28Jan20
Ezra Feinberg, Julian Lynch, Cimiotti @ Trans Pecos
Ezra Feinberg is currently on my if-he’s-playing-in-town-I’m-gonna-do-my-darndest-to-be-there list which resulted in my being at Trans Pecos Tuesday night. His set was the middle of three and I arrived early enough to catch most of the opener Cimiotti. He has a new album out and this was kind of a release show, with Cimiotti on guitar(/vocals on one or two songs) and another guy on synthesizers/knobs/etc. The music was very weightless… total ambient brainwander kind of shit in a good way. Set the scene for the night well. Would definitely check out again. Julian Lynch is the current guitarist for Real Estate. He played solo, utilizing some interesting effects that I’ve never heard before and it combined with his lovingly imperfect singing to create a rather dreamlike sound. The set was fine. I left a little early.
Between them was Ezra. This was my third time seeing him and the shows were all similar mindbenders. The term legato kept creeping into my thoughts, just very stretched out notes and chords that seemed to slow the earth’s spin a bit. The first song technically started with some deliberately strummed chords on the acoustic guitar, some of which got snatched and looped as he took his “e-bow” and layered in some eerie guitar moans and then he added more melodic texture to all of that. It was quite beautiful. That’s what technically happened. Another way to think of it was a ritualistic piece of music in protest of gravity itself, like a shaman’s raindance, but instead of praying for precipitation, it was an appeal to shackle the audience from the constraints of the planet’s gravitational pull, lifting everyone into a metaphoric weightlessness. He played three “songs” of this nature, almost exactly a half hour, almost exactly the length of the other two shows I’ve seen of his, on paper a “short” set, but somehow time stretching to the infinite. Like Lynch, he used some effects, made some sounds with his guitar (switching and layering both acoustic and electric) that I’ve never heard before, the sound of cosmic background radiation picked up by powerful satellites or something. Pretty cool stuff. Looking forward to his next set, I will be there if I have anything to do with it.
Subtonics @ Letlove Inn (late set)
It’s a kinda rare thing to see two shows in Queens in a night. I’ve officially added Subtonics to my “Krantz list” — I will do everything in my power to see this band play every Tuesday that I can. It’s that good. Actually, I should put “band” in quotation marks (I just did), because Subtonics is more of “the music you hear at the Letlove Inn on Tuesday nights” rather than an actual group of musicians… or even a particular genre or sound. Between last week and this week at least two of the 4 musicians were different. Not just that, but the instruments in the group were different, this week a bass player (seated off to the side, almost out of view) and no saxophone player, keyboard player (maybe the same guy as last week) on the opposite side of the stage as last week and a (definitely) different drummer. In essence, the only thing that remains the same besides the location and day of the week is Costas on guitar (same sweatshirt as last week), but even he seems to manifest as a completely different musician from week to week, set to set, even song to song. All that alone is reason enough to dig in, to go as often as possible, to learn the nuances and unlock the secrets. But, mostly it’s the music and holymoly, that music!
This week’s late set opened with a bass solo that sounded like a guitar solo, Costas letting things develop for a few minutes before joining in. I’m beginning to appreciate his laid back bandleader approach, somehow coaxing the group, whatever group is there that week, into some fascinating improvisation without doing any coaxing at all. How they manage it with so much variance week-to-week is something I’d like to know more about. So, things get cooking and then they’re just jamming. Like fucking jamming like nothing else, brain-probing, death-defying, 10’s of minutes of engaging, deep-dive improvisation of the highest level. I am flummoxed every time I go to this gig. How is this happening here? This week’s crowd was much larger than last week’s, maybe 3 or 4 times as many people, but still, relatively few people, plenty of room for more. The band is oblivious to the crowd, oblivious to those who are craning their necks to absorb every note and oblivious to those in the back who continue their late Tuesday night conversations, perhaps unaware that there’s some seriously sick shit going on in their midst. I don’t think they’re unaware, but maybe. I was actually surprised when the first “jam” ended, it went on so long, went to so many places, bounced around leaderless into every nook and cranny of jazzfunkrock improv it felt like it’d last well into Wednesday morning. But it did end. The next piece started off in a very bluesy vein, almost straight rock before melting into anything-but-straight ridiculousness. But really, it’s the final piece that broke my brain. The third and final “song” was the kind of 20 minutes of jammy bliss that should {insert your favorite jamband here} have played it in the middle of {insert favorite jamband jammer here} it would melt down Twitter with hyperbole. It was that good. The middle featured a ferocious guitar peak of cloud-topping proportions, but that was simply the middle, the excursions leading to that discovery and the lengthy denouement of full-band fuck-yeah-ness rated very highly on my personal are you fucking kidding me!? scale.
Simply put, if it’s Tuesday night, regardless of which Tuesday, the best jams in the city are happening in Astoria. It behooves you to check this shit out. The last two weeks they haven’t even bothered to pester the room by passing the bucket around, not that there was any way in hell I was walking out of there without throwing some change in there, but I could’ve…
29Jan20 Jakob Bro with Thomas Morgan, Joey Baron, Mark Turner @ Village Vanguard (early set)
Jakob Bro is a guitarist from Copenhagen who is like the Danish equivalent to Bill Frisell. I saw him play once before with Morgan and Baron in a trio at the Jazz Standard a few years ago and was more or less floored by the show. Tonight’s set at the Vanguard was similarly exquisite, Mark Turner rounding out a quartet that made serious magic in a seriously magical room. By the end of the night, they had played, by my count, 4 songs and filled almost 75 minutes of time… over that stretch, I think I took about a thousand micronaps, short rides on an enchanted carpet, reality left behind as my mind wandered in the licit narcotic their music created. What a wonderful buzz it was.
They opened with a song about a Danish mythological figure. I guess “song” is selling this short, it was like 20 minutes of musical bliss, including some of the most dazzling improvisation I’ve heard in a while. Bro has a very understated style, like I said, kind of Frisell-like, a light touch, a deft use of effects that leaves all these musical smoke rings floating in the room, slowly dissociating while newer ones are formed and added into the air. It’s real wizardry, pure beauty. The opening piece saw some wonderful soloing as well as great work from Morgan and Baron with Turner sitting back for the first long stretch. In fact, much of the night Turner was clearly the “fourth guy,” the show feeling like a trio show with special guest, Mark joining in at key moments, never overpowering, always enhancing, but largely letting the other three do their thing. And that thing was friggin’ brilliant. I believe Joey Baron may be the most enjoyable drummer to ever watch play. We can argue about who is technically “the best” drummer, but Joey’s playing is quite simply witchcraft. His feel for the music he’s feeding and the pure ebullience is infectious and all-encompassing in ways few musicians are. Those dudes that everyone loves, that everyone is friends with, not just friends, but best friends, those rare individuals who just radiate goodness, that’s Joey Baron, that’s Joey Baron playing the drums. When his drumstick or hands or feet touch the kit, rainbows are shooting out into the crowd… and he has a smile to match. There was one stretch where he was playing exclusively cymbals, playing them like no one had ever hit a cymbal before, and it just infused the entire sound, the not-so-secret-sauce smothering everything. So good. Sooooo good. That’s this opening song, Bro and Baron and Morgan just hanging out, seeing where the day takes them. But the thing is, they are going and going and going and in a sense, they’re not going anywhere, they’re just hanging right above the surface, a single click above silence itself, chill, chill, chill, the temperature just hanging steady, steady, steady. Even when things get dense, complicated layers of sound stacked on top of each other, there is no extraneous heat generated. This improv is not jamming in the sense we’re all so familiar with, the band is not seeking any peaks at all, the team is not looking to score runs or touchdowns or goals, they’re just tossing a frisbee around, a wonderful, beautiful, awe-inspiring toss of the disc. And then Turner finally joins in for real and while the temperature stays steady-as-she-goes, things don’t quite build, but they get incredibly, gloriously complicated and also simple as heck. It’s one of those childhood games where you’re trying to guess the leader (the game is called Indian Chief, I think?) and the thing is, there is no leader here, or they’re all four leaders. Such stunning, high-level, absolutely gorgeous improvisation, so good it’s almost inhuman. Turner drops out and lets the trio find new sonic space, more awesome and then Bro drops out, Turner hops in and while Morgan is still in there, it’s really a duet: Turner and Baron, Joey finally adding some extra pop and the contrast of the extra volume and tempo, Turner controlled but with some heat, the contrast is quite thrilling. That was the first song.
The second song was about Copenhagen. So says Jakob Bro. It didn’t feel like a song about a city at all, but maybe that is the point he’s trying to make. Joey starts playing this song by hitting two stones together. Like the kind of stones you might pick up on the beach, round, smooth, nondescript kind of stones and he’s getting a nice sound out of them. This song is maybe even more quiet and subtle than the first one, it’s the musical equivalent of stones worn smooth by water, all soft curves, cool to the touch, beautiful in its simplicity, the music of the power of time on even the roughest of surfaces. Maybe it was about Copenhagen, too, I don’t know, I’ve never been. Good lord, what a gorgeous piece of music. The third song started off as almost a Monk piece and then kind of transformed into something that I was almost convinced was a Peter Gabriel cover. It was the most melodic of the 4 pieces, but still stretched into some cool improvisation. The mastery of these four musicians together, knowing exactly how to react to each other, no moments of ego in the entire show, everyone giving up their talent to the service of the music. Bro’s name was on the sign outside the door, but this was as ensemble-driven a show as you could imagine. Brilliant. The final piece melted me completely, Jakob winding and meandering and painting with time, so much power in such a light touch, the other three tracing and outlining and shading and breathing life into the guitar. I passed in and out of a blissful trance freely, the only thing that could have made it better would have been a recliner in a salt cave. Jakob Bro & Co. are at the Vanguard all week, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Go for Joey Baron alone, a master above all else, stay for Jakob Bro’s magical magnificence, Thomas Morgan’s understated perfection and Mark Turner’s just-the-right-dose additions. So good.
31Jan20
pretty good week in the jazz clubs here in livemusic paradise…
Wayne Krantz, Tim Lefebvre, Keith Carlock @ Iridium (early set)
Fun to see Wayne on a Friday night, not at the 55 Bar, before 9pm, with his old running partners Tim L. and Keith C. Maybe not quite as fun as seeing him at 55 on a random Thursday after something else, but still pretty great in its own way. Somewhere, perhaps a review or just a random post, I described how my various “favorite” guitarists all kind of played a different role for me, like different kinds of “best friends.” I’ll have to dig up exactly how I worded it, but Wayne Krantz was basically “the friend you hang out late at night when things get weird.” I was thinking about this last night, how Wayne is sort of like a guaranteed good time, a no-brainer party for your brain no matter what. Seeing him with Keith and Tim even more so, like there was no doubt in my mind it was going to be a good night. In that vein, the set last night was sort of like meeting up with some old friends for a night of drinking and gallivanting on the town and I likened it to bar hopping and the first song was like you stopped by one place and it was alright, you know, yeah, sure this is fun. That first outing wasn’t maybe even a “song” per se, but maybe just a “jam,” I didn’t recognize any melody in it, definitely not something part of his latter day repertoire. The thing that struck me musically, was Tim Lefebvre, just being Tim fuqqing Lefebvre, literally getting into Carlock’s face and Wayne’s face and challenging them, launching a battery of effects-soaked bass ridiculousness. Somehow absence allows you to kind of forget how fucking good that guy is, but sheesh, I remembered about 5 seconds into the set last night. If you walked in off the street unaware, you’d be sure that it was the Tim Lefebvre band. So good. But, like, it was cool and all, but let’s hit the next bar and see if it’s any better. And yeah, it was a little bit better, good songs on the jukebox (is that AC/DC?) and drink specials and whatnot. The second “song” was more or less the Keith Carlock show. The guy starts and stops from 100MPH to zero and back again with reckless abandon. He’s like the pilot in any of those Top Gun kind of movies where he’s in this nutty dogfight being chased in a life-or-death situation at the speed of sound and then he’s like “I’m just gonna slam on the brakes and he’s gonna fly right by me…” and then he pulls this crazy talk-to-me-Goose move, banging the fuck out of the drums and then SLAM!, nothing, and the band flies right past him and somehow the tables get turned. And then back again. Is he the best drummer in the land? I dunno, but he’s damn fucking good. Damn fucking good. But, like, we could hang here, but maybe we should go on to the next spot? Sure, sure, let me settle up and we’ll head on to song number three and now it’s Wayne’s turn to buy a round and here kind of cemented my impression in the first 3 songs that Wayne was almost too loose for the start of the show, somehow not clicking with the others and as he ranged further and deeper, went to the top shelf booze at the third spot, it only accentuated it more. And the thing is, even thought it was kind of loosey-goosey Krantz/Carlock/Lefebvre, it was still, you know, Krantz/Carlock/Lefebvre (they’re calling themselves KCL this tour… yes, they’re on tour, tell your friends!) and if it’s KCL or K3 or Krantz & Co, it’s, like, a guaranteed series of amazements, good times for the body, soul, and spirit of the break-my-brain type. Even if it’s not quite Thursday at midnight, still pretty good.
Still… so, let’s try one more place before we call it a night… and we walk into the 4th place and it’s like oh, yeah, this is the spot. Cause that next song, that was where it was at. That’s when it all fell into place, the three of them patting each other on their proverbial backs, just like old times, masters of their domain. That 4th joint was hopping, all the old friends were there. But like, with a new look, because from that 4th song on, the rest of the material was all present-day 55 Bar material. The remainder of the set was rather majestic. And because it’s Wayne Krantz, the jamming was really fresh and new and sounding like nothing I’d heard from him before, even though he was playing with guys he’s played hundreds of gigs with over 20 years. Amazing how he does that. The best moments last night had all this wonderful negative space, a rare thing at a Wayne show, the trio not filling the entire canvas with color, leaving patches untouched, crafting artwork around those patches, to accentuate them, to give both a positive and inverted tone to the music. “beautiful melody tune” was a blissful meltdown with all sorts of nooks, crannies, peaks and valleys. Another tune was jagged funk-fest that felt out of place at the Iridium, no way to hop out of your seat and move closer or stand in a cramped doorway and dance. Oh well, a nice modified version of the normal routine. Looking forward to Wayne’s return to the regular bat date and time.
Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Linday May Han Oh @ Jazz Standard (late set)
It’s quite a thing, this city. Three straight sets got me 3 of the greatest drummers out thee, maybe the 3 greatest drummers in Baron > Carlock and then, finally last night, recent Genius Grant winner Tyshawn Sorey. Drummers are nice, but they were part of 3 quite remarkable improvising trios. Seriously, some of the best fucking trio improv you can imagine the last 3 sets I saw, from Jakob Bro (playing in what I would consider a trio with “special guest” Mark Turner) doing the lightest playing you can imagine while still creating the thrill of we’re-making-this-shit-up-on-the-spot interplay to Wayne’s heavy dose of where we end up is anyone’s guess. Perhaps of the three the most remarkable was the set I saw from Vijay Iyer Trio, Iyer backed by Sorey and Linda Oh on bass. The last time they played the Jazz Standard was one of the more amazing sets of jazz I’ve seen and last night’s was maybe just as good… maybe better.
They come out and Iyer says they’re gonna play some new stuff and some old stuff and they just get rolling and… hollllllllly fucking hell, they played for what was at least 30 minutes, maybe close to 40 (I’m not sure exactly when they started, a set for 9:30 started closer to 10, but I don’t think it was after 10 when they started and they played non-stop until past 10:30). At the end of this stretch Iyer was like “that last one was a song by Geri Allen,” and I couldn’t tell if he meant the entire 30+ minutes or just the last part of that stretch. Because within there could have easily been a dozen different songs. And I mean different. Like these lovely, amazing, fully formed ideas would pop up, compel the three around a theme for a few minutes and then they’d dissociate again into freewheeling improv. Everything was amazing, every moment, every second of this long exploration was compelling and then some. There was little thought in my mind about who was doing what, the cohesion between the three players was so strong. This was leaderless, egoless, high-level, literally genius-level playing from three of the best of the best. Tyshawn Sorey is just a prehistoric beast on the drums, absolutely inhumanly monstrous. I was especially taken in with the sounds, rhythms, everything he was getting out his snare drum. An entire Michael Bay movie of explosions and machine gun fire and rocket launching was contained within that single snare drum. The way I was seated in the chair immediately dead center, right up against the stage, my right ear was almost entirely dedicated to taking the brunt of Tyshawn’s drumming and I tell you, I couldn’t have been happier with that. On the other side of the stage, Vijay was a constant downpour of notes on the piano, millions of droplets, constant, each the shape of a gravity-induced teardrop, liquid, thirst-quenching, beautiful. Damn, amazing. Between them was Oh, an artist. The way you want to think an artist to be, she didn’t seem to play her bass so much as seem to channel her bassplaying from some higher place, often looking up or eyes closed or just gazing out, seeing something the rest of us couldn’t see and reacting to it. Combined, they were a formidable ensemble. Sometimes you can feel how happy people are when they’re playing music, how they feel about playing with the other people on the stage. Last night, this feeling was so strong, it was almost like a 4th entity on stage: the I can’t believe I’m playing with these two geniuses demeanor in the three bodies on stage seemed to literally be grabbing the notes and rhythms and marrying them in real time. Special, special stuff.
There were so many things I loved about this show. I loved how all three musicians were all dressed all in black, and how “dressed all in black” meant something different to each of them, Sorey in a casual shirt and slacks, Iyer in a stylish all-black suit and tie, Oh in a dress/shirt thing and leggings. It was the black dress of the stagehands who don’t want to be seen as they move the scenery around: these three were not the focus of the music, it was the music itself, moved around, metaphorically-unseen by these three black-clad people. I also loved how there were no white dudes on stage, an Indian-American, an African American and Oh is actually Chinese-Australian, which sometimes comes as a surprise if/when you hear her open her mouth. What was cool about the make-up of this trio was that it was reflected somewhat in the audience as well. It’s hokey to say “representation matters,” but it was clear as day to me. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of white dudes in the audience, enjoying the everyloving fuck out of the music, but pound for pound much less than at the Iridium earlier or the Vanguard on Wednesday.
But in the end it was the music. That opening song or songs would be the ultimate highlight, but there were so many more moments. The next tune was more of a blues, but it quickly evaporated any semblence of a theme as the trio returned to their improvisation. Now it felt a little more individualized, a section led by Sorey, then one by Oh, Iyer tying it together. I liked how even though there were “solos,” it was rare for any of the other 2 to stop playing, shading the foreground constantly. The next piece followed a similar trajectory, focused themes that slowly fell apart into masterful improvisation. This trio yearns to explore, to push each other, and naturally trends toward the unknown and the beauty and mystery out over the horizon. The slight of hand came when they seemed furthest out, completely gone from anything recognizable, they somehow just knew when to hit the mark and land, not on the song on which they came out of, but on something new. Were these new songs, predetermined sections of the last one, pure made-up-shit? Who knows. Thrilling all the same. The set finished very strong… in fact in the middle of a raging improv, Iyer — while not stopping playing, microphone in one hand, other hand on the piano — introduced the band as if the night was over. Following this, they either landed yet again into a new song or new section or just entered a phase of improvisation beyond what I could grasp, because starting with a gorgeous Iyer solo, his best, most lovely playing of the night, quiet and introspective, the trio built slowly to a ridiculous peak, some of the best playing of the night in “extra time,” whether planned or not, I was blown away… for the third set in a row.
What a city!
Gonna try to do a monthly update on my showgoing. My big goal for 2020 was to try and cut my livemusic spending significantly (goal = 50%) hopefully without cutting the number of shows I see too significantly.
Shows in January = 29 (74% of 1/2019 total); YTD = 29 (74% of 2019 total at this point); spent 42% of 1/2019; YTD = 42% of 2019 total at this point.
1Feb20
In lieu of watching the football game, I will review the shows I caught yesterday. Last evening was my Super Bowl, I suppose, livemusic Brooklyn 4 ways…
The National Reserve @ Skinny Dennis
After a relatively painless drive in, I parked the car and walked towards Skinny Dennis and, as is often the case, heard some great music coming out of Radegast. Somehow I seem to always forget that that’s an option. I made a note of it, continued to SD just in time to hear the band wrapping up their middle set, so I turned around and headed straight back to Radegast. Caught about 20 minutes or so of Triad Brass Band whopping it up NOLA style, a long everyone-takes-a-solo Iko Iko and another song in the same vein. Brass bands seem to work best when you’re not really looking for them, but they find you. That was the case yesterday, a perfect way to get the night started. Maybe next time I’ll remember and plan for a longer stop there.
Recently I reviewed a National Reserve set (a nighttime set) that was marked by a rowdy, drunken am-I-in-a-frat-house crowd. Band fought through the weird energy, but it was weird energy nonetheless. Yesterday for the final of their afternoon/early sets, the crow. Id was quite the opposite. It was a full house, but not a packed house as it can get in there and everyone there seemed to be having a great time, the front section was filled with people grooving to the music and there was just a great mood in the room. The band really responded… or maybe they were just playing great, but maaan, they were playing great. The weekend/off-the-road-again versions of National Reserve can change up from set to set, it’s more of a Sean Walsh “and friends” situation, in fact sometimes Walsh is not even there. Yesterday’s band was some ass-kicking NYC allstar version of the National Reserve. The regular drummer + Walsh, plus the guy on bass who played with the Subtonics on Tuesday. I’m sure I’m one of 5 people who can grasp how awesome it is that the same guy who went deep-fusion-jam on Tuesday in Astoria drove some seriously grooving country rock on Saturday. Like, totally awesome! The second guitarist was John Lee Shannon who is totally sweet and then they had Brian Mitchell playing a Roland accordion. Mitchell is another one of those guys you see all over the place, a pro’s pro, and it just made me appreciate a) NYC that much more and b) the killer rock of the National Reserve that much more. It also made me fall in love with the synth-accordion, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Just like a regular Roland keyboard, it could sound like a regular accordion, but also had effects for some extra funkiness when needed. What a cool instrument, when used properly, at least, which he did. A helluva band.
And damn, they killed it. Lots of the regular NR covers, an amazing whole-bar-singing-along version of the Beatles “Don’t Let Me Down,” “High Heeled Sneakers,” “Big Boss Man,’ and a couple others, not necessarily in that order. In fact, the set proper was only 4 songs long! They were just ripping some long rock outs, each with a killer guitar solo from each and an accordion/keys solo as well. When they finished and said thank you, kind of rushed like, I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the time and saw that the 7pm finish had come. 4 songs in 40 minutes, I mean they usually play 7, 8 or 9 in that time. It really felt like they were just getitng going and the room kind of felt like it, too, pretty much demanding an encore, which I’ve never seen there before, and getting one, that “High Heeled Sneakers” taking things well past quitting time in epic room’s-a-rockin’ fashion! That might have been the best National Reserve set I’ve ever seen.
The 3Ma’s @ Public Records
From there I headed over to Public Records, a new-to-me spot which has this great listening room in the back called the Sound Room. When I arrived the room was almost full, the floor filled with people sitting on little cushions, some sitting on box-type seats behind them and then a bunch of people standing in the back and around the periphery. The room had acoustic tiling everywhere and speaker stacks set up for quadrophonic playing (although I don’t think they did any surround stuff yesterday, looks like it could be cool). I grabbed a spot in the middle, kind of squeezed in on the floor amongst people who had gotten there earlier than me… no cushion (damn!), but a good spot. So, this show is a lesson learned in a you never know kind of way, how you should sometimes just take a risk and go see something just because why the fuck not. When it comes to livemusic, the worst that can happen is almost always something that’s pretty great in some way (if your mind is open to the experience) and more often than not, you will be surprised. This show was pinned hard on the pleasantly surprised side of the showmeter, maybe even off the charts, I was kind of blown away by the music I caught.
The advantage to spending a lot of time looking at show listings is that quite often you find show listings and every once in a while something pops up that intrigues. A week or two ago I notices this show listing, the 3MAs and I read the description, which was:
I
Public Records welcomes the African string-instrument virtuoso trio dubbed 3MA for an intimate + free acoustic performance in the Sound Room. The trio is composed of Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko, Moroccan oud expert, Driss El Maloumi, and Malagasy valiha extraordinaire, Rajery. Not only world class players of their respective instruments, 3MA share a musical passion, a reciprocal dialogue, and a beautiful friendship.
OK, so I was very intrigued, first and foremost because it was a free show, but also, like that’s a pretty interesting show description, I think. So I RSVP’d (it was free!) and figured I’d make it if I could. It worked out that I could make it, but I had kind of forgotten a bit about that description when I sat down and waited the music. That was all for the best. The room was packed and there was an air of something special in the room. The trio takes the stage and they are 3 completely different versions of “African” gentleman and they have 3 completely different “African” instruments, and, it turns out, they play 3 completely different types of “African” music. As I would soon discover, those differences, the wealth of culture and sound and people in that continent, such disparate worlds within, somehow were made to work together, through the talent and generosity and spirit of these 3 guys. The “3MA’s” of the band is their three countries, (it’s pronounced “MAH” not “EM-AY”) — Mali, Madagascar and Morocco (spelled with an MA locally). The instruments they played were the kora, which is something like a harp in Mali, an absolutely magical, most beautiful sound — if you ever get a chance to see Yacouba Sissoko play (he’s at LunAtico and others regularly), please do, he plays some of the most enchanting music; the oud, which many here are probably familiar with, a sort of Arabic lute/mandolin kind of thing, wonderfully resonant, mysterious sound; and the valiha, which was brand new to me, it looked like something made up in a fantasy film, a large hunk of hollowed out bamboo with something like 18 strings around the circumference, and what a fantastical sound he got out of that thing, really, the look and sound of something out of the wildest fiction. These three guys, their three instruments, there’s no obvious reason whey they should work together, but holy heck did these guys work together! They just sat down and started playing and I just started smiling, I don’t think I stopped smiling the entire time, just joyous, ecstatic, pretty-as-a-perfect-flower music, their instruments working together in otherworldly 3-part harmony. So many strings creating such not-of-this-earth sound, weaving and winding around each other, three languages spoken at the same time, needing no translating at all. Most of the songs were instrumental, but there were a few with singing, one in particular, where each took a verse, each in a different language and it was incredibly beautiful and incredibly powerful. Each of them took a solo piece spread out through the set and got to show off their individual talents — and make no mistake about it, without knowing the creme-de-la-creme of these instruments, these guys showed themselves to be exquisite masters of their craft. The guy playing the oud did most of the talking and he had a lovely sense of humor, even if the stage banter and bits were well-rehearsed. From the music and his banter, it was clear that the music was more than just amazing music, it was also seeped in symbolism, the polyphonic cultures of Africa, the world, so different in all ways, but oh, when put together with the aim to make something beautiful, how very, very beautiful it was. This music was the sound of your cheeks hurting from smiling so much, the smiles of the musicians, the smiles of the full house, even the instruments themselves seemed to be smiling, so lucky to be playing such music. I clicked that RSVP button figuring I’d see something new and interesting, I had no idea I’d be getting my entire soul scrubbed clean, nor did I realize how much I needed the spit-shine. Damn, what an amazing, long (almost 80 minutes!), FREE set of music. What a city!
Oneida @ Rubulad
The final stop would be out in Bushwick. I really had no clue about this place Rubulad, but let the GPS do its thing and didn’t really think about where I was. Walked in through the door, through an outdoor hallway that was decorated with strips of translucent plastic, like tinsel hanging from the ceiling, like you were walking into another dimension… into an outdoor space (cool) and then into the performance space which was decorated like an Applebees from the other side of the wormhole. Like crazy crap on the wall, everywhere, sparkly things and weird-as-fuck things and creepy and cool and all points in between. There was just shit hanging everywhere, like so much to look at that eventually you stop looking. The opening band was midset, they were called Knife Hyts and they were loud and aggressive and they were dressed almost as WTF!? as the walls in the room, so, again, almost too much, but also had something interesting going on and rocked the fuck out in a good way and I think I dug ’em. Headed to the bathroom with this feeling like, wait a minute, I’ve been here before, I think? and then I asked someone waiting for the bathroom this used to be Secret Project Robot, right? Yes, yes it was. A very weird feeling to not realize that’s where I was and then have it click like that, so yes, I’ve been there before, there before to see Oneida. Unsettling, but maybe that’s the way to get yourself up for Oneida.
After a take-your-time setbreak for Oneida to set up, they were ready to do their fucking Oneida thing and they did done it. They opened in a blaze of Oneidaness, like jumping into a frozen lake and holy fuck that’s cold! no chance to adjust, no chance to acclimate, just here’syourfuckingOneida, take it! So, yeah, they started off at level 11 and kept it right there for the rest of their set. Sometimes you get long, wild, drone-yourself-to-insanity Oneida, sometimes playing an entire set without stopping, somehow daring themselves and the audience to endure, to just take their constantness and revel in it. Sometimes — and I find this more and more the last few times I’ve seen them — they fall onto actual songs, and let themselves work with standard beginnings and endings, which sounds like rock-and-roll 101, but this is Oneida and they’re kind of the inside out of rock and roll. Last night, though, the set was broken into chunks of 4, 5, 6 minutes. It was interesting for me to think back to the National Reserve show, somewhere in another part of Brooklyn, maybe earlier that evening, maybe in another dimension altogether, but how that show was a small number of songs that felt much shorter than they really were. Oneida played a bunch of songs yesterday that felt much, much longer than they really were. That’s because these guys pack so much into their sound, so much of everything in there, that time itself seems to go putty in their hands. They are the musical equivalent of the walls inside Rubulad, there’s just so much going on, in there that it’s impossible to take in the details, your brain just has to take it all as one holistic borg. The band is typically, and was last night, two guitars, two keys and Kid Millions on drums. I have said this in the past and will say it again here, but it’s like they’re all playing drums, actually, all are an extension of Kid Millions ridiculous, incessant, awe-inspiring, sanity-splitting drumming. It’s almost as if the drum kit is not enough to contain all the rhythm in his body and so those guitars and keys (and occasional bass) are just extensions, split-off pieces of some master drum kit. Also, they just fucking rock so fucking hard.
Oneida shows happen rarely enough these days (seems like we’re lucky to get 1–3 shows a year), that they are all must-sees and all minderaser experiences that all tie together with the previous visits and the future visits, so often harbingers of DIY spaces that are not long for this world, but that’s OK. Until the next one…
