(Photos by Doug Moore, Lisa Hagen Glynn, Brady Tuazon and Erik Meharry) Portland-based psychedelic gaze-wave band Sun Atoms has teamed up with Isaac Brock, the frontman of Modest Mouse, to release the single, “Narco Polo“.

Sun Atoms is composed of a group of musicians: Peter G. Holmström (The Dandy Warhols, Pete International Airport) on bass and production, lead vocalist Jsun Atoms (The Upsidedown, Daydream Machine), multi-instrumentalist June Kang, saxophonist and trumpeter Mars de Ponte, drummer Eric Rubalcava, and guitarist Derek Spencer Longoria-Gomez (Hi Hazel).

As Sun Atoms was working on their forthcoming album “Everything Forever”, set to be released on November 8 via Little Cloud Records, Holmström sent Brock early mixes of the track “Narco Polo”. Months later, Brock invited Holmström to his Ice Cream Party Studio in Portland, where Brock recorded his vocal contributions. The song was mixed by producer Jagz Kooner (Massive Attack, Primal Scream) and mastered by Keith Tenniswood (Spiritualized, Death In Vegas).

Ahead of this release, Sun Atoms dropped two singles from their sophomore album. “Ceiling Tiles”, a new wave-influenced track, was paired with a tribute to Leonard Cohen, “Tower of Song”.

Another single, “Take This Love,” came with the B-side “And The Lion Saw The UFO” accompanied by a sci-fi-themed music video shot at Oregon’s famous Airplane Home.

Sun Atoms’ music mixes psychedelic rock, indie pop, and post-punk. Their debut album, “Let There Be Light” (2021), was produced by Holmström and mixed by Stephen Street (Blur, The Smiths). It included collaborations with Alex Maas of The Black Angels, Jasno Swarez of The Vandelles, and producer Gregg Williams (Sheryl Crow, Blitzen Trapper).

Sun Atoms Concerts

• Nov. 09 – Portland, OR – Show Bar at Revolution Hall (with The Veldt, Asteroid #4, and Los Mundos)
• Nov. 16 – Portland, OR – Belltown Yacht Club (with Valley Suns)
• Dec. 11 – Portland, OR – McMenamins Mission Theater (with LSD & The Search For God and TREMOURS) – Little Cloud Records Showcase celebrating The Dandy Warhols’ 30th Anniversary

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com

(By Joanna Hobart) Yacht, an American dance-pop band from Portland, Oregon, currently based in Los Angeles, California, is going to win the award for the lamest PR stunt this year. Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans claimed in a post on Facebook that an intimate video they made together had been leaked to the public and so they had started to spread it themselves (weird twist n’est-ce pas?). It actually was a way to promote their (not so brilliant) song “I Wanna Fuck You Til I’m Dead”.

According to Yacht their ‘sex’ tape (holding no sex at all) was a stunt intended to “explore the intersection of privacy, media, and celebrity”, in other words, they looked for some cheap publicity. Yacht’s PR company Motormouthmedia probably saw the backlash this very poorly executed PR thingie would get and quickly distanced themselves from the band.

Here’s the video they posted on Pornhub etc.. Note that if they wouldn’t have created all the mayhem around it, the video would actually have been a funny one, but knowing the context of how this one was marketed, it’s not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0cxpv2JRgY

The backlash came quite quick as many see the action of the band as nothing else but trivialising revenge porn. Not exactly what the duo had hoped for of course.

Lawyer Carrie Goldberg, whose New York law firm helps victims of internet harassment, told The Guardian that he considers it to be “a bullshit marketing stunt (…) As somebody who spends all day, every day working with actual victims of nonconsensual porn and rapes that have videos and gone viral, I just thought: ‘Where are these guys, I’m going to come and hunt them down’.” And he adds: “My fear is that next time somebody’s sex video goes viral without consent everyone’s going to stop and say: ‘Wait wait wait, we can’t believe her, this is just a stunt’.”

Bechtolt and Evans have responded now saying that they “never make light of victims of any form of sexual abuse”. Here’s what the duo wrote as well: “Frankly, it’s disturbing to us that press outlets could make the incredibly irresponsible leap from “celebrity sex tape,” which is the cultural trope this project explicitly references, to “revenge porn,” which is unfunny, disgusting, morally repugnant, and completely unrelated. Even within the fictional narrative we created, there was no violence or exploitation. It was always about agency and proactive empowerment.”

What’s your take on this? Let us know.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com