Spotlight: Charlie Salas-Humara
Here’s what I know about Charlie: he’s half of Panther, he uses color about as well as any artist around, and he’s got fantastic hair.
Unfortunately that’s about all I know about Charlie, so to do some justice to this I nagged my friend/his wife Maggie for more. (Because, you know, she’s not too busy or anything.) So here’s a list of the raw IMs that followed:
- he’s always starting new projects. he’s created a whole horror movie soundtrack for a movie that only exists in his head (http://www.myspace.com/humaramusic)
- he’s got more energy then anyone I have ever met, constantly creating music/art
- he’s cuban/italian. his great uncle was batista.
- grew up outside of chicago, been in portland since the mid 90′s
- he’s a good cook – wants to invent future food and make a cooking show. not sure what future food actually is yet
Okay I’m stopping there. At this point we got into details about future food. Maggie talked about something with corn chips, peanut butter, and jalepenos that she shied away from. I, on the other hand, was captivated. As a major advocate of the peanut butter burrito I started thinking about moving to Portland so Charlie and I could start the future food burrito stand and television studio. And you can imagine the IM session went downhill from there.
That’s Charlie. Now, Panther, they’re a different story. Panther I know and they’re rad. For starters, the song ‘Violence, Diamonds‘ from their debut is the single best James Bond theme ever written. (No it didn’t appear in a Bond film, but that changes nothing.) Their new record, Entropy, is gaining attention, high praise, and comparisons to Steely Dan. The first two are spot-on. It’s a really good record.
Entropy takes some of the hard edges from Panther and blends them just slightly, keeping the frenetic feel but containing it a bit. It’s true that there’s a bit of classic rock blending its way in, but it really fits. It’s a little ironic, but Entropy feels like a real evolution for Panther — they pushed their sound and found just the right accents to make it something new, keeping the best of the Portland energy and adding another layer to it.
To add a final (and slightly obligatory) CASH fundraiser note: Charlie did one of the three art prints, detail shown above. You can purchase an 18″x18″ giclée print at http://cashmusic.org/
