NIGHTMARES ON WAX'S DJ E.A.S.E. GETS BUSY ON THE WHEELS OF STEEL
Seattle sure loves Nightmares on Wax. The UK tropical funkateers seem to play here at least once a year, roaming through their 25 years of catalog on Warp Records with the sort of laid-back head-nod fodder that's instant sonic sunshine for our vitamin D–deprived souls. NOW's main man, DJ E.A.S.E., has slick deck skills, too, as his mixes for the DJ-Kicks, LateNightTales, and My Definition series prove. E.A.S.E.'s specialties are '90s hiphop classics (e.g., Das EFX, Camp Lo, Tribe), flashy funk from several eras, and '60s and '70s soul and rare groove. With Kid Hops, Blueyed Soul, and J-Justice. Nectar, 8 pm, $15 adv/$18 DOS, 21+.
THE BLACK MADONNA'S SMART BAR–TESTED HOUSE MUSIC
This weekend, the debauchery-inducing dance crew Shameless toasts its 12th annual My Bloody Valentine event while the venue Kremwerk celebrates its first anniversary. So everyone should be in optimal partying form, including headliner the Black Madonna. She's a house DJ/producer from the city that invented the genre, but the Black Madonna is no stickler-in-the-mud for tradition. She's known for deviating from the conventional Chicago-house script and throwing in idiosyncratic tracks that bust up a mode that can sometimes lapse into 4/4 monotony (dropping Dick Hyman's cover of "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" will do it). The Black Madonna also books the world-famous Smart Bar, so she knows what it takes to fill a floor from all angles. With Nark, Tyson Wittrock, Joe Bellingham, and Moist Towelette. Kremwerk, 8 pm–3 am, 21+.
DRIFT SKYWARD WITH ETHERNET, BENOIT PIOULARD, AND COCOLAS
The Elevator crew gets ethereal this month with a couple of Kranky Records artists: Portland's Ethernet and Seattle's Benoît Pioulard. Ethernet (aka Tim Gray) makes some of the most beatific ambient music in the country, as epitomized on 2013's Opus 2. Over gentle beats more implied than heard or felt, Ethernet finesses a fine mist of aqua-charcoal drone. A lot of cats try to do this thing, but few execute it with more nature-evoking meditativeness than does Ethernet. The gentle, peaceful music of Benoît Pioulard (aka Thomas Meluch, who is also half of Orcas with Rafael Anton Irisarri) complements Ethernet's, albeit in a more song-oriented manner (think the elegantly melodious entanglements of Japan and Eyeless in Gaza). Pioulard sings with an alluring glumness, and his background in stately, autumnal electronic music serves him well on records like Hymnal, Lasted, and the new, elegiac masterpiece Sonnet. Seattle via Australia producer Madeleine Cocolas's output "approaches the dystopian menace of John Carpenter's scores while resembling Cliff Martinez's synth-laden space oddities at others," according to The Stranger's Kyle Fleck, and he's not wrong. Machine House Brewery, 8 pm, $8 adv/$10 DOS, all ages. 
