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.
Sounds Like
Perhapsody: Live At The Lizard Lounge 10/12/2006
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
Club d'Elf coalesced in public for the first time in early 1998 when bassist/composer Mike Rivard (a/k/a Micro Vard) was given the opportunity to host an every-other Thursday night at Cambridge's ultra-hip Lizard Lounge. An in-demand session and live bassist with such local and national acts as Morphine, the Story, Jon Brion, Paula Cole, Aimee Mann and Guster, he had a long list of friends and contacts to call upon to guest with the band. For the core of the group, he drew from several groups in which he was affiliated: Hypnosonics (led by Mark Sandman), Mat Maneri's House of Brown, and Indo-jazz group Natraj. The original concept was to have a "house band" (consisting of Rivard, drummers Jay Hilt or Erik Kerr, tabla player Jerry Leake, and sampler player Jere Faison) play composed grooves upon which guests would improvise, so that every show was a different remix of the tunes. Boston/Cambridge lacked the kind of improv scene that embraced jazz, dub, electronica, rock and world music such as existed in NYC at venues like Tonic (where the band soon found its Manhattan home). Word got around that something new was going on in town and a devoted following began to develop.
The range of musical styles the band incorporates is reflected in its wildly diverse audience: DJ-oriented club kids and ravers; notebook-scribbling, boho-intellectuals; tie-dyed Phish fans; Berklee students attracted to the high level of musicianship; and Moroccan Berbers. In other words, sensation seekers. The Lizard shows came to be known (only half-seriously) as "ceremonies", or as the Boston Phoenix dubbed them "non-denominational revival meetings", where everyone -Christian-Muslim-Jewish-Buddhist-Pagan-Sub Genius-etc- was invited to explore the states of trance which the music led both listener and musician towards. For Club d'Elf "trance" is not just an electronica genre but also includes the Gnawa music of Morocco, extended James Brown tracks like "I Got To Move", and Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying", amongst other points of reference. It's the intersection between Ali Farka Toure and The Talking Heads; between Fela Kuti and Nustrat Fateh Ali Khan, and it is this nexus which the band is interested in exploring.
The name was inspired by Rivard's interest in the writing of Terence McKenna and highlighted as well the fact that, more than just a band, this was a club with varying levels of initiate-hood. Shortly after the first Lizard shows Boston Magazine awarded the group Best Cutting Edge Act and announced "the sound of the future is here". It would be the first of many awards bestowed upon the band including Best DJ/Electronica Act (2001 FNX Best Music Poll), Best Jam Band (2001 Boston Phoenix Editors/Readers Poll) and Best Jazz Act (2004 Best of Boston). The list illustrates the sometimes confusing task of labeling the band's music, which defies easy categorization. Ahead of the curve in predicting the trend of mash-ups, d'Elf navigated a musical terrain where Squarepusher accompanied (Moroccan band) Nass El Ghiwane; where Music For 18 Musicians collided with John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (drums c/o DJ Shadow); and On The Corner was remixed by Brian Eno with Mississippi John Hurt sitting in.
By the time the band released its first CD, 2000's As Above: Live at the Lizard Lounge, the group had shifted to an even greater emphasis on Moroccan music, heralded by the addition of Casablanca-born/NYC-dwelling Brahim Fribgane on oud, vocals and all manner of percussion instruments. Fribgane moved to Boston, and along with Rivard and Kerr became the core trio around which a startling variety of special guests added their flavors, including John Medeski (whom Rivard had been friends with since their time together in the Either/Orchestra in the late '80s), DJ Logic, Joe Maneri, Kenwood Dennard, David Bowie guitarists Reeves Gabrels and Gerry Leonard, Hassan Hakmoun and many others. Inspired by Hakmoun, Rivard began to play the sintir (also called guembri or hejhouj) and worked it into the band's repertoire. Trips out of the 617 area code became more frequent (NYC had already become the band's second home) with tours of the north and southeast, and in 2001 the group first toured Japan, where it has played several times since.
A deal with Los Angeles-based Kufala Recordings yielded six double-CD releases of live shows from the period of 2000 to 2004, and 2006 saw the release of d'Elf's long-awaited studio debut, Now I Understand (Accurate/Hi-N-Dry). This CD was the culmination of eight years of work, and in addition to the core of Rivard, Fribgane and Kerr it featured the contributions of over 20 other musicians. Primary amongst these was Mister Rourke, whose DJ skills had become a major element of the group's sound by this point, giving the music a decided hip hop slant and a surreal quality that played on the group's interest in monster movies, aliens, and paranormal phenomena.
The band's most recent disc is Perhapsody - their seventh release on Kufala. Recorded at the Lizard Lounge release party for Now I Understand, it features deconstructions of tunes from that album as well as other tunes from the group's large repertoire, and a sampling of the "crazy-make-'em-ups" for which the group is famous. The band is currently hard at work on completing their next studio album(s), which has split like an insane hydra into 2 separate discs: one focusing on the band's Moroccan side, with plenty of sintir and oud, and featuring Fribgane's contribution to the bands sound, as well as a guest vocal from Gnawa legend Hassan Hakmoun; the other disc is darker and more electronic and funky in nature, and features some of the last studio performances of the late Mark Sandman. D'Elf debuted the Moroccan material during their energetic performance at the 2007 Festival du Monde de Arabe in Montreal, where they were embraced by the multi-cultural audience. A early winter release is anticipated. Most recently the band returned to Japan for shows in Sept, including a headlining set at the Sense Of Wonder festival at Lake Yamanakako at the base of Mt. Fuji.
Just stopping by to say hello and give you some news. The new album 'Coolgilly and the Freakshow' from Centascope is now available worldwide from CD Baby and also directly from the merchandise page of the official website. You can also get the album from Apple iTunes, MSN Music, Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon and many more.
We just put out a new EP on itunes. Http://www.itunes.com/thebigheavy. Make sure to leave us a review. You f'ing rock.
--
TBH
Twitter: TheBigHeavy
AOL IM: TheBigHeavyband
Yo Mike! Just dropping by to say hey. Hope your doing well and I hope to catch a show sometime. It's been a LONG time since I last you guys. Take care, Fran
Hey, wassup? Just dropping by to say hey and spread the love.
Just so you know though, if you want extra networking opportunities, exposure, fans who can subscribe to your tracks, the chance to run remix contests for free promotion, and get tons of feedback on your music you should sign up for a free profile @ our website http://groundzeroprojects.ning.com
Just wanted to drop a line and say check out my debut album "Blueprint of Soul" which is now available! It is the funk! You listen to it for free at www.teddypresberg.com
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