Dandelion Doldrums: The Electroplasmic Orgasmic Dreamwave Duo

It was a night filled with too much PBR and Rolling Rock, with an intimate saxophone from Careless Whisper helping the crowd forget about all the warm bodies in the room.

Local experimental electronic band, Dandelion Doldrums, performed June 30 at a birthday bash house show, code-named Dexter’s Laboratory.

It really did look like something out of Dexter’s Lab with all the white string lights on the wall paired with green and red buttons. Josh Martinez and Nater Hutto put on a bright performance with their color-changing pianos, sampling pads, bass guitar and Martinez’s tranquil vocals.

From the ashes of Martinez’s former band, Salamander Dreams, Dandelion Doldrums was born.

Over a few cold ones, I had the pleasure of sitting down with these two handsome gentlemen.

Martinez is vaguely similar in appearance to Julian Casablancas from The Strokes. During his performances, he often wears outlandish clothes, but there’s something about Martinez’s enthusiastic attitude for what he loves doing—making music—and the cheesin’ smile that makes a trench coat or orange beanie OK.

The band and I found some solitude in a cluttered shed outside filled with vibrant paintings of purple and pink scribbles. Once we got comfortable amidst all the paintings, plastic containers and a purple bike in the middle of the room, the origin story of Dandelion Doldrums was explained over cold beers.

It all started with a run in with the police, Martinez explains. “The night that it happened I was let out and had to sign paperwork, and I was still technically arrested but they let us go, and Nate calls me up immediately as I’m walking out and he calls me and says do you want to be in a band? And so, I’m like yeah, of course I want to be in a band,” Martinez said.

 Hutto and Martinez have been playing music for years. They enjoy working with their friends on collaborative projects, including the birthday girl of the party, Eliza Goldstein.

“We had a project with Eliza called Cosmopolitan Creeps, and that last song we played was a song we made with her. And that was sort of like a precursor to this project because it’s sort of the same system. We go into the studio and create compositions where we never had the ability to play live like we do now,” Hutto said.

“When we message a venue, we put in the subject headline, Dandelion Doldrums: Electroplasmic Orgasmic Dreamwave.”

They’re always working on new music in their studio/apartment.

“Just the other day we were experimenting with the synthesizer and figuring how to make a synthesizer sound like a drum,”  Hutto said.

Dandelion Doldrums played a new single at the house show—Electric Garden—which will be released soon. Most of their music ideas come to them at three in the morning, when most people are either going to sleep or sobering up after the bars close.   

Dandelion Doldrums is influenced by electronic bands like LCD Soundsystem and Aphex Twin.

“When we message a venue, we put in the subject headline, Dandelion Doldrums: Electroplasmic Orgasmic Dreamwave,” Hutto explains. 

These guys are risky in nature— both musically and personally and it’s hard not to take notice. 

“They try to push past what you would normally expect electronic music to sound like.”

While finishing some more cold ones, (Rolling Rocks, of course) Eliza ventured into the shed and told us her thoughts on the band after they left.

“They explore using different kinds of instruments and in writing the music itself they try to push past what you would normally expect electronic music to sound like,” Goldstein said.

Her purple bead necklace kept rattling, but eventually the background noise of Locochino playing some Nintendo-inspired songs and people talking too loudly silenced, giving her a chance to say her final thoughts on the band, emphasizing the allure of their stage presence.

“They’ve got this great kind of energy that feels so pure,” she said. 

Ring in the weekend with Dandelion Doldrums tonight, July 7, at The High Dive.

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