Sat. Oct. 1

The best thing at Nordstrom Hall’s Optical 2: Grains of Sound showcase was Oval (Germany’s Markus Popp). Looking like a small-town accountant in his button-down short-sleeve shirt and conservative haircut, Oval played about three dozen tracks off a laptop from his newest releases on Thrill Jockey, O and Oh. (He still uses a mouse.)

This new Oval music came off like an odd species of post rock more than it did his previous explorations into glitch orchestrations. The brief tracks often featured big drumbeats and splashy cymbal hits and moved in unpredictable spurts adorned with spindly, fractured textures. It was a succession of Cubist miniatures whose dominant sound seemed to merge strings with percussion, somewhere between harp and xylophone. Oval offered a distinctive vocabulary of sounds, arranged interestingly. Popp definitely has his own thing going, which very few musicians do. All that being said, the visuals—mostly vertical lines of varying hues, looking like fancy barcodes—were shockingly pedestrian for what was supposed to be an audio/visual event.

Later at Neumos' Deep Foundations showcase, Mike Huckaby, Deniz Kurtel, I:Cube, and Chateau Flight spun a consistent stream of quality house and techno, their sets building cumulatively to the spectacular climax of Chateau Flight’s uptempo, Technicolor techno. The near-capacity crowd loved it a long time and it seemed cruel to cut the sound at 1:45 when the French duo were just approaching a peak. But that’s American club life…

• Heather Schofner
• Chateau Flight sacre bleu minds at Neumos.

Sun. Oct. 2

Orcas made their live debut at Triple Door’s Bit Pop showcase, and it was a beauty. Consisting of Benoît Pioulard on guitar, Rafael Anton Irisarri on laptop, and Kelly Wyse on piano, Orcas created glacially paced, delicate orchestral pop of hushed splendor. Think Durutti Column crossed with Slowdive, augmented by Pioulard’s Arthur Russell-like vocals. Solemn drones underpinned stately, minimalist piano chords and tempered guitar sighs and clangs. The cutlery clatter of the attendees often was louder than the music. Orcas closed with a gorgeous, reverent cover of Broadcast’s “Until Then.” I missed it, but toward the end of the showcase, Decibel Fest director Sean Horton reportedly gave an emotional speech saying that he would be relinquishing administrative duties for next year’s event, but will remain in a curatorial position.

Over at Re-bar’s Flammable showcase, Kate Simko delivered her expected sexy techno with exceptional melodic flourishes and lubricious bass lines. Headliners dOP—a French trio featuring a shirtless, bear-like vocalist whose trousers hung at mid-ass level all night—killed it. The singer’s soulful testifying complemented the hardware-intensive group’s stomping tech-house with serious pelvic-thrust traction. Their tracks were populist and festive, but far from LCD—a hard feat to pull off. dOP had no compunctions about swigging whisky and then passing the bottle to the crowd. At one point, the vocalist announced, “The main goal tonight is to have sex... I’m gonna have good sex tonight,” and dOP’s supremely tensile rizzims assured folks would be in the proper mood to achieve that.

As the set wore on, a few people came onstage to dance and flirt with the singer. The dancing was incredibly animated and hedonistic all night, and the energy level was ridiculously high when I trudged out of Re-bar at 2:15 am, my fatigue meter registering way into the red. Decibel, you nearly killed me—again. Looking forward to the ninth edition in 2012.

[UPDATE: One thing that should be noted is that nearly every showcase I attended was packed or close to capacity, and those that I didn't, others told me that they were full to bursting, too. Decibel seems to be thriving. Apparently, a lot of people like electronic music. Progress!]