California bay area-based artist Chris Portka has always dreamt of being a musician. With his roots dating back to the dirty, blistering grunge of the ’90s, a young portka followed his heart… He fought past crippling stage fright; anxiety attacks during Elliot Smith covers; and a voice that sounds like a “Rhinoceros fighting to befriend an Elephant” (his words not ours) to get where he is today. It’s safe to say that portka has devoted a fair amount of blood, sweat, and tears to make this whole music thing work. And while he makes himself at home in any jam session (whether it be on an acoustic guitar or a synth or a piano), there’s a deeper, stranger fire burning within him. As he puts it:
“my roots burrow in this impressionistic improv that reflects a fierce internal conflict.”
Enter trash music, portka’s latest offering. It’s a twelve song album full of noisy noise, swirling swirls, and speaker-shredding sound that is likely unlike anything you’ve ever heard. When albums are as genuinely unique as this, it’s almost integral to get the perspective of the creator. Here’s portka’s take on his unique brand of noise:
“Screaming to be heard, oblivious of myself and having a rough go at feeling loved, mistaking beauty for wholeness, and touching the sparkling bit of debris within detritus of curled ash… I love music. It’s one of the few places I can feel any sense of control in life. The times we live and the collective shit we’ve experienced goes deep and, for the most part, we have very little say about what happens in this life. I accept the good with the bad as I hope to accept myself – the beauty within the trash.”
Prepare yourself – track one, “Burn Him Up, Is It Too Much To Bear?” will prepare you for the most ruthless of portka’s meanderings. Expect wild blasts of noise, glitchy textures, and a general spirit of ennui. This is portka at his most challenging, but it’s also a fun introduction to the sonic possibilities that you may find bubbling within.
Track two, “Wildlife,” feels like a single of sorts. With an energy that lives up to its name, “Wildlife” feels worldly in nature – mixing tribal rhythms with honks of guitar, blasts of static, and atonal whirrs of noise. It’s as broken as it is tangible; as challenging as it is creative. The track as a whole is a mish-mash of different sounds and influences… So much so that it’s hard to pinpoint anything other than guitar noise as an influence. Rather than single out Sonic Youth or Lightning Bolt or Animal Collective as contemporaries, it may be more practical to ask yourself what influenced a song like wildlife. Was it a trek through a buggy, muggy swamp in the middle of summer? Or a dangerous hike through unexplored jungles? You can find this same sort of tribal energy on the song “Bojeurn,” with it’s relentlessly pounding bass presence and percussive synth onslaught. These are the moments where portka’s true nature shines brightest, his aforementioned internal conflict rising up and boiling over in a noisy, synthy cacophony.
“The Sky Is Blue in Hell” plays more into portka’s Elliot Smith influences, a gentle acoustic ditty with absolutely no glitches or feedback spikes at all. While I definitely would consider this more music than trash, at the same time, of anything you’ll encounter here, “Blue In Hell” feels the most like an archetypal “song.” For the squeamish or meek, this one may be your best bet for diving in head-first to portka’s music.
Track six, “Dream Factory,” leans heavy into Dinosaur Jr. territory. With blown-out distortion, a slacker rock vocal presence, and a six minute runtime, “Factory,” like “Blue In Hell,” leans a bit closer to music than trash, and is a nice respite from the otherworldly textures and challenging compositions found elsewhere on trash music. Track nine, “Your Music Is Trash,” skillfully bridges the gap between Dino Jr. and trash pretty effectively, combining big Marshall stack guitar tones with strange vocal textures and peaking noise twinkles interspersed throughout.
Before you know it, portka is back on the noise grind. Tracks seven and eight, “Women are Hot” and “We’re in this Together” are amalgams of bitcrushed noises, Portka’s mind-numbing mumbling, and slammed-to-the-reds sounds. At this point, as a listener, you may find your ears are exhausted from being challenged by the trashier moments here on trash music… So by the end of the album, when Portka reels it back in again with the surprisingly touching “let’s go play today,” it hits that much harder. Sounding almost like an outtake from Adore-era Smashing Pumpkins, “play” is a hypnotic song that makes use of continuous acoustic guitar strumming, blippy drum machine percussion, and portka’s drone vocals.
This is truly an album you need to experience for yourself to fully understand. trash music is out August 1st, 2023. You can find all the different ways to consume trash (and Chris’s other music) via this handy link, or, find his music on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music. Until then, be sure to start with “let’s go play today” below.