The most recent live disc, this recorded in Oct '06 at the release party for Now I Understand and featuring John Medeski, Dave Tronzo, and Duke Levine. And end-of-year list favorite amongst reviewers, eMusic said "This live album is a simmering scorcher, a dance party for giggling pixies and darker spirits...(d'Elf are) perfect masters of one enchanted evening."
8 years in the making, NIU is Club d'Elf's debut studio album, which All About Jazz said"...sounds like lost Syd Barrett...an interstellar dub cryptogram that builds outward in layers..an electronic thrust into the blackest heart of modern darkness." With over 25 musicians, including DJ Logic, John Medeski, Mat Maneri, Joe Maneri, Billy Martin & many more. The music of dreams.
A document of Club d'Elf's first NYC show, with microtonal master Joe Maneri joining the band, along with son Mat, John Medeski & Brahim Fribgane, and inducing at least one audience member to go into trance! All ABout jazz described it as "...colorful, frantic and dangerous as Manhattan rush hour traffic."
Recorded live at NYC's lost gem, Tonic and featuring John Medeski, Adam Deitch, and "...guitarist Marc Ribot, who rarely sounds this gonzo in his own bands. Turntablist Mister Rourke, also present on Gravity, is an integral part of the musical fabric...heady music that doesn't neglect the tail" - Time Out New York
Recorded live at The Lizard Lounge on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Bros historic flight, with Dave Tronzo adding his slide and prepared guitar wizardry to Mat Maneri's eerie electric viola on tracks like "Sabbath" and Steven Bernstein's "Cave Man". Time Out New York said that it "...combines the roaring avant-funk of electric-era Miles with the legato drift of the Grateful Dead. Manic Berber bop, hypnotic Moroccan gnawa and blissful electronica are present in the mix as well."
Gravity All Nonsense Now : Live at Lizard Lounge, 5/08/03
Recorded live at the Lizard Lounge, the dual guitars of Dave Tronzo & David "Fuze" Fuiczynski mesh with the turntables of Mister Rourke, to create a sound which Time Out New York described as"... at it's peaks conjuring Derek and the Dominoes floating on a cough syrup current".
"All-stars they are: Club d'Elf have to be one of the most fluent
polyglot musical aggregations on the planet: straight-ahead and avant-
garde jazz, Indian, African, Moroccan, blues, funk (always funk),
pop." -Jon Garelick, Boston Phoenix
"Downtown jazz meets trance, Moroccan music, dub, electonica and
jamband...the music's ambitious in its scope but navigated smoothly
enough and with enough chops to cause musicians out there to take
notes." -Tad Hendrickson, JazzWeek
"Club d'Elf's Mike Rivard can draw from an unbelievable talent pool
[and] with the studio, Rivard can put together any band he wants,
whether they could all be in the same room at the same time or not.
Great performances litter Now I Understand, but John Medeski and Mat
Maneri deserve special mention (just check the Mellotron/electric
viola feature on "Bass Beat Box") for their near ubiquity on the
album. Now I Understand isn't an improvement over the live d'Elf
shows; it's a different side of the same organism. Consider it the
polished gemstone to the uncut diamonds of the live releases.
Excellent." -Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide
"I love this friggin CD but I took it out of my car so I would listen
to all the other CDs I'm supposed to be checking out for the channel
[XM radio]. It's been a month [since I listened to it]. And then
there is it, like a drug, so I pop it in and all over again - I am
hooked! What have you done to me !!!!??? This is one of my all time
desert island CDs. You can quote me on that too!"
- Michelle Sammartino, XM Radio
"Club d'Elf's debut studio CD is the sound of a Dali
painting...beautiful, surrealistic...eclectic, funny, technically
impressive and, well, just awesome." -Jon Nolan, The Wire, New
Hampshire
"This music takes its time, and only repeated exposure to its
delights reveals the depth of its identity. There is an overriding
sense of construction behind the entire programme of Now I
Understand, [yet] this is music whose democracy is as profound as
that of any piece of free improvisation." -Nic Jones, AllAboutJazz.com
"Put it on and go for a ride." - Miles Jordan, The Chico News & Review
"It took eight years...but Boston improvisational collective Club
d'Elf has finally captured this city. Led by bassist Mike Rivard,
Club d'Elf's first studio album, Now I Understand, translates the
feel of a cross-city commute into music: layers of sounds from hip-
hop to trance and a half-dozen world-music genres create moments of
beauty..." -Jed Gottlieb, Boston Herald
"A suite with many colors and moods, grooves, and melodies changing
at a moments notice... Something about the idea of so many minds and
hearts involved here makes this one a winner...If techno has come
full-circle, enveloping [its] creator even as it points to another
world, this party of relative soloists and collaborators keeps me
guessing and wanting to guess." -John Ephland, Relix
"If you want to hear a band who does it right, may I suggest Club
d'Elf, whose Now I Understand (Accurate/Hi-N-Dry) is an album where
you do not know what's coming next, even after three or four
listens. [With] incredible down-tempo funk jams, tranquil jazz,
African percussion [which will] take you to the motherland, these
guys refuse to stay in one place at any given time and it's a joy to
hang on and see where they take you next. Even with all of the
diversity of music and musicians, it's not scatterbrained or
disorganized at all....It's about unity, it's about community spirit,
it's about one world, one music. Club D'Elf must have discovered some
good hash somewhere, because once they hit that high, they thrive on
the buzz and allow themselves to weave through it. All on one puff. -
John Book, musicforamerica.org
"Club d'Elf is a fusion workshop, somewhat in the style of later
Miles Davis or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, drawing together a range of
players in a variety of genres to plumb jazz, dub, electronica, rock,
trance, and the music of the Middle and Far East, with a heavy
emphasis on Moroccan styles." -Chad Berndtson, The Quincy (MA)
Patriot Ledger
Influences
Miles Davis, Steve Reich, James Brown, John Coltrane, Hassan Hakmoun, DJ Shadow, Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, Mustapha Baqbou & Maleem H'maida Boussou (Moroccan Gnawa (Gnaoua) ), Led Zeppelin, Squarepusher, Morphine, Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Charles Mingus, Jimi Hendrix, Luke Vibert, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Soul Coughing, Dave Holland, Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, James Jamerson, King Crimson, Sun Ra Arkestra, Bill Laswell, Don Cherry, Radiohead, Nass El Ghiwane, Fela Kuti, Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, Bela Bartok, Pink Floyd, Donny Hathaway, Propellerheads, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Claude Debussy, Cream, Steely Dan, Ali Farka Toure, Black Sabbath, Portishead, John Cage, Ustad Ali Akbar Kahn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, XTC, Terence McKenna, monster movies (Tod Browning to George Romero), Philip K. Dick, David Lynch, Zap Comix, Robert Anton Wilson, Rod Serling, Firesign Theater, William Gibson, George Meyer, Mr Show, ayahuasca.
Club d'Elf convened for the first time in 1998, spearheaded and fronted by bassist/composer Mike Rivard, a busy session player who has recorded & performed with Morphine, Jon Brion, Aimee Mann, G Love & Jonatha Brooke, amongst others. Rivard drew from the players in the myriad of bands he worked with to fill out the ranks of D'Elf, creating an incredibly diverse rotating cast. Originally formed around a core rhythm section with the addition of different special guests for each show, the idea was to remix Rivard's groove-based compositions differently for each performance. Guests over the years have included John Medeski & Billy Martin (MMW), DJ Logic, Marc Ribot, Skerik, and Marco Benevento (Benevento / Russo Duo), with jambands.com describing the situation thusly: "Club d'Elf consists of Mike Rivard and any cohorts who decide to embark with him into perilous sonic chimeras."
The music draws from a startlingly wide spectrum of styles, including jazz, hip hop, electronica, prog-rock and dub, with the band exploring mash-ups of these diverse musical universes before the term was even in use. A Squarepusher-styled drum'n'bass groove may give way to a traditional North Indian tabla interlude, in turn dissolving into some Miles "Live Evil" type electric mayhem. Over the past few years (under the tutelage of member Brahim Fribgane, who hails from Casablanca) the band has been absorbing Moroccan trance influences and frequently adding this element to the live mix, showcasing Fribgane's mesmerizing oud stylings and Rivard's commanding playing of the Moroccan sintir, a 3 string bass lute used by the Gnawa people of Morocco, a mystical Sufi brotherhood descended from sub-Saharan slaves brought to Morocco over 500 years ago.
Over the course of it's 11 year history the band has has held a residency at Cambridge's Lizard Lounge, toured Japan four times and played countless gigs and festivals, including the prestigious Festival Du Monde de Arabe in Montreal. Finding it's true element to be live performance, where the band revels in musical tight-rope walking and improvisational daring-do, D'Elf has released 8 live double-CDs, mostly on the Kufala label. In 2006 d'Elf released it's first studio disc, Now I Understand, which climbed to 7 on the CMJ Jazz chart and garnered rave reviews. Slated for early 2010 is Dos, a double-CD comprising TWO new studio releases, representing very different sides of the band's sound: one being post-Radiohead electronica (and featuring some of the late Mark Sandman of Morphine's last recorded performances); the other, acoustic Moroccan folk music (and featuring Hassan Hakmoun singing a Gnawa-ified version of Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love").
- Best Jazz Act, Boston Music Awards, 2007
- Best Jazz Act, Best of Boston, Boston Magazine, 2004
- Phoenix Editors and Readers Poll, 2001
- Best Jam Band, Phoenix Editors and Readers Poll, 2001
- Best DJ/Electronica Act, FNX Best Music Poll, 2001
- Best Cutting Edge Band, Best of Boston, Boston Magazine, 1998
It sounded like a cross between an alien air raid siren, a psyop, and something like outer limits or the twilight zone. it was dope as fuck whatever it was.
Thank you for the add! ALEXANDRA PRUSA Blue Tango | Broken Dreams | Mi Cosmo Tango www.alexandra-prusa.ch www.myspace.com/alexandraprusa ALEXANDRA PRUSA & GRUPO LA STRAPATA: 01.11.2009 live @ Moods, Zürich!
JFJO returns to BOSTON on SATURDAY (OCT. 17) at The Lizard Lounge. Doors @ 8:30pm & two sets of JFJO start at 9:30pm! Advance Tickets are cheaper! See you soon!
I'm proud to give you "Heavy In The Beats Vol. 1 - A Different Drum", the first installment in my FREE mixtape series dedicated to giving drummers and percussionists exposure. "Volume 1" focuses on the avant garde side of the instrument, and features pieces from Billy Martin (of Medeski Martin & Wood), myself, and others.
(you have to copy and paste the link on myspace for some reason) www.megaupload.com/?d=AGH33YP5
hello my friend , Here is our latest releases on iTUNES shop COLOR SPACE - SPACE RAINBOW [Digital EP] ::: http://www.psycore.eu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=49 CREATRIX - Awakening to unlimited [Digital EP] ::: http://www.psycore.eu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=51 V/A - SONIC MACHINERY compiled by EARTHANGEL [Digital Release] ::: http://www.psycore.eu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=50 regards Psycore records www.psycore.eu
Listen up Microvard and Co. I will be in Boston during the Labor Day weekend. Primarily for my cousin's wedding--I'm Best Man. SUNDAY NIGHT I will be at the HOUSE OF BLUES enjoying my very first MOTORHEAD show. Head's up! If you wanna rock out--meet me there. I'd love to chill with ya man over a beer or three. If not... maybe next time. -shaun
Hi thanks for the add , I promote bands Great for independent Rock bands and Hip Hop artists. come to my page to see how it works. by the way my name is Ron Promotional
Hey thank you for adding me. I like the combination of instruments you use. Fire on the Brain was amazing. You must have had a lot of help creating that song. Really nice work. : )
I uploaded two new tracks, called “I Love Your Swingin’ in a Swing” & “Another Kiss, Another Night”.
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“I Love Your Swingin’ in a Swing” ; Partly polyrhythm of 3/4 & 4/4. ; Motown beats. ; I intentionally wrote so catchy melody with mainly using major keys (so this track is very different from my old works).
“Evening Dress (Another Kiss)” ; I tried to make a track like bossa nova, but the finished is nothing but a strange one… ; And it sounds obscene though I tried to make a elegant one… maybe factor’s a sound of guiro. ; Modulations will come twice. ; In the second interlude, there’s a section like trance music... BPM is over 300.
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It will be nice if you give me your impressions… please check those over if you have a time. I’m looking forward to receiving your words.
See ya! [MATA-NE] (‘u‘)b -OMC from Tokyo- Classical / New Wave / Progressive
Greetings…!
Founding member and former front man of John Brown’s Body Kevin Kinsella returns to Southern Cali August 1 to perform at the Belly Up Tavern with Elijah Emmanuel and the Revelations. A typical Kevin Kinsella set includes new, original reggae, 10 Ft. Ganja Plant and classic JBB songs.
Tickets $13 adv/$15 dos. Ages 21+. Come out and show some love! Belly Up Tavern is located at 143 S. Cedros Ave, Solana Beach, California. http://www.bellyup.com.
