Kultur Shock

The West Coast counterpart to New York’s Gogol Bordello, this Seattle six-piece blends Eastern European and Slavic music with punk and metal into a fiery, politically-oriented music that’s meant be taken standing up, preferably in a crowd of other sweaty, leaping people. The band’s renown has been kept pretty much exclusively to the Pacific Northwest, but the increasing popularity of this kind of cultural melding — three of the group’s members came to the U.S. as refugees, including Serbian lead singer Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich, who lived through the war in Sarajevo, and Croatian guitarist Mario Butkovic, who lived in a refugee camp for a while after his hometown was taken over by Serbian troops — and the sheer power and immediacy of their live show will certainly appeal to fans across the country, and world. Their latest album, We Came to Take Your Jobs Away, released last October on Koolarrow Records, continues to show off Kultur Shock’s energy and talent, and is more than enough to convince almost anyone that their performance at Bumbershoot will be one not to miss.

Or check them out at: www.myspace.com/kulturshock

NYC-bred producer/MC Ohmega Watts, born Milton Campbell to Jamaican-immigrant parents, is often compared to other East Coast artists like Pete Rock and Erik B. & Rakim, though, thanks to his various geographic relocations (he moved to Orlando when he was 13 and to Portland, OR after he graduated from the Art Institute of Florida), both his beats and his rhymes have a cool, laidback feel not generally heard anymore in the rush and tumble of the Big Apple. A talented lyricist and an excellent producer (as well as a DJ: he spins every Thursday at the Someday Club in Portland) who uses both obscure samples and live instrumentals, Watts has become a prominent fixture in the Northwest hip-hop scene. He’s signed to the eclectic, electronica- and funk-leaning Ubiquity Records, where he’s just getting ready to release his sophomore full-length, Watts Happening, this October. A devout man, he’s careful to not include any curse words in his songs, but that doesn’t mean his Bumbershoot set is going to be a church-like affair: Watts keeps his religious allusions subtle, preferring to convert audiences more to his style of intelligent, Native-Tongues-esque hip-hop than to his Christian beliefs.

Or check him out at: www.myspace.com/ohmegawatts

Honeycut is a San Francisco Bay area group that features the talents of Bart Davenport, Hervé “RV” Salters, and Tony Sevener. Davenport served with blues shouters the Loved Ones and released a couple of albums in classic singer/songwriter mode, Salters has played keys on a bunch of Quannum releases and is the man behind General Elektriks, whose 2005 record Cliquety Kliqk is a hidden gem, and Sevener plays a mean live MPC, preferring that to the usual method of programming it beforehand. Together they came up with a warm and inviting sound dominated by vintage keyboards that shows funk and soul influences, and is made special by both the uses of live strings and horns and Davenport’s excellent vocals. Their album The Day I Turned to Glass is one of the better debuts of 2006 and their show promises to be a little funky, a little soulful, and a lot of fun.

Or check them out at: www.myspace.com/honeycutmusic

Seattle’s Fleet Foxes are the Bee Gees in beards, backwoods Baroque folk enchanters who, if you have a propensity for falling in love with bands who sport soaring vocals, rich harmonies, classic late-’60s song craft and the arranging skills to make it sound fresh as a daisy, you’ll want to add these guys to your crush book right away. The 4 songs on the MySpace profile are truly wonderful, sounding like a minimal My Morning Jacket (thanks to vocalist Robin Pecknard’s impressive pipes) or a woodsmoke-flavored Pas/Cal, but also quite unique. If you are firm believer in the magic of pop music coming out of nowhere and stealing your heart, making you realize again that it hasn’t all been done before and they do in fact write them like they used to, check Fleet Foxes out on the unsigned artists stage. They won’t stay that way for long…

Or check them out at: www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes

Pretty Girls Make Graves, one of Seattle’s most recently prominent indie-rock bands, called it a day earlier this year, but the current projects of its former members are all over Bumbershoot. Along with the gently trippy sounds of drummer Nick DeWitt’s Night Canopy, bassist Derek Fudesco’s Cave Singers are another of the most hotly tipped acts appearing at the festival. The trio — which also includes vocalist/guitarist Pete Quirk, formerly of Hint Hint, and Cobra High’s Marty Lund on drums and guitar — crafts a dark indie-folk sound that couldn’t be farther from the output of the members’ previous groups, or from the freak-folk popular for most of this decade, for that matter. Songs such as “Seeds of Night” and “Royal Lawns” have more in common with traditional American murder ballads and work songs, even though the band insists that they haven’t listened to much folk music and that the Pixies and Replacements are among their favorite bands and influences. Maybe that’s why the Cave Singers don’t sound hidebound to tradition; they’re equally comfortable with using washboards on some songs and synths on others, like the excellent “Helen,” which telegraphs otherworldly loneliness with a simple melody and even simpler words. At any rate, the trio has already earned plenty of local praise for their compelling songs and intimate live act, as well as a deal with Matador to release their debut album Invitation Songs in late September. The Cave Singers’ Bumbershoot appearance is just the beginning of big things for the band this fall.

Or check them out at: www.myspace.com/thecavesingers

Frenzied, tense and more than a little crazy sounding, Das Llamas crank out a sound that stands out from other Seattle bands. Their angular, dark but danceable, post-punk inspired style is familiar and hard-to-place at the same time: Das Llamas has drawn comparisons to Talking Heads, Liars and Interpol, while the band lists Johnny Cash, the Monorchid and Legendary Pink Dots among its influences. Wherever their inspiration comes from, the band’s music is definitely ear-catching: Drummer Thomas Burke’s jittery rhythms lay down a foundation for Shawn Kock and Aaron Everett’s synth and guitar attack, while Kerry Zettel’s insistent baritone and mischievous basslines propel it all to new heights. Das Llamas’ songs jacknife out in unexpected directions, and can go from playful to menacing and back again in a drumbeat; “Legacy” is a deceptively bouncy song about rising up in arms and burning down shopping malls, and while “I Got Stoned” is indeed about getting high, it sounds like it could very well be about getting pelted by rocks. Though the band has only been known as Das Llamas for about a year — before that, they were stabmasterarson, named for Chris Rock’s character in CB4 — their current success has been years in the making; Zettel and Kock began working on music together in 1999. Das Llamas just released their debut album World War this summer, and not surprisingly, their energetic sound makes for a kinetic live show that gets people dancing, whether they expect to or not. The local buzz around the band makes their Bumbershoot set a must-see.

Or check them out at: www.myspace.com/dasllamas