Deepest Currents
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Deepest Currents is a Portland, Oregon-based music website, focusing on new releases and general reviews, as well as cultural events happening around the Pacific Northwest. Genre coverage varies widely, highlighting everything from indie rock to experimental.
Deepest Currents
7M ago
Regular readers of this site might have noticed that DC's last monthly album roundup was at way back the end of May. Well here I am at summer's close with one BIG highlights post. I've been adding on to this thing for the past few weeks, and since school is almost back in session, I think it's finally time to share some of my favorite summer releases, beginning in mid-June and running through mid-August.
Selections are listed chronologically, not ranked or anything like that. Oh, and feel free to click and bookmark a few Bandcamp links if any of these descriptions or audio snippets pique your ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
Hey there!
I've been pretty quiet on the site this fall, busy with a whole lotta other stuff, but I'd like to offer up an hourlong mix as I'm heading into a three day weekend. Need it bad. The weekend I mean. Well the music too, I suppose.
I've decided to call this mix "Tidewater" - named after the address of our lil shared A-frame on the Alsea River, upriver from Waldport on the Oregon Coast. It's where my wife and I will be relaxing for the next few days, and this mix is meant for that space. Its arc loosely traces an autumnal day on the water, morning into night. And though you won't be i ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
One of the joys of running DC has been building relationships with folks across the global music community, and another (related) joy is listening to all of their random recommendations. Stefan Christoff has been a friend of the site for a few years now, and today I have the great pleasure of sharing an hour-long mix he curated especially for Deepest Currents. Here's what he wrote about the mix:
This mix is an original for Deepest Currents that highlights a bunch of wonderful artists with strong links to independent creative spaces in Montreal. Also, I highlighted tracks from a bunch of my re ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
A few weeks back, DC dropped into summer with an artist interview (thanks again, Ned!), and now that we're sweating through these blistering dog days, let's have another!
I've long been a fan of Ora Cogan's work. A recording artist based on Vancouver Island, she's been a mainstay in the PNW music community for over a decade now. On August 25th, she'll be releasing her new album, Formless, on Prism Tongue Records, and I've gotta tell ya, it's a good one. Like, really good. I reached out to Ora with a handful of questions about the album as well as other topics, and she was gracious enough to g ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
Alright! This is it, folks!
I haven't planned some grand send-off message heading into this, so I guess I'll just start typing and see what comes out.
Oh, and go ahead and hit "play" on the song below. Turn the volume all the way up as you read and I'll try to type enough so the song will sync up with my words. Ha! Or if you're like me and can't read while listening to vocal music, just play it once you finish reading.
I started Deepest Currents back in the summer of 2016 (on my 30th birthday to be exact) as a Wordpress hobby blog. I'd appreciated (and consumed) the heck outta all types of ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
Welcome to DC's final end-of-the-year favorites list! It's been a real hoot curating these countdowns over the past 7+ years, and I hope you find some gems in this last hurrah.
Figuring out my very favorite albums was super tough this year (dang there was a lot of good music released in 2023!) but I think I finally narrowed it down to my top ten. You'll find the cream of the crop below - all amazing works, unique in their own ways. That being said, I noticed some natural groupings within my rankings, so you'll see that I've listed the selections in pairs. Just a different way of formatting th ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
I've selected fewer albums to highlight this month, but considered together, their collective quality is top-notch. Read about all five releases below, hear some choice tracks, and follow those Bandcamp purchase links if you feel so inclinded.
Thanks, as always, for reading and listening.
Angelica Olstad - American (Sonder House) - Olstad is a Brooklyn-based pianist/composer who wrote this autobiographical collection of songs, in part as a response to the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. American is not a straightforward piano album, though, but instead a collage of music and home reco ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
It's officially summer, which means I finally have capacity to publish a few posts I conceptualized last spring, but put on the back-burner since I was too busy teaching to get to anything DC-related. And who better to highlight in my second summer break post than a fellow teacher?
Ned Milligan and first I connected over email a couple years back, I think about some album promo stuff. I was drawn to his (and his label's) music and overall aesthetic, and when I learned that he was a middle school teacher just like me, I felt a sort of connection. Solidarity in the trenches, man, solidarity in ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
After spending weeks chipping away at that summer music roundup, I've decided to go a different direction for this fall music preview. Below, I've simply listed a handful of albums I've either heard already, or am looking forward to hearing in the coming months, along with their preorder links. I didn't have the time or the energy to type a bunch of words, so click on those Bandcamp pages to read some real liner notes!
But first, a couple of qualifications: This post probably won't be worth much by the end of September, since new music is announced, like, all the time. There are surely a bunc ..read more
Deepest Currents
7M ago
I'm not totally sure how I got here.
What I DO know is that about a year-and-a-half ago, back in early 2022, I stumbled across an album titled закуток ↬ якутск by катя егорова и егор клочихин and decided to highlight it on the site. Maybe I found it posted on Foresteppe's IG? Who the heck knows. But this album of mashed-together spoken word + media broadcast + airwave static + folk instrumentation + background ambiance sent me down a strange rabbit hole, leading me to the other side of the world - specifically to Yakutsk, Sibera. Eventually, I connected with a IG user, @wlkthln (wh ..read more