Abdullah Ibrahim 11/14/24 Shubert Theater

 South African piano legend was born Adolph Johannes Brand. If you are born in 1934, and your parents name you Adolph, you have a duty to ditch the moniker. He chooses Dollar Brand, more capitalist than fascist. The music is a fascinating blend of jazz and traditional Cape Town folk styles. In the early 60s, Brand moved to Europe where, and I can’t believe I get to write this, was “discovered” by one Duke Ellington. From Europe to the US, with approval from Duke, Brand fell in quickly with such forward thinkers as Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders. Brand is now in a perfect spot to play a role in the Black Power movement, convert to Islam and change his name again to Abdullah Ibrahim. Returning to South Africa, AI pens the tune Mannenberg, widely considered the theme song of the anti-apartheid movement. The body of work continues to grow with forays into free jazz and film scores. In the 90s, I stumble upon the soundtrack to the movie Mindiff, which beautifully encapsulates the Ibrahim sound. Happy to get a rare viewing of this storied nonagenarian jointly presented by the Shubert and the Schwarzman Center. On this evening, the format was trio with Cleave Guyton Jr. on flute, piccolo, and clarinet and Noah Jackson on bass and cello. The set leans on the recent Solotude record with some renditions of Trieste My Love, Blue Bolero, and Mindiff. The instrumentation gave a cinematic feel with cello and flute being perfect foils for Ibrahim’s surprisingly nimble runs. At 90, the set was brief but it felt like I was witnessing history.

Six Organs of Admittance, Tashi Dorji, Kath Bloom 11/10/24 Spaceland

 Just caught the last half tune from local legend Bloom. She is in the twilight of a cult career of the freak folk variety. Her early aughts records with downtown guitarist Loren Connors are fantastic. Her childlike vocal style allows for complex simple tunes, like the late great Daniel Johnston.

Bhutanese-born, Asheville NC resident, Dorji is an experimental guitarist. He takes the stage with an acoustic guitar and a briefcase of effects pedals and boxes at his feet. The music starts in a Fahey-esque style with repetitive picking and looping. The sound was wide and expansive, making me think of William Tyler or early Pat Metheny. He then switched to some angular avant garde picking layered on a looped backdrop. Growing up in Bhutan, Dorji relied on bootleg cassettes from China to learn the ways and means of western music. The effects pedals stretched the sound, he poked at one like it was a vending machine failing to give change. He puts the guitar down and picks up what looks like a book, made from wood. On the “cover” are 8-10 knobs that he twiddles along with the briefcase. The sound is not folk or jazz, but some kind of extraterrestrial mixture of the two. Dorji’s set was one long song that twisted and turned for 40 minutes. Look at his output on bandcamp and you’ll see a prolific collaborator  with truly original music.

Six Organs of Admittance is the guitarist Ben Chasny. Chasny has been making music since the 90s, much of which is solo or group settings on the fabulous Drag City label. He does time with Rangda, a psych folk supergroup with Chris Corsano and Sir Richard Bishop. Ben is an amazing picker and, like Dorji, his music is not easily categorized.  Relying less on effects, Chasny achieved his sound with open tuning and repetitive passages. His breathy psych vocals are secondary but necessary to give him his singular sound. Slim crowd for these three original artists.

Lankum w/ John Francis Flynn 11/8/24 The Warsaw Brooklyn NY

 So, I’m of proud Irish heritage. My father was from Newry, a sleepy border town in the North. My visits over the years have been lovely, packed with history, culture, and breathtaking landscapes. I’m even ok with the Irish basing their entire culinary palette on some dark and foamy liquid dispensed in pint glasses that requires a PhD to pour. What I have a problem with is Irish music. Not U2 or Van Morrison, but the reelery and jiggery that is traditional Irish music. Why then, would I drive to the hipster center of the universe to spend a night standing in a packed club with said hipsters to view Dublin, somewhat traditional, Irish group Lankum? The answer lies in the “somewhat”. Let’s start with opener Flynn. A big fella, Flynn hits the stage armed with a cup of tea, a pint of  Guinness, a drum machine, a guitar, and perhaps the driest wit this side of Stephen Wright. He plows through some originals, Tralee Jail, I Wish I Was in England ( which was definitely not true) while playing his electric guitar. The drum machine sounded hokey, but at 6’6” 280, I wasn’t about to tell him. He even played one tune on Uilleann pipes. Even with his dry delivery and unintelligible accent, he seemed genuinely excited to open for his longtime friends. Lankum takes the stage to a packed house. The group consists of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radie Peat,  Cormac MacDiarmada, and a mystery woman on drums for the tour. Ian played hurdy gurdy, concertina, pipes, and a small keyboard. Radie played accordion and harmonium. Cormac played fiddle while Daragh was on acoustic guitar. They all sang exquisite harmonies with female Radie being the standout. The song structure leaned traditional with typical Irish themes of drunkenness and suicide. The “somewhat” that I alluded to earlier is the addition of elements of drone and sonic dissonance coaxed from the traditional instruments. This dimension made the traditional modern, much to the delight of the Brooklyn crowd.  The set pulled from their three releases, starting with their signature tune Wild Rover,The New York Trader, Rocky Road to Dublin,  The Pride of Petravore, The Rocks of Palestine( complete with anti-colonialism rant by Ian), The Young People, On A Monday Morning, The Turn, Cold Old Fire, Bear Creek, and closed with the fantastic Go  Dig My Grave. The songs had a similar arc, starting soft and low then crescendoing to a core rattling racket. Like the Pogues who smashed Irish tradition with a punk ethos, Lankum’s mix of tradition with drone and noise creates something exciting and new.

Pamela Z CCAM 11/1/24

 Pamela Z is a woman of color, by that, I mean many colors.  An experimental musician, she uses voice and electronics as her color palette to compose elaborately layered washes of sound. The CCAM (Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale) nerds have done it again. CCAMandant in chief RossWightman scours the outer reaches of the music art nexus for fascinating speakers and performers. PZ looks to be 60ish with oversized pink rimmed glasses, black gauzy attire, a rapunzelesque tangle of braids. Her boots look like they were fashioned on Argus 4, in the Shamwow galaxy. Wightman started with some questions. We learn that Z watered the seeds of avant garde while working at a college radio station in Boulder. Moving to the west coast and starting as a singer songwriter, she quickly realized that what was on her turntable was not what she was performing in clubs. A couple of analog delay pedals, and she was off to the races. Since the late 80s, PZ has circled the globe occupying countless residencies and performing live. Look on Spotify and there is little audioprint for this artist, that is due to the nature of her work best experienced live or as an installation. She took the stage armed with a laptop and two effects “boxes”. The smaller one emitted percussive sounds while the larger one spewed tones and word fragments. She used her hands to wave at these boxes to thereminic effect. The first piece had Z looping herself counting in different languages, stretched and magnified, and funneled through the top tier CCAM soundsystem, it felt like a hundred Zs counting in sensurround. The next piece had her typing a letter to her pen pal, with the percussion box acting as a Smith Corona complete with the carriage return ding. Next up she struck some tuning forks and smushed some bubble wrap into the looper. When replayed upon itself ad infinitum, the sound was deafening as if we were sitting inside a crackling fire. She then pulled out a keyboard that made bird calls with different keys. She mimicked these calls with her voice and phased them backward with the canned sounds. The timing came into phase then moved back toward cacawphony. The final piece sounded like a conversation with a boyfriend, she looped her voice and his voice into submission. His cadence became a bass loop and she layered herself on top. At this point, I notice she has small boxes on each wrist that interact with the stationary boxes as she gestures that manifest in sound. Fascinating artist and fascinating show.

Josh Ritter 10/18/24 District Music Hall

 Cheerful, slightly autistic Idahoan Ritter is a singer songwriter’s singer songwriter. Rolled into a renovated DMH for a Friday night. Refinished interior with removable seats, the Hall is morphing into a go-to midsize venue with good acoustics and sight lines. I’ve seen Ritter several times, at SCSU with Jamie Cullum, at some church in Westport with his female companion of the moment, on a double bill with The Low Anthem at Toads, his hyper-bubbliness was historically off-putting for me. On this evening, I was able to get a fuller picture as to the nature of his internal ecstasy IV. Autistic has entered my observations, his speech gets ahead of himself, his effusive praise for his band mates ( that “put up” with his style) is not off-putting, but endearing when viewed in this light. Makes sense when you read that Ritter gave up neuroscience in favor of music. For twenty years he has made solid recordings packed with thoughtful lyrics and deft song craft. On this evening he is joined by piano/accordionist and lead guitar/pedal steel. Ritter stayed with acoustic guitar, his wide-eyed intersong banter further supported my “on the spectrum” claim. The set pulled from all aspects of his career including a recent Jason Isbell produced slab recorded in New Orleans. Ritter wore a pink floral suit that looked like it was fashioned from upholstery ripped from a south Florida loveseat. Josh told a story about his Idaho homestead which he purchased because it had a lo-fi subterranean writing room. The near capacity crowd was rapt and constant touring has snowballed a decent fan base. Closed with his signature hit “Kathleen” that had most audience members belting out the anthemic lyrics.

Gong 10/14/24 Spaceland

 Flying teapots, Electric Camembert, Pothead Pixies! What is this, some kind of French LSD cult? Well kind of. Welcome to another edition of progtastic fall of 2024. In 1967, Australian singer Daevid Allen was a member of the British psychedelic rock band Soft Machine and was denied re- entry to the UK after his visa expired. ( see September’s post on the current lineup of the Softs) Setting up camp in Paris, Allen and his partner Gilli Smyth established the first incarnation of the troupe that would become Gong. Allen’s wacky drug addled take on the band offered a whimsical fairy-induced output of “space-rock”. They accumulated personnel who signed on to the vision of Allen. Like Sun Ra’s Arkestra or George Clinton’s P Funk Allstars, Gong were an interplanetary happening that were theatrical as well as musical. Allen passed in 2015, but the notion of Gong endures. The current lineup boasts guitarist Fabio Golfetti, bassist Dave Sturt, sax/ clarinet player Ian East, drummer Cheb Nettles, and frontman singer guitarist Kavus Torabi. The crew touched down in Hamden for a lively set. My Guitar is a Spaceship, Kapital, All Clocks Reset, Rejoice! Tiny Galaxies, My Sawtooth Wake, Through Restless Seas I Come, Lunar Invocation, Master Builder, Choose Your Goddess, Insert Your Own Prophecy ( complete with taped Allen words from beyond the grave), and closed with You Can’t Kill Me. The band was tight, something that Allen probably eschewed in favor of mystical ethos. Gong did morph toward prog technical wizardry employing such axe-wielders as Steve Hillage and Allan Holdsworth. All musicians were talented and steered the spaceship. Torabi in particular was a sight, with his androgynous attire and poodle rocker hair, he looked like a lost member of The Romantics, the one that went behind the bowling alley and ran into 20 hits of blotter and never came back. I am amazed these bands are carrying the torch and happy they include the New Haven market as a tour stop.

Carl Stone 9/28/24 Wesleyan

 Philip Glass? Yes. Brian Eno? Sure. Carl Stone? Well, no. That is unfortunate because of his place in the history of sampling and computer music. Stone studied under Morton Subotnick at CalArts in the 70s and started sampling and computer collaging music at roughly the same time as Grandmaster Flash.  Instead of turntables and scratching, Stone used an exacto knife and tape splicing to sample music and field recordings for his product. The storied California new music scene is the birthplace of the cream of avant garde composers, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveiros just to name a few. Stone collaborated and rubbed elbows with many of these music philosophers. His body of work has been under the radar until recent illumination by the great Unseen Worlds record label. Compilations of his decades of work starting with “explorations on the Macintosh” sounds comically outdated today. His recent anagrammatic release, Stolen Car has been embraced by hipster culture. Happy then for a rare concert viewing, as Carl spends most of his time in Japan. The show was supposed to happen at Wesleyan’s Crowell Hall, but was moved to the gamelan garage known as the World Music Hall. The uncomfortable subterranean cement igloo WMH was better suited for the slim crowd, but not for my 60 year old tailbone. The music is challenging and the introduction stated that the pieces were new. In concert, there is not much to view. A 70ish white guy dressed in black armed with a computer, an iPad and a card table does not portend for a stunning visual. The songs were compact with the samples difficult to discern. Metallic whooshes, sped up and slowed down splicing were present in each “song”. One tune sounded like a cement mixer full of teletubbies, another had a chopped and screwed Strangers in the Night. I was anxious to hear Stone talk about the evolution of technology on his craft, I mean can’t he just ask AI to spit out what a cement mixer of teletubbies would sound like? Like many polymaths, talking was not in the cards. The audience was left to imagine the source and process of this sound. While I didn’t hear “Paul is Dead”, I was able to be affected by these strange sounds. If Carl was Stoned, and spending his formative years within waft distance from Humboldt county it was likely, his next record could be Coastal Nerd, anagrammatically speaking.