[Dead-Air]

This week on What's This Called? I've got a very special live performer in the studio, Portland's own Soup Purse! That's of course Saturday, August 11th, from Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time on KPSU.

STREAMING AUDIO RIGHT HERE!!!

145O AM in the Portland OR/Vancouver Wa metropolitan area
98.3 FM on the Portland State University campus

Here's the text of a review of his latest album that I wrote, to be published in the forthcoming next issue of the magazine Plazm:

Soup Purse
Nanopocolyptic Profizzy
Obscurica
http://www.obscurica.com

If you’re like me, and I realize what a baited suggestion that is, then a lot of “noise music” probably bores you to tears. You know the stuff I’m getting at – dudes in all black clothes in a dark room who don’t move any part of their body except for the knob-twisting fingers laying out sheets of pure amplified static while slides of torture porn interspersed with footage of Auschwitz is projected on the wall behind them. Some people actually find this sort of thing “dangerous”. Soup Purse, thankfully, has little to do with that dreck, though he isn’t at all afraid to play on the same bill with such “artists” (he also plays with plenty of other people who are innovative and good too though.)

Soup Purse, AKA Todd Dickerson of Portland OR, is an entertaining performer who happens to make noises with electronic instruments to achieve his performance. This is just as evident on his recordings, case in point Nanopocolyptic Profizzy, as it is when he plays live. His audio output is constantly interesting and never dull. A look at song titles such as “cohabit, then colonize” and “folding laundry and such” belie a sense of humor to his productions that is sadly lacking in too many noise musicians today. He claims the mighty Crank Sturgeon as one of his influences, which is an entirely good thing.

Nanopocolyptic Profizzy is heavily science fiction themed, and indeed, there is an underlying space rockiness to it for all the lack of rhythm and riffs. No surprise then that he also does time in a group called Space Hawk, as this is often closer to Nik Turner than Merzbow (though not altogether far from the midway point.) This is the type of album the Daleks might groove too when their not busy exterminating the universe. If you’re not a big enough geek to know what that means, your loss, but you might still wonder what he’ll pull off next.