for decades in billboards and UO promotional swag, but they’re very much of this moment in time as both EDM heroes and Duck heroes, right at the crossroads of University of Oregon culture and larger American youth culture.

The same can be said of the event at large. As befitting an event organized almost entirely by students, the Campus Block Party knew its target audience and how to keep them around — with DJs, Duck pride and the chance of getting drunk. Though it was hardly Woodstock 2014, this wasn’t just some stodgy, dry, free-pizza snooze.  It was a party.

Update: I originally mistakenly wrote that the event did not begin at its scheduled start time, but I based my information on an outdated source.  The festival began at its scheduled start time of 1:30.

Any student who’s experienced Dead Week at the University of Oregon knows it’s a bleak and desolate period that should leave even the most studious scholars itching for a party. Luckily, that party is here in the form of the Campus Block Party.  A collaboration between numerous student groups, including Ethos, Envision Media and the UO Cultural Forum, the Campus Block Party offers live music, art, vendors and more for anyone looking to enjoy the sun or escape the looking shadow of finals.

“It’s a musical event for all the seniors graduating as well as all the people waiting to come back for fall,” said Daniel Kantor, who helped initiate the event and whose DIY booking agency Dirty Dan Booking provided three of the bands. “It’s a campus-wide event for the students, by the students.”

“We wanted to throw an end-of-the-year event the university has never seen before, and this is definitely it,” said Sam Arabian, regional and national music director at the Cultural Forum and one of the event’s main organizers.

Though the event is off-campus, it’s very much geared towards UO students, and as such, all the bands and DJs are Ducks. One of the main artistic liaisons for the event is the Oregon Voice, the student-run arts and culture publication that’s been based out of the University of Oregon since 1989.

“The Oregon Voice has been trying to throw an event all year, so they approached us and asked if we wanted to do the event together,” said Arabian. “That was great because adding the Oregon Voice to it would make it more of a student art showcase.”

Even without the Voice, the Campus Block Party would still be a great display of what the university has to contribute to the city’s larger music scene.  Campus DJ competitors Carzinger, Adreon and winners Sokko & Lyons will perform, as will four of Eugene’s best-known student bands: The Zendeavors, Pluto The Planet, Face For Radio, and Dirty Man & The Chiefs, plus two groups called Connor and Band and Cuddy and Band.

“It’s gonna be dope — all these awesome Eugene bands that have been played houses together forever,” said Andrew Rogers, singer-guitarist for the Zendeavors. “It’s a party.”

With over 2,000 people confirmed for the Facebook event, it looks to be exactly that — which is why the event organizers have taken precautions against the block party spiraling out of hand.  This is a risk at any music event, but especially one with hundreds of college students about to enjoy their last weekend of the school year.

Thus, 10 security guards and two traffic control guards from Starplex Crowd Management Services will be present.

“Any time a lot of people get together, especially with social media, things can getting out of hand,” said Michael Schueller, South Oregon Operations Manager for Starplex.  “We’re coming in with a lot of trained folks — we’re very prepared for this.”

But if the school was able to pack a thousand ravers in front of Lillis without a scratch on its fabled facade, things should hopefully go off without a hitch.  If you’re a UO student looking to get away from the stress of finals week but still feel true to your school, this is the event for you — and if you’re just a casual music fan, there will be more than enough to enjoy.

The event is free and takes place from 12-10 p.m. Saturday, June 7 on 14th Avenue between Hilyard and Patterson.

June is LGBT Pride Month. Though this month was chosen to commemorate the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969, June has a rich history in the context of LGBT culture in America, and elsewhere. This playlist (embedded at the bottom) uses a song for each day of June to illustrate a pivotal moment in LGBT history, musical and otherwise, that occurred on that date.

June 1: Tom Robinson Band – “Glad To Be Gay” Pioneering gay punk musician Tom Robinson is born on this date in 1950.

June 2: Nina Simone – “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” Bill Clinton, who cited this tune as one of his favorite songs, declares June “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month” in 2000.

June 3: Dolly Parton – “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” “Dolly Parton Day” in South Carolina, honoring the country star and LGBT rights activist.

June 4: Adam Lambert – “For Your Entertainment” Queer “American Idol” contestant Adam Lambert launches his first post-Idol tour in 2010.

June 5: Rufus Wainwright – “Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk” Rufus Wainwright releases his 2001 breakthrough “Poses,” establishing him as a major queer voice in music.

June 6: David Bowie – “Starman” David Bowie releases his 1972 rock opera “The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,” named the “Greatest, Gayest Album Of All Time” by OUT Magazine.

June 7: Antony & The Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone” The New York band, fronted by transgender soul singer Antony, releases its signature tune in 2005.

June 8: Cyndi Lauper – “She Bop” Cyndi Lauper organizes the first True Colors concert tour to support the Human Rights Campaign and other equal rights organizations in 2007.

June 9: Bülent Ersoy – “Biz Ayrilamayiz” Turkish singer Bülent Ersoy, one of the world’s most prominent transgender musicians, is born on this day in 1952.

June 10: Judy Garland – “Puttin’ On the Ritz” Entertainer and gay icon Judy Garland is born on this day in 1922.

June 11: Janis Joplin – “Down On Me” Janis Joplin, possibly the most influential queer woman in rock history, makes her live debut at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom in 1966.

June 12: Metric – “The Wanderlust” Late LGBT music icon Lou Reed makes his final appearance on an original recording in 2012. 

June 13: António Variações – “Cançao De Engate” Influential gay Brazilian musician António Variações dies of AIDS-related complications in 1984.

June 14: Culture Club – “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” Culture Club frontman Boy George, a gay icon during the 1980′s, is born on this day in 1961.

June 15: Neil Patrick Harris – “My Freeze Ray” Actor and gay icon Neil Patrick Harris is born on this day in 1973.

June 16: k.d. lang – “Hallelujah”  k.d. lang comes out as lesbian in 1992.

June 17: Big Brother & The Holding Company – “Ball & Chain” Big Brother & The Holding Company play the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, introducing Janis Joplin to much of the world.

June 18: Yaz – “Don’t Go”  Singer Alison Moyet is born on this day in 1961. Her band Yaz would have a defining impact on the club music that would mutate into hi-NRG and house in New York’s gay discotheques.

June 19: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – “Same Love”  Rapper Macklemore, whose “Same Love” was the first hip-hop hit to address LGBT rights issues, is born on this day in 1983.

June 20: R. Kelly – “Gotham City” Joel Schumacher’s 1997 film “Batman & Robin,” drawing on those characters’ association with gay culture, is released.

June 21: Billy Bragg – “Sexuality” Scotland becomes the first country of the United Kingdom to strike down Section 28, banning the “promotion of homosexuality,” in 2000.

June 22: Lady Gaga – “Bad Romance” LGBT icon Lady Gaga is discovered by musician Wendy Starland at New York’s Cutting Room in 2006.

June 23: Salvatore Adamo – “Alan et la Pomme” Computer pioneer and LGBT icon Alan Turing is born on this day in 1912.

June 24: Janelle Monae – “Sally Ride” Sally Ride, a lesbian and the first woman in space, returns safely to Earth on this day in 1983.

June 25: George Michael & Elton John – “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” Openly gay pop star George Michael, who here collaborates with another gay music icon, is born on this day in 1963.

June 26: Grace Jones – “Pull Up to the Bumper” Sodomy laws end in the U.S. in 2003, an event which ought to have been celebrated with the best song ever written about anal.

June 27: The B-52s – “Love Shack” LGBT culture touchstone The B-52s release their magnum opus, “Cosmic Thing,” in 1989.

June 28: Lou Reed – “Halloween Parade” The date of the Stonewall riots is celebrated a year later with the first pride parades in 1970.  “Halloween Parade” describes a parade many years later, ravaged by the AIDS epidemic.

June 29: Donna Summer – “I Feel Love” Studio 54, New York’s legendary disco nightclub, ends its “first era” in 1979 after being shut down for tax evasion.

June 30: Madonna – “True Blue” Madonna releases her mega-selling “True Blue“ in 1986, establishing herself as both a musical and gay icon due to her large gay male fanbase.

Blind the Thief is one of the most ubiquitous college bands on the Eugene music scene. Composed of University of Oregon students, the quartet has been a common sight at most of Eugene’s bars and small venues — not to mention the innumerable house shows they’ve played over the years.

But with the band’s two core members, Schuyler Durham and Ben Martinson, graduating, at the end of this term, they’re soon to officially be a Portland band.

Both grew up in Portland, but only Durham has previously gigged there — he once played the Hawthorne Theatre with one of his high school bands, Disko Valante. But he and Martinson are both excited to give something back to their hometown.

“Portland’s music scene is really cool,” Durham said. “It meant a lot to me and Ben growing up, so it’ll be great to contribute to it.”

They already have some connections to the Portland scene through Durham’s previous bands, and they’re hoping to reconvene with other Eugene musicians who might gig in Portland over the next year. This, along with Portland’s ample number of both all-ages and 21+ venues, gives the band high hopes for the future.

“If you’re serious about music, staying in Eugene is a tough thing to make work,” Durham said. “There are more people in Portland, but also way more venues.”

The other two Blind the Thief members, bassist Taylor Wolf and drummer Oded Abramson, will remain in Eugene. But both are still committed to the band.

“I’ll still commute,” Wolf said. “I’m still gonna do band shit, hopefully on a weekly basis.”

“I don’t see myself joining another band or anything,” Abramson said. “I wouldn’t have the time.”

Wolf also plans to use the separation to focus more on the electronic music in which he’s been increasingly dabbling. Two of his “beats” will appear on Blind the Thief’s upcoming album, Scientists Have Feelings Too, which is scheduled for release next month. Their debut full-length after a string of EPs, Scientists Have Feelings Too acts as the culmination of the band’s tenure in Eugene.

“These are songs we wrote in college that we’ve been playing for two or three years,” Durham said. “But we’ve never had good recordings of them. It’s gonna sound more like how we sound live at house parties — still with some trippiness though.”

As small as the Eugene scene can be, it still holds a place in the band’s hearts — just as the band still has a place in the Eugene scene. As such, they still plan on playing shows at their old Eugene haunts, like Black Forest, Tiny’s Tavern, and doubtless more than a few houses.

“It’s only two hours away,” Wolf said on Eugene.

“The locals who consume music in Eugene are great,” Durham said. “They get wild.”

“We’ll be forever famous if we come back and play Tiny’s Tavern,” Martinson said.

The group seemed to already be formulating a plan. Though their name won’t be as common a sight on flyers and Facebook events around the Eugene area, they’ll certainly still be a presence. And when they return, it’ll be a party.

Whether you come out of viewing South African rave-rap group Die Antwoord’s Pitbull Terrier music video full of fresh respect for the group or simply wanting to puke, it’s hard to deny its indelibility. Die Antwoord’s videos have always been provocative, having previously featured ten-foot dick sculptures, unsuccessfully decapitated lions and what may or may not have been full-body blackface. But while Pitbull Terrier actually isn’t their most insane video – maybe their third – it’s the most fully realized vision of their aesthetic, and possibly their most grotesque.

The video finds Ninja, the group’s male MC, ditching his previously established persona (which corresponded with his name) and taking on the guise of what is very literally a pit bull terrier, complete with disturbing dog makeup. It’s a cartoon vision of the pit bull, of course, all spiked collars and bloodthirsty jaws. But it’s also a classic hip-hop alter-ego, and Ninja has as much fun creating the character as MF DOOM likely did in becoming “the supervillain.”

Ninja identifies himself with hip-hop culture, right off the bat, in referring to himself as a “sad boy” – likely a reference to the bizarre Swedish crew Sad Boys, with which a lot of hip-hop fans have aligned themselves either jokingly or otherwise. The shot of his “tears” also brings to mind just about every image of a teardrop-tatted Lil Wayne, ever. His self-introduction as “big dog in the place to be” suggests he’s wherever the party is – In Da Club, perhaps?

The connection to hip hop is furthered by the appearance of Yo-Landi Vi$$er, Die Antwoord’s female MC, who seems very, very aroused by the pit bull.  Considering that Ninja had been portrayed as a repulsive drooling creature up to that point, it’s a bizarre change of perspective to see him sexualized.  It brings to mind all the great conventionally-unattractive Lothario figures in hip hop history, from Heavy D (the “Overweight Lover”) to DOOM (“ugly but still get hollers like Ron Jeremy”) to Biggie (see the Fuck Me skit from Ready To Die, on which his partner in coitus is aroused by the fact that he eats chicken gristle and drinks pickle juice).

From this brief character sketch we get a remarkably good idea of who the Pitbull Terrier is.  We see his cartoon machismo, his more vulnerable emotions, his cultural affiliations and how he affects the people around him (including the catwoman whose throat he tears out early in the video).  A good rap persona should include all these things, and Ninja nails it.

But weirdly, the actual music has very little to do with hip hop – it’s EDM, not too far from what Afrojack or Axwell might churn out.  This makes the connection a bit less explicit than in earlier videos, such Enter The Ninja, which does almost exactly the same thing this video does except with the recurring Ninja character.  That video was hip hop geekdom to the bone, the product of a deep love of and familiarity with both rap and conceptual art.

For this reason, it’s perhaps more difficult to take Pitbull Terrier at face value.  Plenty of people would likely enjoy this music out of the context of the video, but I would much rather have the visual accompaniment – in part due to how well Ninja’s rhymes go with the video and in part due to my personal bias against the particular strain of dance music they’re dabbling in.  I’d rather have the sweet chords and chintzy production of their early work than this hyper-produced backdrop.

But Die Antwoord have always been more pop artists (in the Roy Lichtenstein way, not the Lady Gaga way) than rappers.  It is worth remembering that the group now known as Die Antwoord was once the Constructus Corporation, creators of a three-hour, book-accompanied album satirizing consumerism and corporate power.  And seeing as they’ve found more new fans, as they’ve tightened and rave-readied their sound, it’s hard to blame them for taking this opportunity to bring their conceptual ideas to the masses.