If a Washington rainforest started a band, it would sound something like Mt Fog. Carolyn B.’s playful whispers are like a sprite luring you into a mossy forest; the rhythm section—Andy Sells and Casey Rosebridge—like raindrops plopping into a mushroom; the electronics shimmer like a ray of light through the trees. The Seattle-based trio whimsically marries the vocal stylings of Kate Bush, Björk, and Siouxsie Sioux with sparse electronics, evocative of CAN and Mort Garson, and a free jazz song structure. Ahead of releasing their new album, Every Stone Is Green (out Mar 13), and accompanying release show at the Tractor Tavern, I spoke to the band about the medieval mystics, cosmic jazz albums, and psychedelic dreams that inspired them.

One thing that is really unique about Mt Fog is that you don’t use six-string guitars. Was this a conscious choice or something that happened by accident?
CAROLYN: Well, I started Mt Fog as my solo project, and I don't play guitar—I’ve never been that into guitars. So, in the beginning, all the music I was writing was oriented towards voice and a drum machine. It has just evolved from that. Also, I think a trio is the most powerful, stable form. If we had a guitarist, they wouldn't be included in our throuple scenarios. [Laughs]

ANDY: Carolyn covers a lot of ground with the various synth patches and her voice. We play around with all kinds of textures as well, with the drum and bass. It's full enough without having a guitar. Although I like the guitar sometimes. It's either guitar, or I’m like, hey, we should put some congas on this thing!

CAROLYN: No guitar. No shaker. No slap bass. 

ANDY: There are a lot of rules in Mt Fog [laughs]. It’s not a democracy, and that's cool. 

Every Stone Is Green has an improvisational feel to it, especially on songs like “Trees in Conversation.” Were spontaneous decisions made while recording?
ANDY: There's not a whole lot to say about the drums on “Trees in Conversation,” but it was improvised. We kind of built that into the song that's right after it, so it starts with the drum solo, then goes into “Eyes in Buildings.” I have a jazz background, so that song has that improvisational character to it. I was surprised when Carolyn said, “Yeah, the drum solo should be this long!” 

CAROLYN: Side B is more spontaneous because we recorded it live together in the studio. My instincts on this album were to capture a fleeting, whimsical, curious feeling, so I'm really happy to hear that comes across. The song started as these rough ideas, as songs do, and then we worked on them together, and things would come up just naturally, spontaneously. For example, “Imperfect Machine” was something Casey came up with while I was taking a break during rehearsal. I came in, and he was playing this really cool thing. I made a voice memo of it, and then he and Andy expounded upon that idea at the studio. Then, I had a realization that the song sounded like a caravan full of giggling goblins with a little ratty flag coming through the desert, that’s like, getting closer and closer, then goes off into the distance. 

Ready for the time jump that is spring forward this Sunday? Before Monday's rough wake up call, spend time at weekend events from the Seattle Women's March to Seattle Fat Mall's Big Love Social + Market and from Chinatown-International District's Lunar New Year Celebration to the opening of Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. For more ideas, check out our top picks of the week.

FRIDAY

LIVE MUSIC

Echo Ravine (Album Release,) VuVu & Black Nite Crash
Local band Echo Ravine joked on Instagram that though two of its members are originally from Massachusetts, their friendship survived the Super Bowl. The group is used to bridging divides; their alt-rock song "Tumbling Wall" is about breaking down literal and metaphorical barriers between countries and people. The track is off their third album, Taking Up Space, which they put out last month and are celebrating with a release show at Seattle's own community-owned cooperative venue this Friday. Pick up a one-of-a-kind record at the show—the band hand-stamped images and track names onto the vinyl covers for a perfectly DIY feel. Fellow shoegaze bands Black Nite Crash and VuVu open the night with their layered, guitar-driven rock. SHANNON LUBETICH
(Conor Byrne Pub, Ballard, $15)

Layoffs at the 5th: The 5th Avenue Theatre Company is laying off 14 employees, cutting staff from 55 people to 41. The 5th is mired in the $7.5 million budget deficit it’s accumulated since the pandemic. Subscription rates haven’t recovered since COVID-era slowdowns. So, the theater is cutting jobs in "marketing, box office, education, and artistic departments," according to the Seattle Times. If you care about live theater in Seattle, you better go see their production of Jesus Christ Superstar this May. Don’t be a Judas.

We're Doing Slurs Now? During a House debate in Olympia over a bill that would “eliminate the Community Protection Program, a service for people with developmental disabilities who have a history of sexually aggressive behavior" Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley said this: "The folks that we’re responsible for, we’re putting rapists in with retarded people," reports the Seattle Times. It's not 2007 anymore, Leonard. He later defended his use of the r-word, saying it emphasized that the bill would be "feeding these people to the wolves." He has not apologized.

Kate Olson
So It Goes
(OA2)

Saxophonist/composer Kate Olson has excelled in Seattle’s jazz and experimental scenes for about 15 years as a solo artist, bandleader, and member of Syrinx Effect, Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, and Battlestar Kalakala. She’s especially shown an affinity for minimalist works that exhibit a deep spirituality, à la Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, and Don Cherry. Olson’s last album, 2020’s Homeland, pushed her into new territory: funereal post-rock, industrial music recalling the Bug’s iciest and most ominous moments, and discombobulating IDM.

Olson returns to jazz on her new LP, So It Goes, joined by Conner Eisenmenger (trombone, trumpet), Tim Carey (electric bass, electric guitar), and Evan Woodle (drums, percussion). With Olson playing soprano sax, the album zips out of the gate with “Bumbling Thumbs Blues,” bustling bebop full of thrilling dynamics, with Woodle devoting acute attention to the tom-toms. Which makes the transition to the sly “Take Five” homage of “ShouldaCoulda” a brilliant change of pace. Olson finesses a quietly ecstatic and rococo solo in this utterly beguiling and introspective tune. The burrowing, mesmerizing bebop sorcery of “All Pear-Shaped” continues So It Goes’s hot streak.

But Olson also excels at cooler temperatures; her ballad game is strong. “Nominally Challenged” is beautiful, serpentine jazz for late nights or early mornings, while “Pink Mountain”—a delicate, bittersweet ballad—displays Olson’s playing at its most tender. Dedicated to Billy Pilgrim, protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, “So It Goes” is a languorous, melancholy ballad with scene stalwarts Wayne Horvitz on piano and Geoff Harper on double bass. And showing immaculate taste, Olson and company—with Horvitz and Harper again lending stellar support—do justice to the legend Alice Coltrane’s questing astral-jazz composition “Translinear Light,” the title track from her final studio album. Real recognize real.

Thomas Andrew Doyle
Twilight
(Incineration Ceremony)

It’s crazy that Thomas Andrew Doyle’s synth-based music from 2017 onward flies so far under the radar, even though it ranks among his best output. The man best known as the leader of Sub Pop grunge brutes TAD has undergone a radical transformation in this century, and maybe fans of that band and critics just can’t get their heads around this new and improved musician/composer.

These days, Doyle’s into creating soundtracks in search of film directors who revel in transporting viewers to profoundly disturbing places. Twilight is Doyle’s latest excursion into the vast bleak. The epic title track begins with a subdued, solemn organ drone poised between hope and distress, creating a paradoxical tension. Eventually, ceremonial male chants enter and lend a wafting gravitas to proceedings. It would sound infernally grand in a theater. “1 over 137” is a bass-heavy dirge of deep suspense, cut with fluid synth motifs that suggest an appreciation for Dune-loving keyboard sorcerer Bernard Szajner. On “Decimated,” Doyle coaxes out the interstellar eeriness of Brian Eno’s best ’80s ambient releases. The despairing drones of “Dormant Complexities” approximate the sound of E.M. Cioran’s brain waves as he was writing A Short History of Decay. Dedicated to Doyle’s late friend, and friend of the paper (and entire city), Bradley Sweek, Twilight epitomizes the art of darkness.

Seattle-area musicians can send music to NewSeattleMusic@thestranger.com for possible coverage.

Hard to believe it’s been a whole year since Seattle, frequently bemoaned by Southerners as a barbecue wasteland, finally got some legit Texas-style barbecue. And made by a Turkish guy, no less. After opening Outsider BBQ last March, self-taught pitmaster Onur Gulbay quickly built himself a cult following with the authentic Central Texas-ass barbecue chops that he picked up while living in Austin. 

“I went to Franklin Barbecue and just fell in love,” Gulbay says, “and kept going back over and over, talking to the guys there, until I could learn how they were doing it.”

What started out as a pop-up, which the former IBM salesman ran from a portable smoker on wheels, re-manifested last year in the massive ex-Frelard Pizza Company space on Leary. Gulbay has since transformed the place into a sprawling smoked-meats compound, replete with fire pits, retractable garage-door walls, a play area for kids, a separate little house for his TWO gigantic smokers, and a huge outdoor beer garden. (Guess he learned that part from Texas, too. Oops, haha, it is cold here.) 

We’re serving up another fresh batch of tickets. Lo-fi R&B singer Joji supports his recently released album, Piss in the Wind, at Climate Pledge this summer. English virtual band Gorillaz closes out the North American leg of their Mountain Tour in Seattle. Plus, “American Woman” rockers The Guess Who are takin’ it back on their reunion tour. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

ON SALE FRIDAY, MARCH 6

MUSIC

Belle & Sebastian: 30th Anniversary Tour, Performing "Tigermilk"
Neptune Theatre (Sat June 13)

Charley Crockett – Age of the Ram Tour
Northern Quest Resort & Casino (Wed July 15)

Concrete Boys
Neumos (Mon May 11)

Seattle’s hottest nightclub doesn’t have velvet ropes, bottle service, or a bouncer. Instead, it has folding tables. It has name tags. It has four people to a table, all playing mahjong. A year ago, this kicked off with two borrowed sets. Tonight, Emerald City Tile Club is standing room only.

There’s a cloud over Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) this year and, no, it’s not pissing rain. It’s pissing ICE.

Back in January, con-goers discovered that ECCC’s parent company, ReedPop—which acquired the con in 2015 and runs a variety of cons including  New York City Comic Con and BookCon—has a not-so-distant connection to the immigration enforcement agency.

The problem lies in a rotten, corporate family tree. Reed Pop is part of the entertainment group RX which is owned by RELX, and RELX owns LexisNexis, a data broker that holds a $22.1 million contract to be ICE’s precogs, helping the agency track people who may potentially commit a crime (and their cars, according to The Intercept) before they’ve actually broken the law.

Sorry to immediately be a bummer, but I can’t stop thinking about the state of technology. About how we could have done anything in the world with it at this point, and yet this is where we landed. 

Waist-deep in a slop gauntlet run by the most corrupt/least cool (in every sense of the word) grifters imaginable. An internet that currently looks like shit and works like shit, in service of shareholders who will monetize it until there is nothing left to extract. I won’t belabor the point. 

Except of course I will. We are supposedly inching toward an era of AI grandiosity beyond our wildest dreams/nightmares, but until that happens, can we make one website function correctly? It would be incredible, if in the year of our 2026, I could look up what time a show starts without being led to a third-party ticket site, bloated with ads, with some out-of-date map widget that blocks the screen while their glitchy AI asks if you want whatever the fuck. Anything but the information you’re looking for. You will never find it; you will forget what you came here for. 

I sat across from Ron Davis—dad, urbanist, bald—at Tailwind Cafe in Capitol Hill. He wasn’t going to eat during our interview, but then he saw the menu: the “finest” avocado toast in the city. He had to try it. But we weren’t here to discuss toast. We were here to discuss his latest candidacy.

Voters may remember the former tech start-up CEO from his 2023 city council campaign. He ran for the District 4 seat as a density champion, a progressive—aka everything 2023 voters rejected. Outspent by corporate PACs, he lost to Maritza Rivera. He’s been a constant poster since—skeets, TikToks, Reels, and Substacks (or just stacks?). Raise your hands, Rondezvous readers.

Even if you haven’t seen Davis, you’ve probably sensed him. He’s become a progressive mainstay in local politics. He even flirted with a mayoral run before Katie Wilson jumped in. A believer in the cause—and a casualty of corporate fundraising—he fundraised with Progressive People Power PAC (P3) which helped unseat Sara Nelson and kickstarted the PAC that supported Wilson with political consultant Stephen Paolini. (“He and I, together basically raised all the individual contributor money between the two of us,” says Paolini, the director of the Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle PAC.)

Now he’s hoping to knock Rep. Gerry Pollet out of Washington’s 46th District, the Northeast Seattle region he’s represented for 15 years.

Constitution? I Hardly Know Him: Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would’ve halted the attacks on Iran and allowed time for Congress to authorize the war. That’s the Constitutional way to go to war, anyway—only Congress has the power to declare war. The president does not (despite this, we haven’t declared any of our wars since World War II, and we’ve waged many). The House will vote today on a similar measure, but it’s expected to fail. 

Also: The US government is dodging responsibility for the deadly strike on the Iranian girls’ school, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth only saying they’re “investigating” the incident. The incident killed at least 165 students and injured 96 others. 

And Also: President Donald Trump says he must be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader. Replacing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with Mojtaba Khamenei, his son and likely successor, would be “unacceptable,” Trump said.

In a mere four years, Ground Hum has risen from an experimental multimedia festival at makeshift warehouses with infrastructure issues and strictly local performers to a full-fledged Happening™ at a legit venue (Washington Hall) with international artists. That's due to organizers Hans Anderson, Bobby Azarbayejani ('nohup'), and Alex Markey (Archivist) being savvy electronic musicians with deep roots and connections in the Northwest rave scene—plus crucial 4Culture grants.

Azarbayejani views Ground Hum's lofty mission as a recontextualization of rave's "fantastical, transformative experiences that emerge over the course of a single night. You leave those events with a sense of community, of being transported somewhere outside of ordinary life, and the feeling that a different world is possible. A lot of us first encountered that translation when we went to Corridor (2016–2018) and wanted to carry that same ethos forward."

Markey elaborates, saying Ground Hum "is essentially about Deep Listening, in the sense of the concept developed by Pauline Oliveros. Listening as an active, engaged process as opposed to passively hearing. I think the concept extends to our installation and performance art pieces, too. We’re trying to create this... multisensory experience that draws people into an alternate reality and keeps them there for the duration of the evening."

Hey, '90s throwback guy: Your cigarette smoke is gross. And I hate having to walk through it to get my coffee.

You’ve been asked—politely—by staff and customers to move. There is signage. There are coughs. There are stares. Yet you remain.

It’s peak Hill. A neighborhood that prides itself on being considerate—but when it comes to shared air, asking someone not to hotbox the doorway is apparently a controversial take.

It’s prep shift at Hamdi, and the room smells like fire. Winter sunlight filters in, and there’s a faint hum of spices in the charred air. Chef Berk Güldal is giving a private tutorial on making Turkish Adana-style kebap—aka kebab—a meticulous, laborious two-day process that plumps up these peppery lamb skewers.

Hand-mincing kebap is considered an art form in Southwest Asia, but this time-consuming process is being practiced less and less these days—even in Turkey, and certainly here in Seattle. Güldal, however, has all the time in the world to practice this thousand-year-old culinary craft.

Hamdi opened in 2021 as a Turkish food truck and moved into its beautiful, simple fine-dining space on Leary Way the following year. Güldal and his partner, Katrina Schult, had spent their careers in Michelin-starred restaurants—in Güldal’s hometown of Istanbul as well as NYC and Healdsburg, California, among other places—before peacing out to starless, Michelin-free Seattle to do their own thing.