WEDNESDAY 4/17  

Oneohtrix Point Never: Again Tour

(MUSIC) Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) is part of that elite club of challenging, electronic musicians who've gone on to score high-profile movies, which includes Mica Levi, Robert A.A. Lowe, and Bobby Krlic. (Even stranger, Lopatin also was the musical director for the Weeknd's 2021 Super Bowl half-time performance.) The Brooklyn-based composer's early work—desolate, alienating, oft-times abrasive—didn't exactly foreshadow a side hustle soundtracking big-budget Hollywood films such as Good Time and Uncut Gems, but here we are. These cinematic assignments revealed OPN's deft grasp of Tangerine Dream-like atmosphere-conjuring. This work has slowed OPN's solo output, but 2020's Magic Oneohtrix Point Never and 2023's Again demonstrate his growing interest in skewed synth-pop and rock, submerging uncanny melodies in disorienting structures, transmuting nostalgic memories of cheesy radio fodder into futuristically warped facsimiles of same. This show will focus on Again's 13 orchestrated oddities. "Modular princess" Arushi Jain, who fuses elements of Indian classical music with beautiful ambience, opens. (Neptune Theatre, 1303 NE 45th St, 7 pm, $35-$41, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

In a world where arts and culture is often devalued, there is truly nothing like going out to experience the transformative power of cinema at a festival. The vast medium boasts works that can move us to tears just as it does those that may melt your face off. This year, the 50th Annual Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) has films that do each of those things and, in extra special cases, both at the same time.

Taking place in theaters from May 9-19 and virtually May 20-27, SIFF's got a whole lot in store—261 films in total. Not only is it a really strong year of films, but the even better news is the SIFF Cinema Workers Union recently ratified their first contract after coming together to form a union last year. Now that they’ve got better working conditions and the full lineup is out, with tickets currently on sale for members before being available to the public starting Thursday (all of which can be purchased online through their website or at any SIFF venue), here are some of the standouts you won’t want to miss.

I did not know how Pacific Northwest Ballet could improve on its production of The Seasons' Canon, the ballet that took my head off when it premiered in Seattle a couple years ago, but improve it they did. 

Last time, PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal & Co. paired choreographer Crystal Pite's masterful, hyperkinetic meditation on nature with some very good but more or less disconnected ballets. This time, the program felt so cohesive it amounted to a religious experience—one that, incidentally, might best be experienced from the cheap seats. 

Pro-Palestine Google employees protest the company: Workers led sit-ins in Seattle and in other cities on Tuesday to stop Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Google CEO Sundar Pichai from providing technology to Israel. Demands included dropping a $1 billion cloud and AI contract with the Israeli military called Project Nimbus, and ceasing alleged intimidation, harassment, and retaliation against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim employees who speak out. Protesters claim numerous workers have quit Google because their mental health has suffered as a result of the company’s relationship with Israel.

All Alaska Airline flights grounded: In a press release, the company said it ran into a snag “while performing an upgrade to the system that calculates our weight and balance," the Seattle Times reports. Update: The planes are back in the air. 

Influenced more by beetles than the Beatles, the Baltimore-based duo Matmos have been underground electronic music's arch conceptualists for nearly 30 years. Every album they release revolves around a different framing idea and consequently, every tour they do presents different approaches and vocabularies of sounds.

Their latest LP, 2023's Return to Archive, finds Matmos repurposing Smithsonian Folkways' vast catalog of nature, science, and field recordings, and what the group's Drew Daniel calls "unclassifiably odd audio verité recordings" into discombobulated cuts that would have left late label founder Moses Asch spluttering in confusion. It was an adventurous way for a venerated company to celebrate its 75th anniversary, to be sure.

While speaking to a group of Pierce County Republicans in February of this year, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert declared that "marriage is between a man and a woman," expressing a stance on gay marriage we haven't seen from him since he proved himself as an anti-gay bigot in Congress. 

What's a little bit wild here is that Reichert went out of his way to provide this homophobic answer, as he delivered the line in the context of a larger transphobic rant spurred by a series of questions from Dawn Land, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to gather signatures to repeal a law that helps stabilize homeless youth and connect them with the care they need to survive.

At the meeting, Land asked how Reichert defines "a woman," and then she asked whether he supports gender-affirming care and allowing trans kids to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity, though she didn't quite use that language. Here's the full video of his chat with the Pierce County Republicans: 

It was kind of by accident that Taha Ebrahimi wrote a book. Especially an illustrated one about trees.

“This is a kismet, happenstance COVID project,” she told me. “Basically, during COVID, I had all this extra time, and I was always interested in trees, but I don’t have any background in illustration or horticulture. I always thought people who knew stuff about plants and trees, those were the people who had authority. I don’t know why! Those Latin names, they just give you this impostorism.”

Pro-Palestine protesters block Sea-Tac airport: At around 3 pm Monday, a group protesting the US-funded genocide in Gaza parked cars along the airport's expressway. Some locked their arms together and sat on the pavement. In response, the airport closed the road, cops hopped on bikes to confront the protesters, and trucks towed away the vehicle blockade as some travelers exited their conveyances to approach the airport on foot, according to footage from KOMO. The road to the airport reopened about three hours later, and police arrested 46 people at the peaceful protest. 

The airport protest happened in concert with demonstrations across the country, including in San Francisco (where they shut down the Golden Gate Bridge) and Chicago (where they blocked a terminal at O'Hare). In a statement, the Seattle group called out politicians for ignoring calls for a "permanent ceasefire" and approving weapons sales to Israel. The Seattle action aimed to hit companies such as Boeing (which builds weapons) and Alaska Airlines (which works with Boeing) in their pocketbooks. "While the full economic important of today's action is yet to be quantified, the blockade will cost the airport money in delayed flights as well as reduced commerce inside the airport," they wrote. An airport spokesperson described flight disruptions as "pretty minimal," according to the Seattle Times, thanks to the slow time of day and to Sea-Tac's rapid response plan. 

TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe with Tayi Tibble — 'Thunder Song: Essays'
With just a handful of pages to go in Thunder Song, a series of essays from award-winning Coast Salish author Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe, LaPointe asks her reader, “Are you listening yet?” She breaks the fourth wall, but she isn’t speaking for just herself. With poignant essays that center her own experiences, the Coast Salish landscapes, livelihoods, and people who were lost to colonialism—while unapologetically celebrating those who survive—LaPointe sees herself preventing Indigenous erasure in multigenerational company. She traces the ongoing struggle from Chief Seattle, to her great-grandmother and namesake, Upper Skagit elder Vi taqwšəblu Hilbert, to herself. Read more in our interview with LaPointe here and then see her Tuesday night at Third Place Books Lake Forest Park in conversation with poet Tayi Tibble. STRANGER CONTRIBUTOR ADAM WILLEMS
(Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, free)

Let’s begin with The Six Million Dollar Man. The TV show ran from 1973 to 1978. The star, Lee Majors, played an astronaut who, after his body is damaged in the crash of a test plane/spaceship, is transformed, with the top technology of the day, into a cyborg: part human but mostly wires, circuits, metal gears, and synthetic skin. The operation cost $6 million (roughly equal to $40 million in today’s money). The opening for the show is just mesmerizing.

After the test craft hits the ground and explodes, an off-camera narrator, Oscar Goldman, speaks to the members of a secret government agency with the deepest pockets. He says: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better… stronger… faster.” At the last word, the show’s theme erupts into accelerating bongos, whirling and blasting horns, and a hard-funk bass line. By the end of the sequence, you are sold. Indeed, the show could never be as good as that opening: Lee Majors’s fast-motion running to a funky beat. It has to be downhill from there. But no matter. All of the garbage in the show had nothing on the music, which was written and produced by one of jazz’s greatest intellectuals, Oliver Nelson.

SPD hired cop knowing his "checkered past:" The cop, Kevin Dave, who struck and killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula last year while going 74 miles per hour, had a history of bad behavior and reckless driving when he worked at the Tucson Police Department. The agency fired Dave in 2013. According to PubliCola, Dave was the subject of six investigations while at TPD, including two collisions (one deemed "preventable"), two regarding firearm use, one about filing a police report incorrectly, and one for violating code of conduct standards.

Even more disturbing: Eight months after TPD fired him, officers had a run-in with a likely intoxicated Dave. When he encountered the officers, he sped away in his truck and then stashed it away in an alley. When cops confronted him, he said he hadn't been driving the truck. TPD officers described Dave as "belligerent" during their interaction, and "Dave blamed TPD for his inability to get a job at other police departments," PubliCola reports. The Seattle Police Department later hired Dave with a $15,000 signing bonus contingent upon him staying with the department for three years. Dave killed Kandula "less than two and a half years" into his role. He is still employed with SPD. 

NEW OPENINGS 

M Cozy Fusion Cafe
Lately I've been addicted to the "Tropical Vine" (pandan coconut coffee) from the popular local cafe Coffeeholic House, which has locations in Columbia City, Greenwood, and Bellevue, so I was particularly delighted to hear that the team behind the coffee shop has set their sights on brunch. On Wednesday, co-owners Chen Dien and Trang Cao soft opened M Cozy Fusion Cafe, a new modern Asian fusion brunch spot with comforting dishes like ube mascarpone French toast and pandan waffles with chicken wings. The drink menu includes Vietnamese coffee, espresso, fruity "refreshers," and tea.
University District

Antiquarian Cutie

Talked to you at the 2023 Antiquarian Bookfair, my booth partner gave you my number but you never texted me. I still think about you.

FRIDAY

LIVE MUSIC

A Night of Latin Music & Art
Did you know that there is a boutique hotel above the Crocodile (cue Lana Del Rey's "Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd")? This week, Hotel Crocodile is back to spotlight Latin artists, performers, and musicians at their monthly art walk showcase. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for music from Gold Chisme, La Mala Noche, Albina Cabrera, Gloomyyy, Bloqueador Solar, Lucia Flores-Wiseman, and ArtnBeats, along with gallery displays, installations, tattooing, and live poetry. Plus, tasty treats will be provided by the Mexican-Italian street food cart That’s-a-Molè! and pop-up panadería Bakescapade. AV
(Hotel Crocodile, Belltown, free)