"...Portland's Wicker Man–channeling, space-folk troupe..."
Dave Segal, The Seattle Stranger
"I
love the Bagdad Theater- one of Portland's numerous second run cinemas,
they also regularly show cult films and serve a delicious ruby ale. Add
the spacious seating on the upper balcony and the fact that I live a
block and a half away, and it's pretty much one of my favorite places to
get fat and watch bad movies. But I'd never seen a live band there, so
experimental folk favorites Akron/Family would be my first. Their latest
album Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free was one of my favorite of the year, so
I was anticipatory to say the least. But first, there was the matter of
the openers. After ensconcing myself and companions at the edge of the
wide balcony, I watched Datura Blues take the stage and tried to count
how many people were in the band. It's not that I'm that mathematically
unversed, but from song to song, people would join and depart, sometimes
to add vocals, sometimes to bang along on varying kinds of percussion
instruments. It's a theme that would recur with each band of the evening
(as was their shoelessness), but Datura Blues handled it well, the five
member core of the band producing a thick, surf-rock sound, largely
sticking to instrumentals and long, Eastern-influenced jams. At one
point, a long dirge of a number included a violin, saxophone, melodica,
wood block and even a fellow pounding away on what certainly appeared to
be an overturned plastic bucket..."
spectrumculture.com
"Whether
by design or by circumstance, Datura Blues have been steadily lurking,
undercover style, below the Portland music scene for a number of years
now. But it's time you fixed your gaze—or, I suppose, your ears—on their
perception-expanding prog-psych, because they've just released a great
new 7-inch, Damn These Shackles of Gravity! The new record concisely
sums up their wild and woolly weirdness via shifting rhythms, groaning
bass, spaced-out synths, and gas-pipe saxophone, plus too many other
weird elements to catalog. I listened to this record—at the wrong speed,
it turns out—after a night of watching American Horror Story, and I
don't think I'll ever be quite the same. Fans of bands like Van der
Graaf Generator and Amon Düül II will find much to savor in Datura
Blues, while those whose record collections don't predate 1982 will
probably have their minds blown..."
Ned Lannamann, Portland Mercury
“Next
up was Portland’s Datura Blues, which seems like an entirely different
band every time I see them. Once they wore cowboy hats and played a set
of countryfied jam rock, complete with an adept fiddler. Another time
they riffed on Faust’s Picnic on a Frozen River for some 15 minutes.
Their set at the Comet the other night skirted into jazz fusion
territory, with a baritone sax and two drummers…”
portableshrines.com
“Something
has kept us from orbiting too closely around Datura Blues – whose
legacy of music and revolving membership and lack of gravity extends
back to 1999… Now we are happily shackled to their shape-shifting
soundscapes, and not to undermine the gravity of the situation, we have a
lot of catching up to do… “Damn These Shackles of Gravity!” sounds
something like the secular hymns of an alien race determined to outrun
the ordinary expectations of their home planet in order to set up shop
near Portland, Oregon, Earth, collect Guru Guru bootlegs and smuggle out
schematics from the U.S. Air Force’s Special Project’s Office, all in
the service of providing you and I and The Apes with epic songs to
listen to with the volume loud, the eyes closed… Shackling up and
damning the past comes highly recommended…”
revoltoftheapes.com
“The
alchemy of Portland experimental psych ensemble Datura Blues is loaded
with disparate sonic bases that meld together Eastern European jazz,
bits of improvisational noise, transitioning instrumental post-rock,
psychedelic rock freakouts, and haunting ambient textures. Their
multi-colored tapestry is stitched together with threads similar to
those that have been used by Akron/Family, who share members with
supporting band Dana Buoy. What Dana Buoy sound like, I have no idea,
but you'll probably be better off puffing that doob in the alley before
hitting the show…”
Travis Ritter, Portland Mercury
"Datura
Blues’ latest release, “Damn These Shackles of Gravity”, is like a good
game of charades: intellectual, energetic, and emotional, but mostly
just plain fun. Though the album lasts only a little over ten minutes,
it makes up for its short play time by covering an inordinately large
amount of musical territory. Datura Blues’ overall sound can best be
described as that of a psychedelic jam band, but there’s more to them
than that. The tracks on this album are not just jams, they are nicely
arranged miniature compositions that grow and develop, presenting ideas
in their simplest form before embellishing them with additional layers.
This is not to say that the compositions feel overly planned, either –
flourishes of spontaneity add color throughout. The album’s first tune,
“The Draft Dodgin’ Cowboy” kicks off with a majestic drum and bass
intro that breaks into a psychedelic organ part. From there, the album
moves through classic funk grooves, jungle drums, noise music, folk,
R&B, and even a little bit of ambient music. All of it is
executed with noteworthy attention to detail, ensuring that the listener
is given every opportunity to understand the intended affect of each
piece. As I cannot fully communicate the singular nature of this
album’s mood using only prose, I highly recommend giving it a listen for
yourself..."
theportlandpick.com
"Portland's Datura Blues purvey a ramshackle yet epic brand of folky psych rock that'll curl your flannel beard just right…"
Dave Segal, The Seattle Stranger
“Portland's Datura Blues combines psych, acid, and post-rock, and there are horns and creepy organs.…”
seattlerockguy.com
“Portland's Datura Blues does more with eleven minutes than some bands do with an hour…”
nadamucho.com
"Hendrix
said the blues are easy to play but hard to feel... make your life
easier by getting down to the Buddhist-boogie of Portland's Datura
Blues...
revoltoftheapes.com
“Portland has a long
and colorful history when it comes to musical collectives. The worst of
them sound like big muddy disasters. The best of them—from Smegma to
Ohioan and Native Kin—confront listeners with something unexpected at
each performance, but at each performance there's a vitality and energy
to the music that serves as a common thread. Datura Blues has dabbled in
soundscapes and folk balladry over the course of the past decade, most
of which has been pretty damn successful. New songs (mailed to WW last
week with a hand-cut ransom note attached) sound like lost, druggy
improvisational jams from late-’70s Steve Miller Band rehearsals. Which
is to say that they sound awesome...”
Casey Jarman, Willamette Week
"OK, I’m not even sure this album has an actual name. Not only are the
jacket and spine untitled, but both labels on the record are just black
with no writing. No album name… no track lists… no nothing. So
basically I had to make one up, and Untitled seemed as good as any.
Fortunately the etchings in the runout indicate which side is which,
otherwise it would always be a coin flip. Initially I thought this entire album was by a band called the Mindless
Thuggs. What little I’ve found online about them indicates they were
formed on the other side of the state from me, in lovely Spokane,
Washington, back in 1994 before eventually moving to this side of the
mountains. It looks like they’re still active in the Seattle bar scene,
but that their recorded output is supposedly limited to a couple of
cassettes, which makes this record even harder to figure out. There is
an insert that indicates the recording was from a live show at the Blue
Moon Tavern, a Seattle institution, in December 2006, but other than
that I have little or nothing to go on. Was this some kind of a sample?
Was it ever available for sale at shows? I don’t know. A second
flyer inside the jacket that shows a burned out building and reads,
“Factories don’t burn down by themselves… they need help from you.
Learn to Burn.” The band has pages on MySpace and Facebook, but neither
appears to have been updated in the last few years. I emailed the
address included on the insert but got a bounce-back… so this may remain
a mystery for the foreseeable future. But in doing some further research, I looked into another band mentioned
on the Mindless Thuggs insert, the Datura Blues, and on their bandcamp
site I found a reference to a split 12″ they recorded in 2007 with the
Mindless Thuggs, and as an added bonus the site had one of the songs
available for listening. Lo and behold, it matches the opening track on
side A! So that explains a little about this album, as well as the
flip side of the insert which has a trippy drawing and some poetry, but
nothing that clearly indicates it is related to the Datura Blues unless
you happen to recognize their logo at the bottom. Datura Blues are a
sort of psych band out of Portland, so at least there’s a sort of
northwest link to these two groups, and there are certainly similarities
in musical styles. I’d be interested to learn how they ended up on an
album together. I guess if I was going to describe the sound of Untitled I’d probably
have to go with something like ambient psych. It’s mostly instrumental
and sort of meanders all over the place, with some use of distortion
here and there, including possibly some electronics… though my guess is
it’s guitar effects. There are some vocals on one song on side B
(Mindless Thuggs), but for the most part this is sort of a slow paced
musical stream of consciousness. The recording quality is decent and it’s decent to have on in the
background. That being said, I don’t know that you could ever find a
copy of this. I’m almost positive the production run was small… I’d be
surprised if there are more than a hundred copies out there, and quite
possibly a lot less than that. Kind of cool and different though, so if
you’re in Seattle and ever hear that the Mindless Thuggs or Datura
Blues are playing somewhere, they might be worth checking out..."
www.seattlehockey.net
"The
Datura Blues appears to be a band only in the loosest sense.
Incorporating members from all up and down the west coast, including
members of Church, Firs of Prey and other groups, DB self-identifies as
more a “collective” of musicians collaborating in sound-craft of a
dramatic and dense variety. It’s likely no coincidence that, upon
reading their bio, you might feel as though you’re being recruited for
some kind of cult. Combining elements of punk, noise, world, free-jazz
and post-rock influences means DB is as much a socio-political
lifestyle/aesthetic as it is music. Is it as it Is, Brother? contains an
appropriately swampy mix of found sounds, field recordings, chantings,
strange voices, in addition to a broad array of instruments. Equally
broad is the musical territory covered in just 5 songs. At times, you’d
swear you were listening to a lost collaboration between Godspeed You!
Black Emperor, Comets on Fire, and Confusion is Sex-era Sonic Youth.
Opener “Crows…” takes you from a soulful southern gospel choir to a
haunted Stonehenge Gregorian chapel chant in 4 minutes flat. The
following, companion track, “…and Other Rodents” cranks up the ‘rawk’ as
bright horns blare, layers upon layers of guitars overlap, screech and
leer, and drums pound. Yet even in the midst of their most chaotic
tracks, somewhere at the core of Is it as It is, Brother? is a firm,
undeniable structure. Datura Blues succeeds with noise rock where so
many fail because they achieve balance in composition without being
pandering or getting all yawny on you. If they can manage to hone, focus
and sharpen their sound-craft for their next release, they may just
have a noisy, gritty masterpiece up their collective sleeves..."
thisheartwillburnrightout.com
"There
is an artistic communication gap that is lost in the musical
translation from Datura Blues to the mere casual listener. Fleeting
exposure to this experimental—in the purest sense of this word—local
band will just leave you with a confused look on your face or a
pulsating headache, or possibly both. But hurling yourself headlong into
their new album, Is it as it Is, Brother?, will lead you to a better
understanding, if not downright acceptance, of the band's droning
vocals, free-jazz skronk sessions, and commitment to improvised noise,
rhythm, and controlled chaos. Then again, perhaps the best approach to
the artistic upheaval of Datura Blues is to not wrestle with
comprehending the band, but rather just appreciate their dizzying form
of expression..."
Ezra Ace Caraeff, The Portland Mercury
"Can
you believe all these cats are from Portland? A sprawling association
of bands and performance projects spanning two continents, Datura Blues
(and its sister collective, Beast Please Be Still) have run ahead of the
experimental pop music pack for nearly a decade. Datura Blues' aim is
true as they target your nervous system's tender dendrites. Never
simple, never predictable, always always beautiful. Many classical
instruments. Godspeed You Black Emperor on Yage..."
Noah Mickens, Promoter
"A
lineup like this makes me wonder when the folks behind Ptolemaic
Terrascope, the long-running journal of psychedelic music and art, will
hold one of their Terrastock music festivals here in Portland. The two
local bands on this bill alone—the unholy tribal swirl of Swahili and
the earthbound, folksy but still unstable Datura Blues—should be enough
to warrant consideration. Throw in a headlining set by Seattle's
drugged-out maestros of psilocybin jams, Midday Veil, and a visit from
Austin-based purveyors of astral projected synth pop, Os Ovni, and I'm
surprised Terrastock hasn't already underwritten this evening's
entertainment..."
Robert Ham, Willamette Week
"The
Datura Blues does not so much create as "reveal" its unique brand of
improvisational discord. Airy violin, edgy saxophone, dual guitars,
frantic drums and bass, and some inspired vocal screaching coalesced
into chaotic, emotional noisescapes… An uneasy listen, to say the
least..."
Todd Zeigler, Progression Magazine
"Think
pretentious music students who not only believe, but know they are
highly trained, well-schooled musicians. The only splinter in the sauce
is that they aren't pretentious, they just have that air about them that
oozes from the speakers and is spread thickly on their bio sheet.
Overtly intellectual and spiritual, Datura Blues is a band that
challenges description and sidesteps any pigeon holes with the deft ease
of matadors..."
Mike Donahoe, Arcata Eye
"...Quiet,
soft music, with hints of jazz and sudden outlashes of rock...
Reminiscent to a sound you might hear while wandering through a nature
store or some new-age gift shop...
Oliver Symonds, Humboldt State Lumberjack
"Datura
Blues, whose formative roots can be traced back to a cold and stormy
night in Humboldt County, will open the show with their unique blend of
psychedelic madness, one that incorporates elements of folk, punk,
krautrock, and improvisational jams into the mix..."
humboldtmusic.com
