ChiChronicles

Radiohiro's Wedding

2005-07-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

My friends Matt & Emily had a small ceremony at their house/studio to belatedly celebrate their wedding...
Good people, great sound, a house full of studio geeks trading waveform secrets over light beer... Was quite an evening, a beautiful ceremony, and the couple never fails to make me smile...
may the two of you & Chloe find all the happiness this world has to offer...
Thank you for everything you've brought into my life...

Related Links:
www.radiohiro.com

Spun @ the Lake & the Blue Lotus Tribe @ the Bungalow

2005-07-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

Had a night of epiphanies on this evening of full moon madness. Swung by the Foster Beach lakefront and spent the early evening with my friend Mercedes, watching the members of Spun Chicago dance with flaming poi, flaming whips, flaming hula hoops, and assorted pyromaniac toys. Watching the members of this troupe perform felt like a revelation, in that I've been looking for a group like this my entire life. All my martial arts training, all my weapons work, all of those hours have been dedicated not to the actual use of these skills, but in the pursuit of some kind of movement that is beautiful for its own sake, a form of dance that focuses on spirals and is rooted in an aesthetic of burning flow... Watching this show felt like coming home to old friends... Quite simply, there is nothing sexier than watching a man and woman dance while carrying brightly burning, intensely hot bolts of flaming rope, their bodies entwined in fire and circles, a vision of limbs and skin pulsing while framed in otherworldly heat... It was a meditation in spirals, all while an open jam of drummers colored the evening with what i'll have to characterize as hippy drumming. It was a tight performance, and the visual impressions left by this group are burned into my mind... I'll be delivering some custom tracks for them to perform to very soon, in particular a hip hop track I've been working on for awhile now that will soon be a music video featuring Spun:
Vectors
..."we be vectors, protectors of the circle of life,
collectors of the vinyl that's the nectar of nights:
we be vessels:
specters filled with liquid lovelight:
reflectors of the future with the flaming foresight..."

After the Spun show wound down at around 10:30 pm, me and Mercedes headed to the Bungalow to catch my favorite crew of belly dancers perform with DJ Madrid & Fluxcore. I'd never been to the Bungalow before, on Belmont & Ashland, but I was really impressed with the place and its decor and vibe. Totally worth checking out. Got to kick it with the inimitable Audrey Sica & Chris from the Blue Lotus Tribe, decked out in thousand dollar outfits and shaking what their mama gave them to the selections of DJ Madrid. Got to dance for a bit with them, which is always a lot of fun...
hip drops amongst the House flocks-
trading funky moves from dancer's private stocks-
summer sweat & july thump-
release from it all each time those beats go BUMP...

check out the Bungalow sometime if you're in that hood, it's a nice little bar with good taste in DJs, as far as I can tell...

Related Links:
www.bluelotustribe.org (Audrey&Chris's Bellydance troupe)
http://www.encroach.net/info/show_docs/pages_2004/full_moon.html (SpunImages)
http://chicago.citysearch.com/profile/11660923 (the Bungalow Lounge Bar)

Bombay Beatbox @ Sonotheque

2005-07-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

I spun a decent opening set for this month's installment of Bombay Beatbox. It was a lot quieter than last month, but luckily my friend Mercedes brought a whole crew of her friends over from the Moksha Yoga Center, so the party got bumping around 11 pm... Met a handful of cool desis courtesy of my friend Nikhil (www.nikhiltrivedi.com), who never fails to turn up with some intelligent characters, and also got to kick it with my long lost friend the Doubtful Guest, an I.D.M. producer who moved to London a few years ago and is in town for a few weeks to cause trouble... I had a great evening, overall - Radiohiro spun a set heavily laced with jungle and I got to dance with Mercedes and her friends a bunch, who are a totally riotous batch of hipsters & yogis.. Adheesh Sathaye and Baseshot Scenario added in some nice flavors to the mix, throwing down on Tablas & a powerbook, respectively, and I distributed 60 copies of my first Drum n' Bass DJ mix, a collection of up-tempo Desi jungle featuring Badmarsh & Shri, Karsh Kale, the Midival PunditZ and more... There's something profoundly powerful about spinning music that's that fast - things can go horribly wrong if you're just a second out of sync, but when the mix links up right, and beats match perfectly, you get a sense of being at the crest of a perpetually peaking breakdown. It was a good evening, overall... met some folks who will probably become regulars, which is always a good thing for the burgeoning Asian Massive Chicago scene...

Related Links:
www.radiohiro.com
www.nikhiltrivedi.com

Africa Hi-Fi @ Sonotheque

2005-07-15T18:16:00.000-05:00

Welcomed Ms.Sonia Hassan back from a three-nation trip to Africa. She brought me a badass Daishiki from Kenya that I'm pysched to rock at next month's party... Ya gotta love to work with folks who think about you when they're halfway across the world and bring you back presents from distant lands..
Ron Trent was actually in Madrid this month, so our feature DJs were Kennedy Octane & Jeremy Sole, who both dropped hot sets laced with some very funky Afro-House. We were featuring a compilation from Om Records entitled ReBoot, the proceeds of which go towards building a community center in South Africa for children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. It's quite a disk, with unreleased tracks from the Thievery Corporation, Miguel Migs, Kaskade, Jeremy Sole, Ron Trent, and a whole lot more. It's truly encouraging to know that the DJs & producers in the House music community are willing to support conscious endeavors that give back to the world at large, and aren't just focused on serving up sounds for the hedonistic club scene that they cater to. I guess I don't give these cats enough credit...

Spent the night behind a table selling wristbands for NextAid, talking about recent campaigns for Amnesty International to the few random folks who cared enough to listen, and meeting a handful of delightful people. A representative for Uhuru360 swung through and dropped off a "Free Assata" flyer publicizing the long-running plight of Assata Shakur. Again, it's a beautiful thing to meet people who've been long committed to the struggle for equal justice & equal opportunity, and even though I get discouraged sometimes by the tepid response to my solicitations on behalf of groups like Amnesty, every now and then you meet like-minded individuals who recognize themselves in you, which joins us together in a profoundly powerful way. Those people tend to congregate around the music that supports the quest for self-determination, which is why Africa Hi-Fi is such a vital breeding ground for conscious visionary artists & people tapped in to the infinite funk rooted in the drums and music of the African diaspora...

Related Links:
www.prescriptionworld.org

Bossacucanova & Chicago Samba @ Hot House

2005-07-14T18:03:00.000-05:00

Tabled tonight at Hot House on behalf of Six Degrees Records & Bossacucanova, my newfound friends from Rio. I met up with DJ Dalua & his manager Dado in March when they were on tour to support his solo album Tranquilo. They're quite the duo, after their March show in Chicago they kindly handed me copies of Tranquilo & an album of remixes that the Mad Professor had reworked, and both those disks are HIGH on my list of HOT Brazilian Drum n' Bass. So I was looking forward to seeing Bossacucanova live, as they're traveling as an 8-piece band with DJ Dalua delivering a significant amount of their rhythmic power via turntables... Bossa Nova with a DJ, ya gotta love it, these cats are eloquent in the way they incorporate breakbeats & hard digital elements into the weave of what is relatively traditional Brazilian music. In their hands, though, you get a very clear look at how this tradition will manifest for future generations...

It was a great show, but I was relegated to the side room selling albums, so I didn't have a good look at the stage and only caught the music peripherally. Still, I sold 26 albums, which is a number that I usually only hit when the act is really tight and delivers a hot set. Bossacucanova definitely threw down, and Chicago Samba followed up with a banging live PA. You really can't go wrong with a roomfull of Brazilians determined to dance and a bunch of badass musicians playing for them... It was a hot party, and I got a chance to meet the rest of DJ Dalua's posse. In a few days they'll be opening for Basement Jaxx @ the Hollywood Bowl. I love it that I'm running with folks poised to rise to the next level of their respective careers....

Related Links:
www.sixdegreesrecords.com
www.hothouse.net

upcoming shows @ the Binary Mine...

2005-07-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

Swung by my friend Kim's digs to see what I missed after the week I just spent in California... The Binary Mine Gallery is in the process of finishing up one of its shows and prepping for the next, a visiting collection of Peace posters that dates back at least 30 years and has some of the most powerful anti-war images I've ever seen. It'll go up on the walls at the end of the month, after finishing a run in Tokyo, and boy oh boy are those some powerful prints... The images are simple, crystal clear, and express their message with no room for misinterpretation. I believe that propaganda is the most powerful tool people have at their disposal, and the collection that's about to show up in Chicago for a month is a vibrant testament to the venomous potency of citizens critiquing the violence of our civilizations with something as ubiquituous as art... Art is the dirty filter through which we wash our collective guilt, the stained sheets soiled by the illicit commerce between our lowly desires and our highest ideals... First comes the action, then the color commentary, provided by all those weary souls burdened by what their consciences have witnessed... Check out this gallery once this collection arrives next month, and your faith in the future might just be rekindled...

Related Links:
http://www.33graphic.com/yo/

Belmont Harbor Yacht Club

2005-06-22T09:58:00.000-05:00

Visited an old friend at Belmont Harbor, spent an hour chilling by the boats, as she was in town to assist her father & brother who were competing in an elite regatta on Lake Michigan. Sat at the lakefront and watched the water darken as the sun set over the city behind us... That was my first visit to the actual pier of the Chicago Yacht club, I've passed it on rollerblades a million times but I've never actually been inside. They're hosting a North American Championship Regatta over the course of this week, and a horde of sailing professionals from around the world were there in force. It was nice to see folks who are serious about their skills congregated around some world-class boats...it was a little slice of the waterfront I don't sample much these days, since I moved inland to Logan Square a year ago... Must...get...more...LAKEFRONT...

Related Links:
http://www.etchellschicago.com/

Cuban Love

2005-06-21T20:19:00.000-05:00

Had dinner with some friends from out of town at Cafe Laguardia in Bucktown, which features fantastic Cuban food, live Latin jazz, beautiful people, & a great vibe all around. We had some great Mango Mojitos & Capirinhas while slinking down into some comfortable couches, then had an outrageously tasty meal in the dining area while listening to the music of Angel de Cuba in the Solar System.... If you're in Bucktown, this spot is HOT and well worth a visit...

http://www.cafelaguardia.com/

Africa Hi-Fi @ Sonotheque

2005-06-17T23:51:00.000-05:00

Worked the Africa Hi-Fi merchandise table all night. Had the wonderful chance to meet a few amazing people: the artist Chadwick did a live installation at the gig, painting a huge canvas over the course of the evening, and I was working in a room that had three of his masterful paintings on display. I highly recommend checking out his work. Also talked to Angel Luis Figueroa, the guest artist of the month, a magnificent Puerto Rican percussionist/producer based out of LA, and he was kind and generous enough to spend a few minutes talking to me about politics in music and the subtleties of sending a message through the intricate interplay of rhythm and words. I dropped some Six Degrees CDs in his hands, and my most recent DJ mix, but I think I got the better end of the deal just by having the chance to talk to him for a few minutes. There is something incredibly powerful about veteran percussionists schooled in the Afro-Caribbean tradition, they carry in their presence the awareness of the Yoruba powers underlying the music we make, and that awareness bleeds out of their very pores. They are links to a neglected realm, and beneath their hands a tapestry of beats emerges that wraps any who listen in the folds of powerful old ceremonies that tap deep into the collective memory. Angel's set, at the very peak of the evening, was a blissful overwhelming event for some, and an annoyance for some of the House kids who "just want to dance." I suppose we receive what we are open to receive... To those who can't get into a conga/DJ set, filled with chants & calls & response, it's their goddamn loss...
The evening was the 1-year anniversary of Africa Hi-Fi, it's been a year since I met Sonia Hassan and began to appreciate the incredible aesthetic & skills of my favorite DJ, the inimitable Ron Trent. Sonia outdid herself this month with gifts for the staff, an array of sustainable plantain chips from Equador, and with custom strings of beads from Africa for her legion of club friends who can't seem to scare up the willingness to part with $10 to get down all night long. She maintained a general air of goodwill and celebration that colored anyone who crossed her path. However, she pushed herself hard, and was short of breath at the end of the evening... To be a conduit for a community is a taxing, thankless job that milks the most generous souls dry... Sonia gives so much of herself in everything she's involved in, and it's frightening sometimes to see how oblivious people are to her health. For every party that works, there's an overworked, undercompensated promoter whose blood, sweat, and tears are woven deep into the mix. I've learned so much from Africa Hi-Fi, the least of which is what it takes to really make sacrifices for what you want to achieve. I hope to spend another year working with Ron & Sonia, because they're truly surfing the leading edge of Afro-centric futuristic sound, which taps into the source and looks to the future all at the same time...

concept gatherings and spicy plantain chips
amnesty pamphlets & hordes of shaking hips
live installations & funky dreads
the next generation of conscious house heads
deep throbbing bass & Fela onscreen
some of the flyest people i've seen on the scene
dub & bailefunk & boricua riffs
weave it all together and the center of gravity shifts...

Related Links:
http://www.pawsmusic.org/angel.html

Bombay Beatbox @ Sonotheque

2005-06-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

This month's Bombay Beatbox evening had a surprisingly large turnout. In the middle of my set, I turned away from the decks to select a track to play, and when I faced the crowd again the room had somehow filled up and there were people dancing. It was 10:15, and usually it doesn't get crowded or inebriated enough for folks to start getting down till at least midnight. So I played some more floor-friendly cuts and relinquished the tables to DJ Warp, Baseshot Scenario, and Adheesh Sathaye on tablas. Spent the rest of the evening chatting with new and old friends. Turns out a business conference had sent their delegates to Sonotheque to party the night away, which was why a whole lot of "normies" (aka normal people in dockers & casual business suits) outnumbered the usual hipster set. It was a good vibe all night long, though, the dancefloor never emptied, I met some amazing new people who I hope will become friends for life. The music has its own inertia, and I believe we might be starting to attract a steady stream of Chicago regulars who understand and appreciate what we're trying to do, which is cultivate a scene of connoisseurs who have cosmopolitan tastes in sound. It's not an easy scene to break into, though, Chicago is filled with hedonists & music snobs, and the club world is filled with heads who've been spoilt over the years by getting so much good music from so many different directions that it's difficult to convince them of the worth of something they've never heard before. On Bombay Beatbox nights I generally try to spin music that's fresh off the presses, or overlooked albums from the near past, I stick to playing tracks that the crowd hasn't come across, which is a test of their patience & willingness to be led in new directions. There aren't many occasions when a DJ has that privilege, and it's a blessing to have that opportunity to share underpublicized gems under the tutelage of DJ Warp & Radiohiro, who are old hands at working a room with futuristic worldbeat. I hope next month goes as well as June's monthly night, perhaps the momentum has begun to shift in our favor...

Related Links:
www.radiohiro.com

BluesFest - Day II

2005-06-11T13:27:00.000-05:00

spent the majority of the afternoon @ BluesFest, catching some rays and checking out the scene. I'd planned on staying to watch Buddy Guy headline the mainstage @ 8 pm, but ended up cutting out a little early. I did see elder veteran Benny Latimer throw down a hot set @ the CrossRoads stage, using his keyboard and voice to lead the crowd through a series of great jams and entertaining songs. Lyrical highlight of the day: "I may be an old dog, but i still know how to bury the bone..."
:-)

BluesFest - Day 1

2005-06-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

Picked up some flyers at Hot House and since I was right next door I swung through Grant Park for the first evening of BluesFest... This is now my 8th year of catching Bluesfest, in 1998 it was the singlemost important factor in making me decide to spend the summer in Chicago... Since that first encounter with the city's muddy electric soul, I've never really left... Every Delta guitarist eventually finds their way to Chicago, seeking to plug in and wail out a magnified testimony of the polluted streams from which we've emerged... My blues-singer dreams, however, have been deferred, re-routed through turntables till they no longer resemble the initial impetus... I come from the blues, but all shades find their way into the mix, a growing motley tapestry of cultures, rhythms, and methods lifted from every tongue i've ever encountered. I wouldn't have it any other way...

My experience of the sun-drenched arrival of summer each year is marked by BluesFest, but it's meaning has changed to me. The sound that once felt like a revelation has grown increasingly familiar, bringing with it a banality that taints my appreciation of this form. But regardless of how many times I've heard Muddy Waters covers, the spectacle of BluesFest, the sight of the Petrillo Shell against the skyline, the intimacy of the Front Porch stage, the raw gritty feel of the Juke Joint stage, these are signature Chicago moments, musical snapshots that are fundamental to my aesthetic and identity. I saw Chris Thomas King, the actor who played Robert Johnson in "O Brother Where Art Thou" on the CrossRoads Stage a few years before he was really famous, and the litany of artists I've encountered through BluesFest makes for quite a list... Every year I am reborn in Grant Park, listening to old wrinkled guys from Fat Possum Records and young upstarts like Jonny Lang or veterans aces like Larry McCray. These guys don't play...this is not a game, this is the infinite pain of the transplanted plugged in and bent till it trembles like a breaking human voice...
anyhow.
Today I trudged through the park with a 30 lb bag full of flyers, doffed the shirt and lay half-naked amongst the masses while drinking in the June sun, sitting in the grass and soaking in summer. Moved from the Front Porch stage to the Petrillo shell, where they just recently added a huge live video screen to magnify the happenings onstage for all the folks lounging in the field... Talk about a fantastic addition... I lay down in the far fringes and napped while people-watching... 86 degrees and sunny, tank-tops, tattoos, skirts & sculpted bodies out in force... God I love this city... I forget sometimes, but once BluesFest comes around and summer in Chicago calls its beautiful children out to play, it all becomes clear...
come on
baby don'tcha wanna go
come on
baby don'tcha wanna go
to the land of california
my sweet home
chicago....

Related Links:
For a complete line-up of the 4 day festival's 5 stages & highlights:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/music/sidebars/BLUES2005.html

Saul Williams @ Manifest - Grant Park

2005-06-03T20:37:00.000-05:00

Columbia College hosted Manifest today, a 12 hour marathon arts showcase featuring a tremendous array of talent at various venues along a small stretch of Grant Park, @ Michigan Ave & 11th. I had to work the 9 to 5 but heard that Saul Williams was performing at 6 pm for FREE, which is quite the deal since I'm too broke & too busy at the moment to make his set @ Hot House later tonight. So I finished up at the day job, and walked down Michigan Ave to catch what promised to be a truly great way to start the weekend...
Got to the park @ 5:40. There was a nice graffiti showcase leading up to the stage, and a horde of beautiful Columbia hipsters lurking around in various states of casual lounging... The spot wasn't crowded, and I found a nice place to sit on the grass about 50 feet from the direct middle of the stage. I basked in the grass for awhile and people-watched, till DJ Ad Lib (aka Fabian???) started soundchecking his gear. It was hard to sit still when he started toying with those bass frequencies... It didn't look like he was using turntables, but some kind of trigger-oriented sequencer-like gear that spat out loops and had its own effects rack built in. Regardless of his gear, soundcheck was over quickly and I soon spotted Saul at the side of the stage, relaxed and stretching his arms out while in conversation with some stage folks. To be completely honest, although I've been following Saul's career for almost 7 years, this was actually the first time I've been in his presence. The man has an undeniable glow, and carries with him a tangible energy that radiates off his body... He stood in the wings as Terri Hemmert from WXRT got up in front of the crowd to introduce him. She made a few brief remarks about the importance of spoken word in the rock and folk traditions and then introduced Saul. The crowd greeted him with a brief but rather tepid bout of applause...
His first words: "y'all are sitting down..." Then he launches into a slam poem, which I believe was featured in the 1998 documentary SLAMNATION, an epic poem which i last heard performed by Saul alongside Beau Sia, muMs the Schemer, & Jessica Care Moore... It's an awesome piece, but for some reason, framed by the sunlight slanting off the skyscrapers on Michigan Avenue, it feels a little bit like Saul's B-game, an old familiar text that's just a warm-up for him at this point in his career. I should point out that these days Saul is one of the most hyped MC's in America, with a veritable torrent of worshipful press following him, and he's arguably the most legendary hip hop poet to come out of the Slam Poetry scene. My expectations are high, and they are legitimately so - I'm familiar with enough of Saul's recorded catalog, read enough of his poetry, and have heard interviews with the man to be aware of the breadth and scope of his consciousness and the magnitude of the intentions underlying his work. He's a pioneer and a true embodiment of the hip hop aesthetic in its organic, pre-bling state, and the potency of his reputation raises the bar for his performances. The audience demands a lot from such folks, as they are torchbearers for the rest of us...
But I'm getting ahead of myself. After the opening slam poem, Saul intones an undeniable command: "STAND UP", and the crowd gets to its feet and moves closer to the stage as DJ Ad Lib drops the first powerfully thumping beat of the evening. Over a deep rumbling bass and a spacious break, Saul begins chanting the refrain to "African Student Movement" off his latest CD. The poem's all about "African People", (the chorus is "where my niggers at?) and after the song concludes Saul explains its meaning to him. He offers a concise, eloquent rational linking the labors and trials of "African People" to the lives of privilege we live in America. It's a compelling argument, and although you can feel the crowd is with him in spirit, it's still early, the sun hasn't set yet, no alcohol has been consumed, and the collective mood is still stiff. Unfortunately, although the crowd loosens up over the course of the show, it never really lets loose and I think Saul came away feeling a little disappointed in us. There wasn't much bouncing, there wasn't much chanting, and the overwhelming mood was of diffident inspiration. Yeah, he rocked our worlds, but we didn't give him much back... That's probably the fate of any artist trying to work a sober Loop crowd at the end of a long week, beneath an overcast Chicago sky, before the weekend mood has really had time to settle...
But again, I'm ahead of myself. After "African Student Movement," Fabian & Saul go into "Black Stacey," a second heavily racial song about skin consciousness, and given the crowd's mostly white constitution, it felt a little confrontational. The whole set, in fact, was a little detached from the audience. From where I stood, the crowd was full of largely silent listeners, soaking in Saul's infinite lyrical gifts, but absorbing them in the receptive position, disinclined towards any outward show of support other than polite applause and some reserved head bopping. This was no failure of the music, as the beats were intricate, the bass was incredibly loud and a tangible presence, and the lyrics were suitably profound and well-syncopated. Still, something was missing, and it didn't feel like the absent element was missing from Saul's presence...
Perhaps the strangest moment in the show came immediately preceding "Act III Scene II", during a brief stretch between songs when Saul was talking about the validity of the underground, and what it means for an artist to go mainstream. He was talking about the reality of being part of the silent majority of America, and made a humorous little comment about hip hop kids rocking backpacks, when out of the blue some random chunky white guy blew by me on the right side screaming, "FUCK YOU YOU IGNORANT MOTHERFUCKER" at Saul. I thought the guy was some kind of staged act at first (cause the only people i disingenuously call ignorant motherfuckers are my friends, of course) but this dude was SERIOUS. He approached the stage real militant-like, cussing at high volume the whole time, before he was re-directed by the booing crowd towards the side of the stage away from the action. It was a really strange moment, because nothing precipitated the guy's outburst, and it was so out of place in what had been a pretty positive experience up to that point. (To be perfectly honest and betray my northside roots, it felt a little like redneck WhiteSox rage, like when those two random fans charged the field & beat up the 1st base coach for no discernable reason...) Saul was a little put out by the incident, but quickly got things back on track, shrugging off the guy's bad vibes saying "ahh, that wasn't me he was thinking of, it was that OTHER nigger..." (which was damn funny, but maybe you had to be there...)
Anyhow, the show got on track again, but the sound was a little bit muddier, and although there were some incredibly profound moments, it finished up pretty fast. Saul ended the show with a funny line, something along the lines of: "Remember that God is an infant that we just beget, and now he's crying, and his diaper's wet..." I might have that little wrong but you get the jist...
The performance was truly powerful, but it did feel like he was saving some energy for his sold out show later tonight. You can't blame him - the crowd was standoffish and the venue, although a beautiful backdrop to the lakefront and the South Loop, wasn't really conducive to the evolved progressive hip hop consciousness Saul manifests so well. Still...a free Saul Williams show on a Friday afternoon is nothing to turn your nose up at... The future of hip hop is unfolding before him, and his lyricism is setting the standard for MCs everywhere. 'Twas a pleasure and privilege, no matter how short his set or how stiff the crowd...

It seemed like a lot of the folks at the show hadn't heard the songs before, so I highly recommend anyone who hasn't checked out Saul's recorded aesthetic to have a look at his albums. The first is a juicy little nugget produced by Rick Rubin and the second, which I just purchased last week is a crazy hip hop/jungle/atmospheric soundscape journey into electronica and charged militant rap. They're both worth a listen, or ten, if you're interested in the art of the WORD...

Related Links:
www.saulwilliams.com
http://manifest.colum.edu/

Funkadesi @ Hot House

2005-05-27T23:07:00.000-05:00

Caught Funkadesi @ Hot House to open a long weekend. This was actually my first time seeing the group perform, although I've seen various band members in different capacities playing in other ensembles. It was a big group of people, with a whole lot of instruments, and with a vibrant, happy Friday night crowd dancing in front of the stage all night long. I was front and center...
I cannot begin to describe the sound, look, or aesthetic of this band - their appeal crosses generations, continents, and language boundaries. A group of musicians this eclectic that manages to communicate at all is a feat in and of itself, but the fact that they can forge coherent, well-crafted songs together is a trubute to the openminded cooperative nature of most students of the world's rhythmic traditions. The sound of a dhol drum juxtaposed against conga patterns, the melodic blend of a sitar & a saxophone, these are compositional experiments that have the capacity to go horribly wrong at any given moment, but within Funkadesi the arrangements breath, the musicians are all smiling, and the crowds are bouncing along to a cosmpolitan groove that feels both organic and evolved...

turbans & dreads
bopping Hot House headz
sitars & singing sisters
drummers with finger blisters
celebrations and passages through multiple formats
burnt melting pot anthems from culture junkies in cool hats
elders & upstarts
interracial couples with full hearts
tacets & hits
the funk fuse lit
too many people dancing to see
no matter where you sit
something so unlikely and so innate
natural blues across nation states
we find the people we're meant to find
while seeking the soundtrack of the immigrant mind...

Related Links:
www.funkadesi.com
www.hothouse.net

Binary Mine Deliveries...

2005-05-26T22:40:00.000-05:00

Swung by the Binary Mine to drop off a fistful of files -
Rung the doorbell and got a look @ some upcoming styles:
curator Kim A. lining up the talent & clients
the aesthetic engineer schooled in applied science
the business & art coalescing
big pants '96 parties meet ambient rooftop sessions
digital layers of organic fruit essence
a hot Wicker Park art gallery of intersecting impressions
old school jams & funk in the speakers
circuitry boards run by Adobe AfterEffects tweakers
holding down the spot & plotting out the rise
a summer full of plateaus & perpetual highs
my friends with the SICK loft, the classy venue of choice:
the masses prostrate to her DV rig & jazz diva voice
sometimes a single friend makes it all so clear
why it is i'm an artist
why it is i'm here
within the mirror folds among my many muses
between the DJ crews & deep dancer bruises
when you run with the creators you create your own
constantly projecting polyrhthms
seeking complementary tones...

Related Links:
www.aestheticengineer.com

Body Worlds @ the Museum of Science & Industry

2005-05-21T13:21:00.000-05:00

Spent Saturday afternoon on the South Side @ the Museum of Science & Industry. My parents were in town for the weekend & they wanted to check out the notorious exhibit "Body Worlds", which has garnered a lot of national attention for featuring real cadavers that have been treated with plastics in order to showcase in gory and miraculous detail all the intricate workings of the human body. It's an overwhelming exhibit destined to have a powerful impact on the body awareness of everyone who sees it. It's impossible to be indifferent to the sight of corpses stripped of their skin & tissues to reveal the underlying structures of the various systems comprising the complete human form. What could be horrific and in shockingly bad taste is instead a true tribute to the objectivity of scientific inquiry, in that the exhibit feels like a journey towards a greater understanding of the complexity of the machines our consciousness operates. That said, there are plenty of disconcerting sights that will leave visitors queasy, and a pervasive air looming over the whole wing that calls to mind the necrophiliac element coloring all the endeavors of Mary Shelley's Dr.Frankenstein. Who pays to see bodies that have been ripped apart and manipulated? Or, more disturbingly, who dedicates the time to perform such laborious processes on dead matter? I left the exhibit questioning my convictions & with a renewed committment to eat better, lift more weights, and kick-start my lapsed martial arts regimen. Any display that has such a positive effect on its viewers is praiseworthy, no matter how warped its basis...
Before walking through the exhibit, we bought tickets to see the IMAX film "The Human Body" which accompanies the cadavers and definitely eases an audience into appreciating the nuances of what goes down beneath our skins. The film was fantastically shot, and opened with a sequence of a camera rolling over what looks like a textured desert landscape of shapely dunes, only to pull back to reveal that the viewer is in fact seeing is a torso, with a great gaping chasm in the middle that's actually a belly button. The sight of a belly button the size of a four-story building is well-worth the prices of admission alone, but the film continues over its course to offer stunning glimpses of the processes occuring within the body. From uncomfortable but humorous images ranging from the creation of a zit and the production of bile, to a series of breathtaking shots of the muscular and skeletal systems in action, the film is a fantastic exploration of the machinery comprising "the Human Body." Funded by the BBC, this is a movie far superior to that atrocity "the Miracle of Life" i was forced to watch in middle school sex ed. My personal favorite scene was watching newborn infants the size of 2 story buildings swimming with wide open innocent eyes through water - it turns out that there's a strange 6 month phenomenon whereby newborns do not attempt to breath when submerged, as their lungs block off the fluids and channel the water directly to their stomachs. This fact led to the film's most memorable sequence, in which a slew of babies adoringly paddled across the screen in scenes reminiscent of the album cover to Nirvana's "Nevermind". It was a great visual, and a really fascinating fact to learn about... How our bodies transform over time is nothing short of shapeshifting...
I highly recommend folks to check this exhibit out before it leaves. It will totally alter the way you see yourself and others. Aside from the cross-sections of obese people, the plasticized example of a man with a hernia around his genitals, the blood vessel systems that resembled the texture of cotton candy, and the spactacle of raw musculature adorning athletes in motion, my personal highlight was not even a cadaver. Directly behind me in line was a couple and their 6 year-old daughter, who after seeing the very first body began to whine and pout rather loudly that she wanted to home. "Please Mom, i don't want to see anymore, let's go, please!" This continued for the rest of the exhibit, accompanied by the girl's comically frightened expression as she stared at the various bodies laid out like nightmare zombies stripped of their bones, organs, and cut open in cross-sections. The look on her face throughout kept me cynically amused throughout, even though it was apparent she'd be having nightmares soon...Even a 6-year old doesn't necessarily want to understand... Life isn't very romantic when you strip away the mysterious cloak of skin to revel rusted levers, broken springs, and dirty gears... It's so much more peaceful to just trust the dreamsequence in our minds and divorce our consciousness from the messy earthbound nature of our bodies... But the parts make the whole, each element plays a perfectly callibrated role, and no matter how cerebral our journeys may seem, our thoughts are just the ghosts lurking throughout the machine...

Related Links:
http://www.msichicago.org/bodyworlds/index.html

Ron Trent & Africa Hi-Fi @ Sonotheque

2005-05-20T23:46:00.000-05:00

The monthly Afro-beat fix -
Fela flavors & plantain chips
refined nubian night crawlers
between stepping sisters & brazilian hips
another Friday night held in the sway of DJ Ron Trent
400-some folks funking to the Orishas descent
west village jams & Ghana grooves
Africa enters the room - see how the crowds move...
Sonia H. in a tangible state of flux
between the party & the people she's the pressured crux
stressed by seeking to share the most authentic feel:
a delivery system undergoes a taxing ordeal
the facts are these:
the scene grows at its own pace
it takes time to cultivate a community's tastes
the best music is always way ahead of the curve
those who bring it are burdened by the visions they serve
the mission evolves year by year
the faces of the cast slowly become clear
there's an imperative hidden in these mixes we hear:
this is a journey of reclamation, so much more than it appears...
reparations resonating through the room
raised hands & spirits each time the bass goes boom
Ron's birthday bash is a packed house of friends
a communal gathering of folks determined to ascend...

11 months of Africa Hi-Fi
all the fluctuations a year in the life implies
getting closer to the sources we seek to tap
giving the dark continent a House Party on the American map...

Related Links:
www.prescriptionworld.org

M.I.A. & Diplo @ Metro Chicago

2005-05-19T23:37:00.000-05:00

Concert Review for www.indianelectronica.com

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a radical woman of color in possession of a microphone is a revolution waiting to happen. Weaned on the bitter milk of colonialism, spitting spiced manifestos in the ghetto slang of an appropriated tongue, a female desi MC with skills is a glorious phenomenon to behold. Shaped by all the joys, contradictions, challenges and indignities of being born a brown girl in a world presided over by white men, there is something incredibly uplifting about someone who’s overcome unlikely odds to emerge unscathed, fully empowered, and with a middle-finger raised high against all the inherent injustices of a rigged system. The recent arrival on the world stage of Maya Arulpragasam, aka “M.I.A.” heralds the rise of a new style of conscious hip hop surfacing from marginalized third world communities, in which a Tamil hottie can make a living spitting catchy streams of unapologetic insurrection over the grimiest, funkiest beats the UK has to offer. I had the pleasure last night of seeing M.I.A. in concert alongside her co-conspirators MC Terry and DJ Diplo, and came away from the show with a head full of unforgettable hooks, a body jacked up by dirty dancehall bass and with a deep sense of solidarity for the unique aesthetic and subversive message of the world’s preeminent postergirl for progressive desi hip hop.
Currently on her first American tour supporting LCD Soundsystem, London-based M.I.A. is a critically-acclaimed MC and producer who has received more press-coverage than any single desi artist in recent memory. She makes great copy, which is why her story and profile have been filling magazines for the last year – fueled by the 2005 release of her debut album “Arular” and last fall’s notorious Diplo-crafted mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol.1.” Her records are infused with a sound unlike anything else, a thick stew of potent garage-heavy hip hop which borrows liberally from every shade of UK immigrant culture to forge a refreshingly innovative danceable 21st century urban folk music. It sounds hot on tape, and I was looking forward to seeing M.I.A. perform live in order to assess whether or not all the hype was legit and well-deserved. Having heard vague unsubstantiated rumors of M.I.A. lip-synching through performances, I was quite ready to be let down, mentally prepared for a disappointing performance from a character who simply could not live up to the overexposed media-manufactured image that precedes her. My worries proved to be groundless, as M.I.A. delivered a fantastic enthralling set that was at once intimate, inspiring and powerfully authentic and original. This is no feeble Ashley Simpson-esque bubble-gum diva sleepwalking through songs someone else wrote, this is no industry-framed idol regurgitating the safe saccharine melodies of yesteryear, this is an artist whose success is not dependant on the fickle trends of the music industry’s bloated corporate machinations. M.I.A. is the real thing, a raw conscience channeling the patois of the streets over the hardest beats she can find, deftly using the tools of hip hop to shape her message and spread it concealed in what seems to be the most innocuous of places, a gibberish pop song. Regardless of how you feel about her lyrics and music, it’s difficult to not be enamored with the spirit that crafted such an ingenious ploy…
The actual show was quite an experience. I turned up at the sold-out Metro a little after 9 pm to find the main floor of the venue already densely packed with a tangibly excited crowd of hipsters. Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” was playing as I entered, a good omen for the start of any concert, and as I worked my way towards the front of the room the mix evolved to incorporate a few dancehall tracks and an eclectic assortment of garage and hip hop instrumentals. A hooded Diplo showed up discreetly onstage for the briefest of moments to test some gear, and then disappeared again for what seemed like an eternity. The mood of the crowd was anxious and suitably claustrophobic by the time Diplo returned to work his turntables and laptop, and after a few cursory tracks, he triggered a video sequence that preceded M.I.A.’s stage entrance. The video was a carefully cut version of a Tony Blair-George W. Bush joint press conference, humorously edited to where both nation’s leaders were repeatedly asserting that the only thing they could truly be sure of was “M.I.A.” The crowd loved it. Enter the divine feminine.
M.I.A. and her co-MC Cherry bound on stage, eliciting a roar from a suddenly exuberant crowd. M.I.A. is a vision of understated sequins and printed cloth, in denim and white sneakers and wielding a disarming smile, while Cherry rocks a small white tank top and short shorts. Both women are devastatingly gorgeous, in the way of shit-talking street sisters well-versed in fending off the unwanted advances of every thug within whistling distance. They grab their mics as Diplo drops the intro to “Pull Up the People” and the crowd begins to bounce. It’s immediately apparent that this crew is here to throw down anthems, and that this show is going to be a loud, celebratory sensory assault. After the first track is over, M.I.A. asks to be turned up, (“louder…more bass…I need to feel it”), and then they launch into another song, then another, each punctuated with memorable exchanges between the performers and the audience. The beats are compelling, the bass is invasive, the vocalists are on point and in sync, and the crowd is completely captivated by M.I.A. and the infectious energy of her music and character. Each chorus sounds like a call to arms and each break ripples through twitching, bopping heads and bodies straining to see the stage and the artists on it. By the end of her set, before the intro to “Galang” drops, it’s apparent to everyone in the room that M.I.A. is way more than just hype. Hidden within the weave of these beats and lyrics is a contagious drive for self-determination, a long-simmering desire for social justice, and an encoded invitation to a righteous form of empowerment. M.I.A. wants what any missing person seeks from her community once the forced stretch of isolation comes to an end: a gathering of complementary fragments, a chance to reconnect with like-minded souls, and above all, one ass-kicking party to bring home the love of those souls so potent they’re destined to spend their lives on the run…

Related Links:
www.miauk.com

Bombay Beatbox @ Sonotheque

2005-05-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

Hosted the monthly Asian Massive listening party at Sonotheque lounge last night. Very low turnout, but the people who showed up were determined to have a good time and were totally digging on the sounds and were getting down regardless of how empty the rest of the room was. Dropped a short set to open the evening and relinquished the tables to DJ Warp, who played a quick seamless series of tracks and then promptly departed to go watch a midnight screening of Star Wars. Adheesh Sathaye & George Lawler performed a SICK impromptu, unrehearsed jam between plugged in tablas and frame drums over one of Radiohiro's custom-made tracks, and Baseshot Scenario also incorporated some of his original beats into the mix via Ableton Live. It was a fun evening, I distributed an Afrobeat mix called "Fela Fallout & Fertile AfroFUNK", and also got a rare chance to dance my troubles away to the sweet sounds of Karsh Kale & Talvin Singh at high volume on Sonotheque's really well-crafted sound system. Radiohiro held down the decks for the whole evening, and there was a series of spontaneous jams between drummers & DJs. It was a very good vibe throughout, even though it was low key and most of my friends flaked and didn't show. The fewer of my friends who turn up, the more I'm obliged to actually work the room, introduce myself to strangers, and polish up on my promotional skills. It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn about myself and other people each time I dust off my game face and try to talk to folks about music... Working for Six Degrees Records is a lot like being an ambassador for musical traditions from all over the planet, and I'm blessed to be able to share these sounds with folks who are willing to listen beyond their media-manufactured comfort zones... The future belongs to those of us who understand that sound and vibrations are not hemmed in by arbitrary man-made borders...the beats cross all boundaries, the music permits us to transcend the limitations of all other human communication... Sounds idealistic, but yo - the vibrations are the only higher power I really trust anymore... & they've been good to me...
Do I weave the mix or does the mix weave me?
locked into identities, sound is a skeleton key
one love emerges from decaying cultural debris
beats form covenants across communities
setting vagabond listeners free...

Related Links:
www.sixdegreesrecords.com
www.radiohiro.com

Crate Digging 101

2005-05-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

Scored a $100 gift certificate to Coconuts Music from a low key DJ gig...
...spent an hour flipping through stacks of overpriced sounds...

Yo - the conscious way to buy records is direct from the artist or their record label, or from establishments that are NOT chain megastores, because by supporting independant retailers, music consumers keep the variety of what's available diverse and unaffected by the industry's pervasive monopolistic commercial agenda. Today I strayed from that path and bought a bunch of disks from Coconuts, the embodiment of a bloated corporate media outlet, whose world music selection was painfully small and woefully mislabeled. They also stuck it way in the back section of the store where no one ever goes, next to "New Age." So sad. Infuriating, really. But I ended up with some hot afro-centric albums for this mix I'm working on, look for a SOLID compilation of free Afro-Beat @ this month's Bombay Beatbox night @ Sonotheque. Here's what I picked up today:
Salif Keita - Remixes from Moffou (SICK!!!)
The Best of Fela Kuti - (2 Disk used set for $14 - DEAL!)
Angelique Kidjo - Black Ivory Soul
Ry Cooder & Ali Farka Toure - Talking Timbuktu
In the Mode - Roni Size/Reprazent
Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Journey of Dreams
Lo Fidelity Allstars - How To Operate With A Blown Mind
Nitin Sawhney - Prophecy
Talvin Singh presents Anokha (3rd time i've bought this...the best music always grows legs and walks...)

life's good when i have a stack of fresh sounds to explore...

Deconstructing Ragas

2005-05-07T17:04:00.000-05:00

Spent early Saturday afternoon in conversation with a few devoted students of the Indian classical music tradition. It seems this will soon become a regular monthly gathering, where we trade rhythmic breakdowns, scale secrets, and various techniques, perspectives, and motivations behind our pursual of this path we're all wandering down. (Or in my case, stumbling blindly down...) I'm hardly a posterchild for Indian Classical music, as I identify with the Bengali folk tradition, and consider my lineage to be rooted in Tagore, Nazrul, & Lalon Shah. However, the underlying structures and theory behind classical & folk music are the same, and it's always interesting and revitalizing to hear other people discuss different approaches to the process of composing music and recreating ragas... If you practice an art from another culture while living in a place where those skills are foreign, it is essential to trade metholodogies with whatever peers you can find in order to keep your skills up to par. Nothing grows in a vacuum, nothing develops and evolves without coming into contact with the conflict and positive resistance found in a community of like-minded people. Some reflections on a few hours spent listening to ragas and getting to know some truly awesome musicians:

As the diaspora disperses certain circles converge:
Each of us drawn towards the carriers of the teachings we heard:
Immersed in the deep folds of an unbroken line
Concerned for the preservation of what we’ve been taught to mind…

4 disappointed gurus from 3 different gharanas
in two distant ghettos adds up to one confused musician:
I’ve appropriated so many other cultures
I’ve irrevocably altered my desi-vision:
Cross-cultural smuggling missions
Require a willingness to bend tradition,
a desire to disregard the dogma concealed within discipline:
I can’t be a good disciple if my life is essentially about dissidence…

I will never claim to come from the Indian Classical tradition –
I am not respectful enough to do this the right way:
If I can’t find the time to practice I shouldn’t claim that I play
I leave the classical world to the superior students
Folks with higher degrees of commitment and more real skills
The souls clean enough to manifest their guruji’s will:
I am dirty Dhaka moonshine where they are ghee distilled…
__________________________________
yo, the conversation @ this gathering brought to mind one of my favorite pieces from Gitanjali, especially when we started talking about the Vedic concept of creation being born from vibrations, and the potential of sound to unify the various communities we come from...

peep this poem, circa 1913, by Rabindranath Tagore:
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake..."

Related Links:
www.nikhiltrivedi.com
www.2devotees.com

Barbershop Scenes - Milio's Hair Salon

2005-05-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

Stopped through Milio’s on Belmont to get my dreads tightened by Jeffery, aka PoofyHair, who is something of a living legend among Chicago hairdressers. He handed me an incredible book on the history of dreads to read while pulling my scalp tight with quick efficient fingers. Learned a new word courtesy of Alice Walker’s essay on the virtues of the locks lifestyle… The Hindu/Sanskrit term “Jatta,” which means Dreadlock, according to the Upanishads, and refers to a spiritual commitment made by an ascetic mendicant to adhere to a certain disciplined code of conduct as a consequence of venturing onto the path of emulating Lord Shiva’s divinely disordered ‘do… Quite a read…always good to know whose footsteps you’re following in… For anyone looking for a crazy beautiful new look from the hippest salon in town, you should hit up Milio’s. They’re right next to the Belmont Red Line stop, and their handiwork is to found on the most beautiful freaks and style setters you can find in the Chi…

Relevant Links:
www.milioshairsalon.com (959 W.Belmont Ave)
www.poofyhair.com

Marta Topferova Trio @ Preston Bradley Hall

2005-05-02T23:37:00.000-05:00

Last September during the 2004 Chicago World Music Festival my man Brian Keigher hooked me up with a free ticket to a Fado concert where the opening act was a trio led by an unforgettable Czech chanteuse crooning Latin lullabies. Experiencing Marta Topferova in concert is akin to closing your eyes and being transported to a South American plain at sunset, listening to the winds coalesce into a gently hypnotic music full of gypsy rhythms and earthy longings for a higher purpose. Tonight I watched her perform again with the inimitable Columbian Harpist Edmar Castaneda and backed by drummer Chris Eddleton beating out a lush foundation with jazz brushes. Her trio has now twice left me completely in awe of the transcendental awareness they channel while trading journeys of tone that cross tongues and trace continents. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been quite this enchanted by a purely acoustic ensemble. Marta Topferova, originally from Prague, delves deep into the Spanish folkloric songbook and emerges armed with a Cuatro, a fully nuanced Latin sensibility, and all the husky intensity of a young vaquera shapeshifter singing beside a raging camp fire on the pampas. She uses her voice to dance around the dark flaming duende supplied by the immensely talented Edmar Castaneda. who alongside surehanded Chris Eddleton lays down a tapestry of soft aggression on deftly manipulated harp strings. The combination is simply riveting and breathlessly beautiful, and FREE, courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center’s incredible taste & programming. Life is good when my city is gracious enough to bring me music like this…

Tonight is the second time I’ve heard Edmar Castaneda perform his instrumental song “El Camino” (the Road). The piece is an elaborate journey – a devastating display of virtuosity and restraint tempered with soulful mastery and crisp dynamics, and it left me and the rest of the audience in awe of the tremendous future awaiting this young talent. He is in the early stages of redefining the Harp as an instrument, in the manner that Stanley Jorden expanded the capacity of the guitar for Jazz musicians and Jimi Hendrix stretched the living repertoire of the blues to create his otherworldly Stratocaster styles. What Edmar Castaneda does with a harp is at the same level of accomplishment as those legendary names, and his unique method of combining multiple lines of counterpoint melodies seems to know no boundaries. His phrasing is exquisite, his accompaniment of Marta Topferova was always tasteful and distinctive, and he sounds like no one else. Perhaps that’s because no one else has the audacity to play something as darkly complex as Latin Jazz with a tool as inherently transparent as an upright Harp…

The set this ensemble played left me daydreaming & humbled, & smitten like a 13-year old schoolboy too shy to say hello. Some musicians are so beautiful that they radiate the grace they carry with them in every movement, and it bleeds through their every word. Marta Topferova is a singular soul cut from such cloth, a spirit split into multiple tongues who delivers deadpan gorgeous vocals with a casual ease that is both astonishing and comforting. If she sounds THIS good in an appropriated language, she is truly raising the bar for vocalists everywhere. After the concert ended I found that I couldn’t approach these musicians, I couldn’t bring myself to walk over and buy what they were selling and tell them how I felt. They had just given me a deep and profound gift with a timeless musical experience that I will remember and carry with me forever, and to profane our exchange with a feeble self-introductory greeting seemed blasphemous. So instead of being brave I walked out to Randolph & Michigan and headed for the train, with a head full of undiluted duende and my mind wandering down towards those sunny lands in the southern hemisphere…

Related Websites:
www.martatopferova.com

"Cha No Aji" or "Taste of Tea" - Film Screening @ Cafe Suron

2005-05-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of dining @ Café Suron this evening with my favorite table of foreign film fans. For those of you who have never sampled Café Suron’s exquisite cuisine, you are missing out on one of the best-kept secrets of Roger’s Park, a classy Persian restaurant filled with surreal artwork, fantastic conversation, the richest tea to be had in miles, and refined flavors infused with the distinct taste of family hospitality. The food is a sensual delight, the company is always pleasurable, and the movies are memorable classics worth viewing multiple times. We gather in Suron’s side room (which seats 10 family style) and feast while projecting the film onto the far wall. Hitchcock and Kurosawa and Polanski and Brando and Dunaway have all been featured, as well as forgotten treasures and quirky new work from around the world. We also screen short films by Stoptime341 and assorted other local filmmakers who care to show their work, and the evening generally unfolds into a satiating night that leaves everyone involved deeply contented. You should come check out a flick with us sometime…

So tonight we watched a recent Japanese film from Chicago’s 2005 International Film Fest that Chris Andrew has been talking up for months, entitled “Cha No Aji”,which translates as “Taste of Tea.” A 3-hour glimpse into the life of a truly absurd Japanese family. Although it was shot interestingly, and the visual style was bizarrely endearing, I thought it could have been stronger with some careful editing. Sometimes stories that take too long to tell lose the immediacy of their impact, and this particular movie arrived at its conclusion without clearly focusing on any one strand of the multiple quirky sub-plots woven into it. I suppose “Taste of Tea” was essentially about how a loving screwball grandfather’s passage into death was paralleled by a spiritual rebirth of each member of his family. But I sometimes lost sight of that larger theme while laughing at the episodes about the boy who shits on a yakuza skull, the biker chick debating the merits of breast implants, the teenage boy’s hormone-driven bike ride marathons, and the little girl’s surreal gigantic astral body-double looming through every shot she appeared in. Still, “Cha No Aji” is a humorous portrait of a really odd family, and well worth a screening if you have the time, the patience, and the right kind of DVD player… Regardless of the film’s pros and cons, I still got a chance to feast on Hawaiian Tilapia, crusted Salmon, Koubideh, Dill rice, Persian tea, and so much more…

Drop me a line if you’d like to know about the next Suron movie night…
Relevant Links:
www.cafesuron.com
www.stoptime341.com
http://www.sfindie.com/indiefest05/films/the_taste_of_tea.htm

Aerial Aloft Dance @ the Circus Factory

2005-04-30T22:13:00.000-05:00

I spent an hour tonight at the Circus Factory checking out the newest anti-gravity stylings of Shayna Swanson and her crew of aerialist aestheticians. It’s been well over a year since I’ve been in that space, a unique high-ceilinged hall that is the home of both a Wu Shu academy and Chicago’s own Midnight Circus, a beautiful crew of clowns, jugglers, and well-schooled acrobats that I was blessed to stumble across a few years ago. Took a few classes with Shayna @ the Circus Factory…woman had me dangling by my ankles off a spinning trapeze with rope burns like love bites on every exposed limb… The form requires an unwavering tolerance for vertigo that my stomach couldn’t handle and the experience pushed my willingness to part with skin for the sake of beauty. Still, the sight of bodies spinning in ultra-smooth spirals is one of the most exquisite visions dance has to offer an audience, and the sheer strength required of aerialists inspires respect. A form that demands refined physical attunement at all times weeds out everyone but the truly devoted spirits determined to move beyond natural physical limitations. Honestly, though, aerial dance wasn’t really quite for me… …I’m more of an earthbound stepper / flimsy capoerista than anything more evolved… But that doesn't mean i can't appreciate the beauty of other artist's chosen forms... to each their own…

5 Pieces from 5 Dancers under the collective title:
“variations on a single point”

1…on Kimberly Olsen-Wheeler’s “break free”
…calls to mind the Buddhist definition of Bardo:
“A gap, a suspension between states of stillness and hard flow…”
two seams of red fabric entwining an inverted torso
a shining white soul screaming sweetly for a sustained release
held rapt within a double-helix by dual blood-colored glow…
symmetrical extensions unfold, fast falls from grace then sequential climbs:
nine inch nails remixed with knot tricks draped in crimson cloth vines
where the fabric ends and the body begins the weight streams off
she weaves a tale out of hard positions that seem soft
concave spinal curvature caused by pull from above
she craves freedom from the commitments that gravity is composed of…

2…on Claudia Finn’s “Fist”
pole issues and self-punishment publicly conducted in loud silence
the feminine receptive’s firsthand knowledge of manufactured violence
rope friction and coping with self-scripted fictions
what is proud to be unfettered gets wrapped in restrictions
there is no real freedom that is not struggled for
the body is repeatedly split along axis until it yields the hardcore
the cold steel feel of randomly encountered parts charts the evolution of confrontational art
there is a certain peace to be found by purging anger’s pollution from the heart…

3…on Shayna Swanson’s “anti-“
…godDAMN this girl’s got GUNS…
everytime she flexes my first impulse is to RUN…
a slow deliberate tango, a dancer's duet with a static trapeze
a professional’s nonchalance, a partner’s familiar ease
deep spirals script signatures using this woman’s frame
even after she stops spinning her tracings remain
witness the pain body awareness of an elevated soul
with this blackness as backdrop she navigates higher thresholds
skin stripped raw revealing rippled layers of tone
dangling from clenched claws, an skeletal epic inked by linked bones
hurt replaced with grace and a curling taint of defiance
senses swirling around the bittersweet taste of a furious self-reliance…

4…on Jenn Liang’s “out of the daily grind”
logical frames born from hard cubicle angles
multiple levels & flat planes & accessories that dangle
reinforcing negotiable bonds within whitewashed walls
building ties with skilled hands, a set of programs installed
a squarish peg forced into an oblong hole
the status quo structure determines everyone’s role
whole weeks wasted waiting for the clock to escape
the captive mind daydreams a beyond that the body makes…

5…on Gail Coover’s “goddess ascending”
ancient psalms & clean white robes
glittery hair above wide eyes that probe
the angelic layer thrown aside to reveal day-glow stitching
a swift and vicious alteration – criminally deliberate archetype switching
from the unspoiled virgin to blood streaks etched in lines down legs
from a vision of innocence to a spectacle of Gaia’s monthly dregs
the theatrical impact transcends the crafty skills
the meaning delivered marinated & impeccably distilled
a priestess in profile working the magic of the veil
a Technicolor temple concealed behind an impossibly idealistic pale
leave behind the temporary stigma of the stains
& the strength of the immortal awareness remains…

Related Links:
www.aerialgirl.com
www.midnightcircus.net

Bombay Beatbox @ Sonotheque 4-20-05

2005-04-20T23:57:00.000-05:00

In April 2004, when I first started working for Six Degrees Records, I was told to go check out DJ Warp & Radiohiro, aka Bombay Beatbox, who have been holding down the Asian Massive tip in Chicago for as long as drum n' bass has been emerging from the Indian diaspora. They turned out to be the most gracious and cosmopolitan music collectors I've ever met, and a year after I first begain promoting their night, I'm blessed to now spin the early set with them at the monthly Bombay Beatbox showcase at Sonotheque. It's usually quite an evening, and although we don't have the highest turnout, I do believe we drop some of the most exquisite music to be found in the city. This month was no exception...
It was really good to see a whole bunch of my long lost friends who came out to support us, kick back a few drinks, and chill while digging on the newest worldbeat electronica. What was exciting and a little different about this month's showcase was that we squeezed in a small but potent improvised set of live Tablas vs. Turntable scratching over original beats provided by Bombay Beatbox's resident VJ Baseshot Scenario, aka Brandon Ross. The idea was Adheesh Sathaye's, an accomplished producer and tabla player who is a member of San Francisco's notorious Dhamaal Sound System, perhaps the largest and most successful desi musical collective in the USA. I was a little scared things might go horribly wrong with our unrehearsed Tabla vs. Turntable segment, but it went surprisingly well and I think everyone involved really had fun. The crowd dug it too, so I guess we'll be doing a segment like it in the months to come. Brian & Matt (DJ Warp & Radiohiro) have been totally supportive of opening up the scene for more opportunities to spread the Asian Massive gospel, and considering their list of friends and contacts, I have faith that this city will evolve into another central locus for the electronic desi aesthetic. Anyone who hears Radiohiro's junglist tabla tracks is already aware of the fact that Chicago has its own distinct Asian Massive sound, equally as valid as New York's or San Francisco's or Birmingham's. It is, however, still in the process of forming, and hopefully in the months to come, while Adheesh still graces us with his presence, we can begin to coalesce from a crew into a full-fledged midwest MOVEMENT with the help of our touring friends like Karsh Kale and Six Degrees' MIDIval PunditZ. If we continue to have nights like tonight, things are looking up for the Chicago's fledgling Asian Massive community...

Related Links:
www.radiohiro.com

Africa Hi-Fi @ Sonotheque

2005-04-15T23:59:00.000-05:00

Another late Friday night spent at Sonotheque listening to the strains of Ron Trent's DJ selections while tabling for Sonia Hassan, my two favorite Afro-centric spirits in the city of Chi. Tonight Africa Hi-Fi featured guest DJ MKL, a Belize-born NYC cat who came armed with some incredible silk-screened shirts to sell, a fistful of vinyl to hustle, and a whole bunch of records to drop into what was a cohesive mix of old and new afrobeat. I had a real good time, flirted with a fine sister who was flattering enough to come talk to me while all the rest of the weekend warriors were busy getting sloshed to release themselves from what's been a long, stressful week. 4 hours spent in little room with a wall full of Six Degrees posters, a table full of CDs & flyers, and a listening station equipped with MKL's album "3 Generations walking." I had a good time, as always, met a bunch of cool folks, sold a decent amount of music... Africa Hi-Fi brings out the usual Friday night fiends looking for hook-ups and quick drunks but also draws a regular crowd of beautiful folks from Ron & Sonia's circle of friends, good people committed to the music and focused on the intentions underlying the concept of this monthly gathering. Since I was away from the speakers I couldn't really fully appreciate the mix, but Ron routinely drops a moving set of sounds that is both funky and conscious, which can be surprisingly hard to find in the hedonistic world of House music. But Ron is so much more than just another House DJ, and he's seriously altered my approach to spinning records since I met him last year. Hearing him throw down for a Friday-night crowd once a month has been really inspiring, and I'm definitely privileged to watch and learn from the best how to rock a crowd till they bounce... Ron's a respository for all things funky and 'fro-oriented, and he's a great foil for the serious & imposing beauty Sonia H. brings to the mix each month. They make quite a team, and I'm starting to really need the monthly fix of dub & plantains & dark refined love I receive each month at Africa Hi-Fi... If y'all aren't doing anything on Friday, May 20th, and are looking for a good place to get down, come check out Africa Hi-Fi's "Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa" evening, which features the sounds from the Afro Counter Culture of the 1970's...

Related Links:
www.prescriptionworld.org
www.lionmusic.com
www.sonotheque.net

Chöying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts @ Preston Bradley Hall...

2005-04-15T20:55:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of spending a little over an hour tonight listening to the renowned Tibetan Buddhist nun Chöying Drolma as she sang mantras and northern Indian melodies over a cinematic landscape of electronica provided by Steve Tibbetts on guitar and percussionist Marc Anderson. The glow emanating from her shaved head and the overpowering clarity of her focused chants took me back to Nepal…I closed my eyes and was transported to the Himalayan foothills I traversed in my adolescence, vistas of such serene beauty and magnitude that they dwarf human pretensions and put all the feeble posturing of our species into perspective. What I heard tonight was the sound of higher ground, the songs of a lineage of teachers descending from the spiritual plateaus of Tibet to illuminate the right path to grace for anyone caught up in the shadowy karmic limbo of materialistic concerns. Set against the backdrop of Steve Tibbett’s carefully orchestrated washes of volume and tone, and framed by the muted polyrhythms of Marc Anderson’s restrained percussive wanderings, Chöying’s voice opened a window to a tangible state of exaltation, the blissfully detached view available to those who have labored hard to arrive at the top of a mountain, who look down with affection at the stepping stones of the prolonged circuitous journey that led them to the vantage point at which they stand...

The crowd was middle-aged, mostly, but with a few gloriously blissed out 2-5 year olds running around the stage while gazing up at the performers with all the wide-eyed wonder of unadulterated innocence. The spectacle itself was as unique as the sound – Marc Anderson’s drum rig alone was an incredible combination of wood, steel, and skin, as doumbeks, tablas, and assorted shakers and chimes were all arrayed beneath a framed set of thick, tuned metallic plates that he played upon with soft mallets. Chöying Drolma sat elevated in the middle back of the stage, while Steve Tibbetts sat at the right side with a complex set of foot pedals linked together at his feet. During a break in the show, as the sound folks attempted to correct a monitor problem, Chöying briefly described her motivations in “traveling around and performing in blues bars with two men,” and how such a lifestyle fit into the greater scheme of her life. The performance proceeds she receives from touring and the sale of the “Selwa” record go towards funding a school for female Buddhist nuns in Nepal, where she is part of a respected lineage of teachers devoted to educating women devoted to the path of spiritual enlightenment. She also briefly touched on the idea of ego-less music, which is such a different approach to the process of making art from most Western methodologies. Most music is so rooted in the idea of SELF and personal identity that it is incapable of being divorced from the human delivering it. These musicians, however, were on a much different tip, seeking to build a repertoire of music that is tapped into a separate realm of awareness. You could hear the transparency she was talking about in her vocals, a channeling of sorts whereby she accessed a much older energy by becoming a vessel and living incarnation of the vibrations of the men and women who have sung these mantras in earlier generations. There is a certain kind of necromancy involved in repeating mantras, those who have previously invested their energy into the words arrive each time they are repeated anew, and their undeniable presence colors the experience of the sound. I don’t know much about the theoretical underpinnings of Buddhist music, but after soaking in music as rich as this, I look forward to learning more. For anyone interested in some clear focused sounds to accompany Yoga or meditation, I highly recommend Chöying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts latest album, “Selwa”, which can be found along with more about the artists at the Six Degrees Records website. Check out their work for an auditory glimpse of the breathtaking beauty of the Himalayan plateaus…

Related Links:
http://www.sixdegreesrecords.com/artists.php?artist=Ch%F6ying_Drolma_%5Bamp%5D_Steve_Tibbetts

Cyro Baptista & Beat the Donkey @ Hot House

2005-04-07T21:57:00.000-05:00

Scored two free tickets to Hot House via a Flavorpill contest! Ya gotta love anyone who will give you free tix just for knowing random music trivia...
Anyhow, my friends Hillary & Geoff wanted to check this show out as well, since they were already familiar with the ridiculous phenomenon known as "Beat the Donkey," so we headed down to Hot House together for what would prove to be a truly great show. We missed Chicago Samba, the opening band, because we arrived late, but Cyro Baptista and his rather large group of cohorts were busy setting up their incredibly elaborate stage rig. Here's some of the toys this group put to use over the course of the show:
A Day-Glow PVC Pipe device straight out of a Blue Man Group performance
A plugged in melodica
A samurai sword
A tap dancer
A set of timpanis
A set of Djembes
A full Drum Kit
A set of rigged-up original drums operated by levers and pedals
A grand piano
An organ
And more assorted insanity that I can't remember.

With vocals in Portuguese (Cyro Baptista was born and raised in Brazil before he became a New Yorker), Japanese, & English, and a formidable drum-core like rhythmic assault, this group was a lot of fun to watch and listen to. They came out all waving wind wands and then stretched out piece by piece into a stretched set of jams that spotlighted various members of the group, from the curly-haired pianist to the jumpy drummer to the tap dancing, samurai-sword wielding percussionist, to the smiling dreadlocked Djembe player from Rio. Equal parts performance art and jam session, I was really happy to have had the chance to experience the hysterical glee that characterized "Beat the Donkey." With a deeply Brazilian approach to combining rhythmic elements, this ensemble still managed to incorporate some free jazz, some deep funk, some raw blues, and some absolutely nutty polyrhythms into what was a most enjoyable concert. As Hot House was the designated venue for the afterparty to Widespread Panic's earlier performance this evening, the crowd was full of happy hippy types doing that disctintly phish-like dancing. It's hard to argue with a bunch of dreadlocked types determined to have fun, and I'm happy to know that I'm no so damn old as to try... Cyro & Beat the Donkey took us where they wanted to go, and I'm glad I got the chance to admire the view...

Bill Laswell's Worldbeat Soundsystem/Musical Freezone @ WTTW

2005-04-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

I won't even attempt to try and summarize this concert in words. Bill Laswell was asked to do a TV taping for Public Television's Soundstage program, and so he rounded up a ridiculous crew of his friends and partners in crime and then descended on Chicago's WTTW TV studio with the intention of recording a show for posterity documenting the pervasive overlap found between progressive worldbeat artists. I was one of 200 or so lucky folks to score a free ticket to this show, and it was simply overwhelming. Here's a list of all the artists that shared that stage over the course of 3 unbelievable hours:
Zakir Hussain
Pharoah Sanders
Pete Cosey
Hamid Drake
Nils Petter Molvaer
Buckethead
Brain
Toshinori Kondo
Bootsy Collins
Karsh Kale
DJ Disk
Grandmixer DXT
Ustad Sultan Khan
Selim Merchant
Foday Musa Suso
Aiyb Dieng
& Bill Laswell

My personal highlight was when Bootsy Collins made a loud theatrical entrance towards the end of the show, alongside his brother Catfish who was dressed in a clown suit & a big rubber prosthetic nose, and then they proceeded to wander the through the crowd getting folks riled up and echoing the refrain: "Keep That Funk Alive!" In fact, when Bootsy first climbed off the stage, he stood on my chair, put is hand on my head, shook his ass in my face, and started chanting: "Ain't No Kinda Party Like a Laswell Party Cause a Laswell Party Don't STOP..."
While I'm sure Bootsy has probably done that plenty of times to plenty of people, the proximity of it to me made me go home and immediately throw down some basslines in the vain hopes that perhaps the infinite funk the Collins brothers carry might be contagious by touch... Regardless, though, that TV taping was INSANE. Look out for the PBS screening of "Bill Laswell's Musical Freezone" whenever it comes out. It was the nuttiest gathering of legends I've ever seen on the same stage, and it's going to take me a long time to digest all the music that went down...

Tabla Beat Science @ House of Blues, Chicago

2005-04-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

The seekers begin to gather in the shadows of the Marina Towers, converging from all directions to the north bank of the Chicago river. The crowd arrives in twos and threes, with the occasional loner strolling up amidst the multitude of cabs and cars ascending the spiral incline that marks the entrance to the House of Blues. There is a certain excited expectancy in the step of those who have come on foot, their approach is marked with body language that speaks volumes about how the promise of rhythm manifests in those who find their meanings in music. The crowd is an interesting cocktail - brown skins and white dreads, turbaned professionals, middle aged first generation immigrants, DJs and musicians of all creeds and colors, blissed out bourgeois fashionistas, respectable bespectacled minds, and a veritable horde of fine desi women who I'd like to take home to meet my mother. All kinds of folks have turned up. Walking the main floor of the concert hall, you sense the generations of listeners around you - the depth of their appreciation is tangible. Next to you is a refined connoisseur who was introduced to Zakir Hussain's recordings via Shakti in the 1970’s, and in front of you is a bobbing 19 year-old college student enraptured by the communion unfolding in front of her eyes. It's a good mix of people, with a collective awareness that reaches far beyond the limits of any single culture. The crowd is a vivid tapestry of overlapping languages and schools of thought, all of us anticipating an experience that will reconfigure our notions of musical identity.
DJ Warp and Radiohiro ease into the evening with reggae cuts and the occasional throbbing Asian underground classic. Long a fixture on the Chicago music scene, they're old hands at the task of warming up a crowd, both DJs equally adept at throwing down furious drum n’bass sets or seducing a fickle Chicago audience with lush international soundscapes. Their selection of sounds this evening is down tempo and deliberately restrained, but ripe with the prospect of the legends soon to grace the stage. The crowd is anxious, as friends seek out their companions and try to locate the optimal viewing spots from around the concert hall. The room begins to feel full.
At 9:45 the curtains draw back to reveal a stage filled with Abyssinia Infinite, a motley ensemble of veteran musicians whose 2003 release “Zion Roots” infuses traditional Ethiopian songs with African gospel stylings and impeccable production techniques. Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw holds court in the center of the stage, smiles out a benediction at the audience, and then begins to sing over a lush atmospheric bed of horns, keys, and congas. There is a gravity to Gigi's vocals that is ethereal yet earthy, she sings of Abyssinia in its own ancient tongues, the languages of Amharic and Agewna, with the occasional English lyric woven into the mix. Gigi’s vocal inflections are rooted in the traditional music of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and when framed against this ensemble’s organic percussion and electronic washes of noise, she sounds like a genuine Nubian priestess equipped with a vision for the digital era. After a few minutes of spacious, patient exposition by Gigi and her cohorts, Bill Laswell turns up on stage to drop the bass into the mix. He straps his instrument on, paces a quick circuit, then promptly starts to riff with the incomparable Hamid Drake, who's holding down the core beat on a drum kit. The two kick out a heavy-handed groove, which evolves from song to song into an entire set of intense, penetrating afro-funk. The crowd soaks up the refined blend of Abyssinia Infinite, as the bass embraces the main floor from the bottom up and the band begins to stretch out and trade solos. The spectacle is almost as dizzying as the sound.
A few tracks into the set a guest artist appears on the right side of the stage, wielding a white Gibson Les Paul guitar and with a freakish Mike Myers mask concealing his entire face. This is the notorious Buckethead, a sought-after session musician and a revered underground performer, and he makes several quick cameos over the course of the evening to provide an array of tightly compressed guitar solos. Buckethead leaves a deep visual and auditory impression, but he is hardly the only memorable face in this cast of characters. My gaze is drawn towards the tenor saxophonist, an inscrutably intense elder black man with ancient eyes, a high forehead framed by wisps of frizzy white hair, and an aura of severity and grace about him. Gigi introduces him a few songs later, after a handful of incredible solos, and it turns out this horn player is the jazz patriarch Pharaoh Sanders. He wasn't even listed on the bill, but apparently Bill Laswell, with the most enviable rolodex of any producer on the planet, and can summon forth quite a cast to sit in with his band at the touch of a dial. The rest of Abyssinia Infinite’s set goes by in a blur of solos and heavy bass textures, and they depart the stage to resounding applause from an enthralled crowd. People are still arriving.
When the curtains part again the members of Tabla Beat Science are spread out across the stage in staggered layers and small risers. The band weaves together its inimitable layers of rhythm and tone, slowly at first, and then picking up pace as each instrument introduces itself into the conversation. Ustad Sultan Khan is an immediate stage presence, his nuanced vocal flights handily paired with intricately bowed sarangi phrases that escalate into frenzied stabbing climaxes. Karsh Kale beats out a deft and elaborate rhythmic skeleton, which Zakir Hussain and DJ disk explore while trading fills and extended phrases. Selim Merchant colors the space with lush washes of texture from his keyboards, while Bill Laswell toys with his pedals and projects a tangible wall of bass into the room that you can feel filling the very pores of your skin. Hours after the show I can still feel the bass in me, a residual energy that refuses to let my body surrender easily to the folds of sleep. Some sounds leave traces of themselves embedded so deep that your reaction to their vitality is delayed, and only becomes apparent after the music has ceased. So it is with Laswell’s bass: he dishes it out in wave after wave of noise that you initially perceive from the bottom up, but which your mind must process later, after the immediacy wears off…
The concert is filled with highlights, conversational exchanges, calls and responses, dynamic shifts and solos that cumulatively comprise an incredible convergence of musical paths. When you have masters of this capacity trading techniques and skills with each other, the alchemy is fluid, inevitable, and undeniable. Over the course of the evening the mood in the room shifts, as everyone is swept up and savoring the caliber of the skills bouncing around the room. The band is having fun as well, obviously relishing the chance to play with old friends they rarely perform with. Gigi and Zakir trade 8 bars of bol-scatting in between giggles. Dj Disc, Karsh, & Zakir barter blistering breakbeats. Ustad Sultan Khan and Gigi vocalize careful overlapping harmonies. Laswell and Buckethead push the thresholds of tone and volume. By the time the group begins the first phrases of "Satellite (Show me the worth of the world)", most of the crowd is riveted. The worth of the world seems to be unfolding before our eyes, in the shapes of these masterful musicians refuting the limitations of their human differences in favor of pushing the boundaries of community beyond the constraints of language and culture. In a world thick with the fragmented static of warring ideas and confused civilizations, it is revitalizing to experience the simple clarity that comes from people united in rhythm, regardless of their races, their creeds, or their origins. Tabla Beat Science represents a musical culmination that dispenses with centuries of cultural distrust and misunderstanding in favor of pursuing a solidarity born from the evolved awareness that we all ultimately emerged from the same primordial rhythms.

Jorane & Azita @ Hot House

2005-04-02T23:50:00.000-06:00

Spent early Saturday evening at Hot House, doing some merchandising for Six Degrees Records at a show featuring Jorane, an incredible French-Canadian singer songwriter who rocks a cello like no one I've ever come across. I've been listening to her new album "The You and the Now" a lot over the course of the last month, it's a moody masterpiece filled with beautiful vocals and evocative textures, and I was looking forward to seeing her perform tonight. Unfortunately I got stuck in the second room away from the stage because I was selling her album, so all I could really see was a spotlighted profile through an occasionally obstructed door. Still, I saw enough, and caught enough of the audio to discern a little about how her live show differs from her studio efforts. She threw down an impressive set, clearly outperforming Azita, the headliner, who came on after her and spent most of the rest of the evening commenting on the nuances of performing while sloshed... I dunno, man... Anyone can croon a song while drunk, it takes something else to be sober and still deliver for a crowd of unconvinced strangers. Jorane definitely left the audience with something to think about, turning out a collection of well-arranged, spacious songs both solo and alongside her guitarist Simon. Although it was a rather small crowd for Hot House, Jorane still sold a bunch of albums, which is always a good sign that people do in fact like what they hear, even if there aren't that many of them...
Since I was working a table on behalf of her management, I had the opportunity later in the night to meet Jorane and her road manager Brendon & guitarist Simon. A very cool crew of artists, I picked up some tips on albums to buy (while trading notes about playing pedal steel guitar, Brendon suggested I get a copy of Robert Randolph's album "Sacred Steel") and got a chance to give Jorane some lyrics I wrote while listening to her music. I've been wanting to work with a cellist for years, and her aesthetic is so unique that I really can't think of anyone more appropriate. She also informed me that "Fu" in French means "crazy", which fits more than I care to admit. It was nice to meet the personality behind the music, she was smaller in stature than I thought she'd be but virtually glowing with vitality and the infinite potential of a youthful beauty-seeker. Quite the looker, too, it's hard not to be enchanted with a talented avante-gard artist who can riff like a fiend and sing like an angel. I hope to run into Jorane and her crew again in the near future, as she begins her conquest of all those lands south of the Canadian border...

Related Links:
www.jorane.com