Scene Report: Live in the Depths 86
LIVE IN THE DEPTHS 86: Official Website
Venue: Mississippi Pizza & Atlantis Lounge – Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR
Back again – Live in the Depths 86 – same location as last time, different fever dream. I’d been looking forward to this one ever since whispers started slithering through my social media feed about some custom MIDI-synced light show that was to be performed by Occurian himself while simultaneously playing live music. That kind of multitasking usually ends with something on fire or having a nervous breakdown, but hey, that’s show business. The pre-show atmosphere was a little unhinged. The DJ was spinning sounds that could only be described as moaning giants or aristocratic penguin grunts – something guttural and weirdly regal. On visuals tonight was Disco Voltron, fine tuning their setup with surgical focus preparing to beam a message into our souls. As I watched him tune his gear with those moaning giant sounds playing in my head, something in that moment hit me sideways. A sucker punch from the soul. Out of nowhere, I felt this melancholy creep in – a sudden pang of grief. I realized a close friend of mine was about to leave the country for two weeks, off to Ireland for a vacation they deserved but that I secretly feared would become permanent. That they might fall in love with rolling green hills, real healthcare, and beer that doesn’t taste like a radiator – and never come back to this sunburned, spiritually bankrupt republic. But there was no time to wallow. The lights were fading. The bass was rumbling. It’s LIVE IN THE DEPTHS, BABY.
Live in the Depths doesn’t officially begin until Dhug starts yelling. I don’t care if two full sets have already come and gone, gear scattered across the floor and bodies writhing to some half-lit rhythm – if Dhug isn’t shouting wild-eyed affirmations of love, connection, and holy chaos into the void, then the ritual hasn’t started. So when I heard Dhug bellowing praise, proclaiming the sanctity of community and the beauty of weirdos, I knew the night had officially begun. And that’s when Enzo Caselnova showed up and gave me one of those famous hugs – his summoning powers at Live in the Depths aren’t needed. But with Enzo here, the night felt complete.
The first set was CyclopTatiToad – their name is a combination of Cyclop Toad and Tatiana. Do you remember Megazords? This is the musical version of that. Toad, usually known for projecting high-frequency chaos through light and motion, was stepping out from behind the screen this time. Last time I saw him and Tati perform was back in the tail end of 2023 – another Live in the Depths, another hazy time in my life – and back then they were both wearing wigs, looking like post-apocalyptic drag queens who’d crash landed in the wrong timeline. It was beautiful. I asked Toad before the show if he was going to be wearing wigs tonight and he gave me a friendly but vague answer. At one point I saw him in the corner trying to slice one of those white party plates into a triangle – pizza cosplay, perhaps? Seemed like he was planning to wear it like a tiny helmet – but when he came out he was sans wigs and sans pizza helmet. However, when they started, none of that shit mattered. They opened with experimental vocoders, metallic and warped, folding into those satisfying, rubbery delayed drums that bounce around your skull like loose change in a dryer. It had that classic robo-funk texture – and then Tati’s voice came in, pitched down, eerie, gorgeous. Chef’s kiss. Then it devolved into deep crunching drums – but they were precise. You can tell Toad is a percussionist. An avante garde percussionist. What a weird set – I absolutely loved it.
Maybe the DJ was onto something.
Next up was Brian Oblivion, and holy hell – what a breath of fresh air. Straight to the gut: old school, down-and-dirty, no-frills IDM. Meat and potatoes electronic music – and yeah, I know that sounds like an insult in this age of overproduced, microgenre name soup, but it’s not. This stuff was nourishing. Warm. Physical. Human in the way only machines can be when someone actually knows how to wrangle them without showing off. It reminded me of Autechre, sure – but not the cryptic alien mashup they’ve morphed into. This was homegrown, like someone built a sound lab in their garage and fed it feelings instead of code – on second thought I think I’m describing a music studio. This is exactly the kind of music I want to be listening to on a Tuesday at 2 pm – the perfect companion to an okay cup of coffee and a mild existential crisis. I don’t know what Brian Oblivion’s cooking next, but I need to find out – immediately.
It was around this point in the night that I locked eyes with Kapala across the room. Her gaze sharpened like a switchblade and, without a word, she made a beeline straight for the chair next to me. No hesitation. Just immediate info dump mode – I love a good info dump. The last time I saw Kapala perform was at my very first show in Portland, back in my heady, anxious haze of 2023. Her set back then was warped, delicate, dark – it hit me hard. I walked away from that night thinking, I need to see whatever she does next. But the next never came. That was it. A ghost set. One and done. Apparently she’s been in her hermit phase, simplifying life and stepping back. The music she’s been sitting on, she said, would be too sad. But here’s the thing: we love sad music, Kapala. She told me she’s got a live show coming up at a goat-slaughtering farm – because of course she does – and honestly, I hope she records the whole thing. Tape hiss, goat noises, and all. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally get a proper album out of it. And if not, I’ll take the info dump and count myself lucky.
Heartworm was up next. Apparently there was quite a bit of buzz about them – and sure enough, the crowd scuttled forward like rats to a powerline made of cheese, suddenly aware that something violent and beautiful was about to happen. Did I mention I love breakcore? This was some intense shit. At one point during the set, I heard one of those cheap, white, plastic cups hit the floor – and for a full five seconds, I thought it was part of the track. That’s the level we were on. Controlled chaos. Frenzied, spliced-to-death rhythms stitched together with precision. I feel like this music could double as a homemade Lithotripsy – and for a moment I genuinely believed if I just leaned my left flank up to the speaker, I could pulverize my kidney stone and save $11,000 in healthcare. No insurance, no co-pay. Just bass therapy. That’s when the music calmed. Then it didn’t. You know that fakeout move where the plane levels off and you think you’re through the turbulence, only to drop 2,000 feet like a demon kicked the elevator? Yeah – that. Was that a jazz percussion loop I heard that was broken up into a million pieces? It was a regular breakcore buffett. Nourishment seems to be the theme of the night. I heard a few vocal samples mixed in there, including Christopher Walken in “The Prophecy” rambling about angels and violence, and of course, the timeless sound of Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem telling us all to go fuck ourselves. Beautiful. Super fun set.
But now it was on to the main event – at least for me. I love Occurian’s work and am always impressed when I see him perform live. He’s a very tech driven dude, but even I started to raise my eyebrow at the idea of him juggling a live music set WHILE performing his own visuals. Very ambitious. I talked to Occurian before the show and he told me that he wrote a control software that allowed him to midi-sync his infinity mirrors to his music in real time. It’s pretty cool, but very technical. Classic Occurian – channeling art through math. And it took a damn long time to set up. After about 30 minutes, we were ready – the suspense of the setup was palpable. The crowd was absolutely buzzing with anticipation and curiosity, that’s when a robotic voice cut through the haze like a sermon from a silicon prophet – talking about channeling the songs of the ancestors. That was the ignition point. From there, all bets were off. The room went full synthetic ritual. Light, sound, and reflections folding in on themselves, triggered in real time, layered with precision and just the right amount of madness. You could practically feel the bulbs sizzling. But fuck me, it was awesome. I posted a video below, though it barely scratches the surface. You’ve got to be there, sweating in the dark, wondering if the machines are dreaming of you too.
Between CyclopTatiToad’s wigless mind-melt, Brian Oblivion’s soul-nourishing IDM, the surgical violence of Heartworm, Occurian’s cybernetic photon sphere of mirrors and light and Dhug’s love bellowing, Live in Depths 86 checked all of my boxes. An absolute banger of a show. Don’t forget to check out Live in the Depths the first Thursday of every month at the Atlantis Lounge.
Videos Courtesy of Ramon Mills (Production Unit Xero)
You can listen to the entire LITD set on S.P.A.Z. Radio here: https://spaz.org/
