Traditionalist may use masa with fruit or chocolate to make a steamy blend of atole. Others use video game explosions, post-punk basslines, and dancey drums to brew up a sweaty pot of Atole.
Others include PDX heretics Atole, a dance rock, disco mash-up of Italo electro beats and SFX wed to krautrock and decidedly punky exaltations. It’ll make you move.
The boys of Atole have many faces around Portland and love to smother this town with their dance joy, whether it’s at house parties, spinning DJ sets, hosting webisodes, or booking gigs and playing with friends at Rotture.
Spreading the love on thick, Atole plays a whopping FREE gig at East End on Saturday, February 13th for UFO #4 alongside Coronation and Joey Casio.
Saturday’s highlights: Beat thumper Joey Casio’s first Portland show since he moved here this week from Olympia as well as the debut show of Coronation–a new dance-rock outfit featuring members of Ra Ra Riot and Plants.
Atole’s Manny Reyes singer/dancer/masterminder spoke with OMN about their debut, full-length album out this summer and this weekend’s gig–look for the UFO dance party every month at East End to feature local intergalactic indie-electro-rock-dance acts, free admission, and according to Manny, “good times in a cozy venue.”
Listen to Atole’s “Tonya’s Song” off their latest EP and forthcoming debut.
But before Saturday night, here’s the rain and delicious, mushy Atole.
What’s Atole?
Manny Reyes of Atole
Atole is a popular ancient Latin American drink made from masa, sugar, water, and fruit or chocolate. It’s often served warm, sweet and shared with family and friends. Similar to oatmeal in style.
What’s the best recipe? Is it necessary to own a crockpot to make Atole?
Atole is easy to make and can be blended into any flavor: chocolate, banana, blueberries, etc. First you griddle masa adding water that’s been boiled with cinnamon. Then you add your favorite fruit or chocolate. You can also buy packets of Atole–Kool-Aid-style–at any Mexican Market. You just add milk or water to that and boil.
Okay then, who’s Atole? How’d the band form?
Atole started out with me performing live with four boomboxes–making weird, theatrical experiences.
After a stage fight, the boomboxes were destroyed. My boyfriend Tim Ferrell approached me about joining the band as a duo making beats and playing keys. We went on a tour with Copy (Marius Libman)–good times, back when we were all in DnD. Atole jammed with lots of different people, then we decided to make Atole a solid band. Two years ago we asked our friend Mike Conroy to play drums, which changed the whole experience. Marius/Copy joined on bass with Manny and Tim on keys. This year our buddy Jacob Soto joined on drums. He’s an old friend, we are stoked.
How has the addition of Jacob Soto changed your sound?
Jacob Soto joined Atole this year on drums–feels like the new jams are weirder and dancier than before. Jacob has fully jumped into the songwriting process. He’s full of new ideas and is helping a lot with sounds and song structure. We’ve been able to keep our favorite Atole tracks and play them live, so it’s been a smooth process. It helps that Jacob and Manny played together in Flaspar five years ago, and Jacob guest-spotted for Atole when we played with Matmos over two years ago.
You’re making some breed of electro-disco-punk-funk for the kids of 2010. What’s your sound?
Upbeat dancey synth punk with heavy post-punk, disco and electro influences. It’s hard to pinpoint the sounds into one category because we experiment in lots of styles. We like electro funk, haha. Definitely our sound was built for the kids and our audience. We pretty much stopped playing a lot of our spacey krautrock jams–at the request of several dance fans.
What are you live shows like? Dance parties or headbanger balls?
Dance parties for sure. I think there will be more headbangers in the back once the album comes out and they know all the words and melodies to bob their head to. We love the all ages crowd, they really know how to get down. We all groove on stage, get the vibe going–plus I love jumping out and dancing with the audience. Some of our groupies also happen to be our best friends!
How’s the live sound differ from the recorded stuff?
Most of the songs on the album are bass, drums, vocals and keys–the setup is minimal and exactly like the live setup. So not much changes with those, but maybe everything isn’t perfect live, haha.
What is the single most necessary item to wear to an Atole show?
Headbands! We used to give them out at all our shows cuz everyone gets so sweaty.
What’s your favorite place to play around town?
Rotture is our home. It’s also where we book bands at our monthly party called Supernature as well as our all-ages dance festivals Superfest! and Superfresh! Ideally though, we love house shows the best–strange wild energy–lots of fun.
Where does your sound come from? Who are your influences?
The four of us are into diverse sounds, bands and influences. We do have a shared love for left-field dance music–strange grooves, melodies and beat-structure. We’re definitely influenced by a lot of old-school Portland electronic bands like Nice Nice, Solenoid, Strategy. We look up to all those dudes. They paved the way for us to be free to do what we like!
What are you listening to right now?
We love all our friend’s bands in town right now–people like Fake Drugs, Miracles Club and May Ling. As far more popular acts go, we all love Caribou, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and Battles. Especially Battles. Marius has seriously been digging Wire this past year, I think that has influenced us. Plus Tim has been playing a lot of early B-52’s–check out their live 1978 YouTube video in Atlanta, “Devil’s In My Car.” They’re amazing, seriously!
The Brainwaves EP was hanging around this summer. What’s happened since then?
We recorded our debut 7 inch, a track for a local 12 inch comp, as well as our debut full-length. We’ve also
started working on our first cover song as well as writing three new songs that sound nothing like the stuff
people know. Fun times!
When’s the full length out? What’s it called?
Our debut record is fourth in line on the 2010 Audio Dregs roster–first up are Copy, ROTFL (member of Paper Rad), and E*Rock. Then Atole hopefully end of summer. We can’t say what it’s called right now, but people will be happy. We can guarantee it’s not going to be called Debut, Atole, or Untitled.
Check out “La Montaña Májica” also off the future LP.
What else is coming up?
Before the full-length we have a debut 7 inch coming out on Community Library Records. It’s going to be the first single for the album: “Strike Zone” on the A-Side and an exclusive track that people know from our live shows, “Dirty Bird,” on the B-Side. Both songs are fast minimal synth-punk tracks that we love playing.
What are your future plans?
Our future plans are to put out our debut record and get the word out–play shows and possibly tour a little around it. And we’re already hard at work on new stuff. We plan to put out as a series of DJ-ready 12 inch records without the idea of writing an album.
What are your day jobs?
Jacob teaches music and choir, Manny makes sandwiches, Marius makes mochas, and Tim works sound in the clubs.
What other artistic projects are you guys involved in?
Marius is Copy. Tim and I have a new dance band, we plan to crash a ton of summer house shows. Manny also makes flyers and paper-based art, and Tim has worked on videos for Alela Diane and The Shaky Hands.
Describe Atole in 3 words.
Work It Girl.
Favorite thing about Portland.
Any advice for on stage?
Never go down to your boxers, unless you’re ok if someone pulls them all the way down.
Where can we see you?
People can see us Saturday, February 13th at East End, Thursday, February 25th at Backspace, and both March 5th and 20th at Rotture (the 20th being Supernature’s two-year anniversary). We also plan to play tons of house shows–free shows for the kids. Keep your ears tuned.
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Bonus: Check out a clip of Atole at the Audio Dregs studio on the WKE show Don’t Move Here.
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