Avant-garde electronic music is probably the last thing people think of when they hear “dinner theater”, but that’s exactly what Decibel Festival attendees got if they were lucky enough to snag a spot at the sold out Optical 1 showcase. After fine dining courtesy of the famed Wild Ginger kitchen, a…
Excuse the bad pun, but the MOTOR showcase on Friday night of Decibel Festival is where the rubber hit the road. From Pharmakon’s primal yells to Shifted’s asymmetrical time signatures, the noise and industrial leanings of the evening’s artists were not for the faint of heart. Show attendees had th…
Decibel Festival has spent the last 11 years building a movement. This is no run of the mill, mindless EDM party. Instead, Decibel is a unique multi venue music, arts, and lecture series that brings some of the best, brightest, and most interesting to the Emerald City. And night one at Showbox at t…
One prominent feature of Decibel Festival is the way its schedule breaks down into rather meticulously set showcases. Unlike most other festivals, in which entry to one location likely grants access to every stage, Decibel also sells individual tickets to each show as an alternative to more expensi…
When attempting to describe electronic music, natural and organic are usually quite far down on the list of adjectives used. But Saturday's Decibel Fest 2015 Sublime Showcase showed Seattle how the natural and organic can be beautifully integrated into cold and computing machines to make captivati…
In the ocean of electronic music at Decibel, we found some hip hop beautifully integrated in. Beat Alchemy on Saturday night at the Crocodile, focused around Mick Jenkins and was a brilliant mixture of hip hop and electronica.
Friday night of Decibel Festival 2015 not only continued the celebration of its 10th anniversary but also festival founder Sean Horton's birthday. And while the night provided many enticing showcases, one was hard pressed to find a more entertaining one than Body Language at Q Nightclub. Mr. Horton…
So often we find ourselves looking at festival lineups, picking and prodding for female artists, but here, in the world of Decibel, female artists were the focal point of the night. The Discwoman showcase on Thursday night was fantastic, energetic, and powerful.
Is there any band that has defined the sounds of early 80s like New Order? From the post-punk roots of "Ceremony" to "Age of Consent", and the new-wave brilliance of "Blue Monday" to "The Perfect Kiss", New Order are the figurehead of an era. They extended their reign through 1993's Republic, where…

In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.