Takahide Higuchi a.k.a Foodman, creates music that defies categorisations – and is one of the few artists that actually fit this overused description. There are traces of almost every electronic music genre, from juke, footwork, ambient, house, techno, to noise, but those elements are dissected and morphed together then driven to extreme without giving you a second to come up with a definitive genre. The noisy technicolour of these borderline versatile or schizophrenic collages is borne out of his experiments (or accidents) and has titillated, confused, and enchanted music obsessives far and wide. After releasing his debut album from NY/OH experimental label Orange Milk, his music has been released from international labels including Diplo’s Mad Decent and its offshoot Good Enuff. His ever-evolving and mutating musical vocabulary draws from every kind of music he stumbles across, from Chicago footwork to Okinawan folk music of his roots, ambient to J-pop, Talvin Singh’s Indian classical music/drum ‘n’ bass fusion to classic video game soundtracks, then twists them all with his playful psychedelia. This extends to his remixes and DJ mixes, including his monthly residency at NTS radio mix, which was picked up on Pitchfork’s 10 Best DJ Mixes of March 2017 list. Since playing his first show outside of Japan in mid 2016, he has appeared on Boiler Room, Low End Theory, and Unsound just to name a few, as well as headline shows across the US and Europe. In July 2021, the album Yasuragi Land was released on Hyperdub.The album was voted best of the year by various national and international media, including Pitchfork’s The Best Electronic Music of 2021. The new EP “Uchigawa Tankentai” was released from Hyperdub in November 2023.
Carly Barton:
Carly Barton has spent the last decade+ immersed in Portland’s creative community as a composer, DJ, and visual artist. The bulk of their music catalog prioritizes world-building electronic music, dub, and contemporary piano composition, exploring and creating genre-bending scapes with a specialty in collage and controlled chaos. Most of Carly’s work is self-published: sheet music, concept EPs, Vidya World (an imagined 12-part game soundtrack), Anime Resource Center, OST, Subs Before Dubs, Carb’s Bong Orchestra, and the occasional crossword, with additional releases/remixes with friends and labels near and far (MANIC!, Disposable Commodities, Blankstairs, secondnature, iideo, The Periphery).
SH:
SH is the Portland-based duo Francisco Botello and Zackary Rowe (Bathwater, Nuisance), two experimental musicians embedded in the city’s underground music circuits for nearly a decade. Emerging first as sharon, the project has evolved from hardware-based sample destruction to custom-built digital tools, dismantling sequencing conventions while privileging improvisation, system volatility, and chance operations. Their sonic language draws from glitch, early computer music, free jazz, and footwork—assembling momentary structures that slip into dissolution just as quickly. Embracing ambience as discomfort and glitch as comfort, SH continues to trace a trajectory driven by self-interrogation.
Beyond sound, SH’s practice extends into spatial, curatorial and cinematic realms. As founding members of the underground house venue Freque Space, they cultivated a vital zone for the Portland experimental music scene to prosper. The duo are also resident DJs for the annual Off the Grid mini-festival. In 2019, their work expanded into immersive media with Four Corners, a spatialized audiovisual experience debuting at the Portland Art Museum. Their upcoming EP will be released by Hole Recordings.
