Menomena /mɪˈnɒmɪnə/ is an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States, made up of Justin Harris and Danny Seim.

The band formed in late 2000, when Brent Knopf graduated from Dartmouth College[1] and returned to Portland to collaborate with Harris and Seim.

Knopf detailed these issues in an interview in Spin: "Systems that failed (and had to be replaced) during the tour included the following: tires, muffler, brake, master cylinder, exhaust manifold, windshield wipers, horn, side-view mirrors (both fell off).

[15] Menomena signed a contract with German record label City Slang, to release their album Friend and Foe across Europe on August 31, 2007.

The band toured Europe twice that year, and their adventures were extensively chronicled by Seim in a blog for Portland-based website Local Cut.

[9] A friend advised the band to mail a copy of their album to Pitchfork Media, a popular music website that Seim "had never heard of" at the time.

The band continued to assemble the flipbooks by hand and distribute them with the help of online retailer CD Baby until late 2004, when the album was released nationwide by FILMguerrero, a Portland-based independent record label.

On November 8, 2005, Menomena released Under an Hour, an album of instrumental music written for and performed with Monster Squad, an experimental dance company based in Portland.

Stylus Magazine gave the album a somewhat lukewarm "B−" and described it as, "…an interesting view into a band that continues to evolve without really throwing down any breadcrumbs for them or us to follow.

"[23] To celebrate the release of the album, Harris assembled a 25-member choir and taught them the various vocal layers of the new material with the help of his mother Diane, a trained opera singer.

[24] The choir was made up of other Portland-based bands and artists, including The Helio Sequence, 31Knots, Nick Jaina, Pseudosix, Dat'r, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Corrina Repp, Miss Murgatroid, prussia, and several other of Harris' close friends.

[26] The CD and LP (the latter was released in August 2007 by FILMguerrero) features an intricate packaging layout consisting of Die-cut shapes, decoder rings, and hidden messages.

Both Knopf and Danny Seim addressed the matter in an interview posted on the Portland-based Local Cut blog two weeks later.

The band also announced a series of digital reissues of their previous albums, as well as a live performance of their debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster!

[38] On August 9, the band made their national television debut as a four-piece with Haege on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

[39] The band's songwriting process involves a computer program called the Digital Looping Recorder, or Deeler for short.

"[40] The use of Deeler as a compositional tool was discussed extensively by the band in an interview published in the May/June 2005 issue (#47) of Tape Op magazine.

The Portland Mercury described this as a "painstaking cut-and-paste method of song assembly ... as each member contributes, then vanishes, only to return later to add more.