Stéphane Vilar enlisted French model/actress Zouzou to sing on Calcium's psych recordings in 1969 which were only just released. |
Here's the scoop...
Stéphane Vilar enlisted French model/actress Zouzou to sing on Calcium's psych recordings in 1969 which were only just released. |
Since it's Dan Kroha's birthday today, here are two clips of Danny & The Stools live in Austin and lovely Hamtramck, Michigan. |
Celebrating the birthday of Canuck music writer and musician Gary Pig Gold with an interview with Norton's Miriam Linna. |
Suicide's Martin Rev makes a rare Toronto return appearance at The Garrison on Thursday. Get tickets while you can right here. |
Celebrating the birthday of CAN co-founder Irmin Schmidt with some interview clips and a 1972 performance. |
Rare polaroids of SCTV cast members in costume are currently for sale to the highest bidder in a Waddington's auction. |
Have a look at some of the photos available in the SCTV lot right here. |
GLOVE's Brie Deux, Rod Wendt and Justin Burns directed and edited their own video for "Chewing On A Wire" – have a look. |
Adventurous Japanese post-rock crew Buffalo Daughter make a rare Toronto appearance at The Garrison tonight at 8 pm. |
Tickets for Buffalo Daughter's upcoming North American tour dates are available here. |
Remembering honky tonk hero Gary Stewart on his birthday with performance of a couple of his classics and one by Alex Chilton. |
One of the stranger Eurovision '68 entry's was "Stress" from Norway's Odd Børre Sørensen who passed away in January at 83. |
Remembering Canadian electronic music pioneer Hugh Le Caine – born in Port Arthur, Ontario – with his 1955 classic "Dripsody" |
Sadly, bassist/composer Bill Lee – father of filmmaker Spike Lee – has passed away at the age of 94. He'll be greatly missed. |
Bob Stanley recently recirculated Basil Kirchin's "Viva Tamla Motown" b/w Alan Parker's "Main Chance" via Measured Mile. |
Sadly, it has been reported that Hammond hammering soul jazz great Reuben Wilson has passed away. He'll be greatly missed. |
For her follow-up to Joy's Reflection is Sorrow, Sharron Kraus wrote the songs from KIN in response to the global pandemic. |
Here's the scoop...
Over the years Sharron Kraus’ musical career has pulled her in many directions and seen her collaborate with artists, poets, writers and researchers, creating soundtracks, podcasts, musical accompaniments and responses. She is an intuitive improviser, a compelling performer and a weaver of musical spells.
The spine supporting this body of work is songwriting, though, and it is to this most natural combination of words and music that she always returns. If prose writing is a tool for analysis and working out what we think, because of the emotional dimension music introduces, songwriting is a tool for working out how we feel.
KIN, her newest album for Cardinal Fuzz, is a collection of songs written during and partly in response to the pandemic and the relative isolation it plunged us into. Kraus dives into deep explorations of themes of kinship with other humans as well as the natural world, and of what happens when those kinship bonds are severed or abused. Sonically the album is on a continuum with her previous solo album, Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow, with its layered synths and recorders, and sits somewhere in the space between Jane Weaver’s electronica and the psych/folk of bands like The Left Outsides and Modern Studies.
Get a copy of Sharron Kraus' KIN album via Bandcamp right here. Listen to a few songs below.
Instead of Lawrence Welk reruns, PBS should be airing shows like their Soul! special featuring Blue Note jazz greats back in '72. |
Remembering Tina Turner with an amped-up performance of Sly & The Family Stone's "I Want To Take You Higher." |
Neil Young and Rick James each recall their 1965 collaboration in Toronto's Mynah Birds which led to a brief deal with Motown. |
Today it's Cate Le Bon taking on Gruff Rhys and his teen band Ffa Coffi Pawb in the battle over Welsh classic "Tocyn" by Brân. |
Sadly, Algy Ward who played bass with The Damned, The Saints and Tank has passed away at the age of 63. He'll be missed. |
Celebrating the 86th birthday of saxophonist Archie Shepp with two hours of footage from a 1977 performance in Torino, Italy. |
The late Nigerian drumming dynamo Tony Allen – longtime Fela Kuti sideman – has an unreleased Jazz Is Dead session on the way. |
Here's the scoop from Jazz Is Dead...
The genius that is Tony Allen departed this mortal world in April of 2020, but not without leaving an unmatched legacy that crossed oceans and borders, bridging cultures and forging a sound that changed music. As the drummer for Fela Kuti’s revolutionary Africa 70, Allen’s polyrhythmic drumming defined Afrobeat, combining American Jazz and Nigerian Highlife to animate one of the most iconic performers of all time. Over the course of Allen’s tenure with the group, and later as a solo artist, he would continue to relentlessly innovate, incorporating new sounds and working with scores of contemporaries. His contributions as an artist and cultural ambassador left an indelible impact on every genre of popular music, from Techno to Jazz to Rock and Hip-Hop. Tony Allen’s music stands as an ongoing testament to the interconnected musical relationships and dialogues across the African diaspora, and their lasting influence on how we listen.Aside from traditional Yoruba Juju music, Tony Allen was enamoured with Jazz, particularly the recordings of Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Elvin Jones, musicians who had begun to experiment with West African rhythms and musical concepts. At the time, Nigeria’s immensely popular Igbo Highlife music was incorporating influences from Jazz formulating what became known as Afro-Jazz, connecting the American genre back to its roots. These early cross-cultural dialogues pushed Allen to develop a drumming style that fused Highlife and Jazz. In the mid-1960s, Allen met Fela Kuti, and the two formed the group Koola Lobitos, which would later grow to become the legendary Africa 70 band. Nigerian audiences did not immediately take to this new sound, but following a trip to the United States, Kuti was exposed to James Brown and the Black Panthers. Allen began to incorporate the sounds of Black American Funk and Soul. By the 1970s, the group morphed their influences into Afrobeat, the sound of post-colonial Africa, making music that was concerned with economic and political liberation and Pan-Africanism.
The nearly 30 records which Allen appeared on with Africa 70 contain some of the most innovative drumming of all time. Throughout his time with Fela Kuti and Africa 70, Tony Allen introduced the world not only to Afrobeat, but to an entirely new way of conceptualizing rhythm.
In his post-Fela career, Allen moved to Paris and continued to be a vanguard. He experimented with Dub, Electro, and Hip-Hop. He was a willing mentor, collaborating with several generations of musicians inspired by his vernacular. French pop artists, such as Sebastien Tellier, Air, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, called upon Allen to help shape some of their most well-known work, such as Tellier’s “La Ritournelle” and Gainbourg’s “5:55”. His collaborations with Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz formed the bands The Good, the Bad, and the Queen and Rocket Juice and the Moon, where rock stars like Paul Simenon and Flea were eager to enter conversation with a musician Brian Eno once called “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”.
On some of his last recordings, Allen returned to his love of Jazz, while reminding listeners of the ongoing influence and legacy of the diaspora. Recording with Blue Note, he released a tribute to his hero Art Blakey, along with an album of original material and collaborating with the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. In 2018, Allen and Techno pioneer Jeff Mills released an EP that fused Afrobeat, Jazz, and Techno. On 2021’s aptly titled posthumous recording “There Is No End”, Allen worked with Hip-Hop artists such as Danny Brown and UK Grime star Skepta. Allen remained a constant innovator, absorbing sounds that had derived from West African music and conversing with new generations, passing on the ideals of Pan-Africanism. For Jazz Is Dead producer Adrian Younge, it is no small honor to share new music recorded with the drummer revolutionary Tony Allen.
"Don't Believe the Dancers" is the first single from the forthcoming Tony Allen JID018. Have a listen below.
Remembering French composer Michel Colombier with a performance alongside Herbie Hancock and a few classic recordings. |
Check out the clip for "Foreign Land" off Teenage Fanclub's forthcoming album Nothing Lasts Forever out September 22nd. |
The Children of the Forest double album feat. Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover in March, 1976 is out now via BEA. |
Here's the scoop...
Black Editions Archive is ecstatic to announce the newest release in the Milford Graves Archival series, the double LP, Children of the Forest, featuring previously unreleased 1976 sessions with Hugh Glover and Arthur Doyle that re-write the book on Milford Graves' ensemble music of the 1970s. Graves recorded these sessions himself in his legendary Queens basement laboratory and workshop in the weeks immediately leading up to the March 1976 session that, with the same unit, produced what many consider his most iconic album, Bäbi, recorded at WBAI-FM Free Music Store.
Following the death of Albert Ayler in 1970 and up until his storied trip to FESTAC 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria, Graves gigged fairly often as a band leader in the New York Loft scene and traveled twice to Europe (1973, 1974) with duos, trios and quartets comprised of fellow New York City based musicians —almost always with Hugh Glover, and variously including Arthur Williams, Joe Rigby, Frank Lowe, and Arthur Doyle. The three sessions that comprise Children of the Forest date from near the end of this intensive period of grassroots activity by Graves during a peak era of musical & cultural ferment in jazz & Black American Music.The earliest recordings feature the duo of Graves (drums & percussion) and Glover (tenor saxophone) from January 24th, and Graves solo (drums & percussion) from February 2. In an interview commissioned for this release and conducted by Jake Meginsky, Glover discusses the mastery of form and execution in Graves’s playing and approach: "It has always been a mystery to me how Cuban drummers in Bata were able to modulate the rhythm and the meter. Well, it takes more than one player to do it Cuban style. Prof (Graves) shows you can do it as one player. The reason he’s able to do it is because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rhythms of the Caribbean, rhythms of Africa, plus rhythms of jazz. He can move around without losing the feel.”
The centerpiece of this set is the March 11 session featuring Graves, Doyle on tenor saxophone and fife, and Glover on a rather unusual pair of instruments that would not appear on the Bäbi recording just one week later —klaxon, and the Haitian one-note trumpet the vaccine. Glover: "The klaxon… it's important to keep that tribal possession-state feel... because it’s not a Hollywood gallop. It’s very much about the energy, this gallop. Prof (Graves) talks about that, talking about the low, the galloping as in the Divine Horsemen of Haiti.”
Doyle’s visceral and unrestrained tenor playing on the March 11 session is further evidence as to why his work, especially during this period, has attained mythic status among aficionados of free jazz and even noise music. Graves would later discuss Doyle in Conversations (William Parker, 2011 Rogue Art Books): "There was another horn player I know that really got into it from the gut and he had a certain kind of intellectualism when we performed… that was Arthur Doyle. (laughs) Arthur Doyle would just go into it. I mean really just go into it… something happened there that was beyond the immediate intellectual control of the people who was doing it. It was about just doing it and don’t worry about all these people putting you down. The most important thing was what was coming out of your instrument and how it was effecting people.” Listening to these recordings, that spirit is unmistakable.
The original 1/4 inch reel, labeled “Pygmy" by Graves, including 15 minutes of audio from an unknown documentary on the Mbuti People of the Congo Basin, are among the few tapes we’ve so far encountered from Graves' private archive that seem clearly intended in his conception & sequencing to be an album. For this reason, these recordings are now presented exactly as assembled by Graves, for soonest possible release. – Peter Kolovos & Michael Ehlers
Get a copy of Milford Graves, Arhur Doyle, Hugh Glover's Children of the Forest via Bandcamp right here.
"Bananas" is off the forthcoming Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You out August 11 via Drag City. |
Remembering my old pal Dallas Good on what would've been his 50th birthday with some performance and interview clips. |
New Orleans trumpeter Kevin Clark will be joined by Alex Pangman and pals at the Trinity outdoor stage from 4:30 to 7:45pm. |
"Weird Al" Yankovic & Susanna Hoffs, Peter Zaremba, The MC5's Wayne Kramer, Peter Case & others appeared – have a look. |
Remembering Chicago soul ace Lee "Shot" Williams with a few gems with Syl Johnson, Jo Armstead & Green McLaurin. |
Adventurous keyboardist Elizabeth Shepherd and band play the Trinity outdoor stage today from 4:30pm to 7:30pm – it's free! |
Sadly, British novelist and essayist Martin Amis has died from cancer on Friday at the age of 73. He'll be missed. |
Salman Rushdie: “He used to say that what he wanted to do was leave behind a shelf of books—to be able to say, “From here to here, it’s me.” His voice is silent now. His friends will miss him terribly. But we have the shelf.”
Check out the trailer for Little Richard: I Am Everything, a char with director Lisa Cortés and clips of Richard's interviews. |
Nick Lowe recorded "Bay City Rollers We Love You" b/w "Rollers Show" as the Tartan Horde back in 1975. |
Drummer Bob Irwin questions the show business acumen of his Cowboy Outfit boss on a train at Penn Station. Photo: Jim Herrington |
Protomartyr's new album Formal Growth In The Desert is out June 2. They play the Horseshoe June 13th. Listen to "Make Way" |
Check out Joel Kyack's video for "Intercepted Message," the title track off the OSEES' throwback synth-pop album out August 16th. |
You can pre-order the OSEES' Intercepted Message album via Bandcamp right here. |