“Wide open.” That’s how John Medeski describes his bandmates’ musical sensibilities, the attitude he seeks in himself, and the spirit of musical adventure he, Billy Martin and Jeff Wood have pursued for two decades. On Saturday, October 6th at 7:30pm, Medeski Martin & Wood will perform a special acoustic performance at The College of Saint Rose, in the Kathleen McManus Picotte Recital Hall, located in the Massry Center for the Arts. Tickets are $30 each and may be purchased online.
photo by Christopher Decotis
Medeski, Martin and Wood’s amalgam of jazz, funk, “avant-noise” and other musical currents and impulses is nearly impossible to classify. Medeski’s keyboard excursions, Chris Wood’s hard-charging bass lines and Billy Martin’s supple, danceable beats have come to resemble a single organism, moving gracefully between genre-defying compositions and expansive improvisation atop a relentless groove.
Though the “jazz spirit,” as they like to call it, has been ever-present in their sonic voyages, Medeski Martin & Wood have won over a substantial audience that rarely responds to instrumental music. Their club and festival appearances are packed with alternative-rock lovers as well as jam-band aficionados and jazz heads. The band’s onstage adventurousness sparked an experimental approach to recording as well – as on 1996’s solar-powered Shack-Man, recorded in a plywood shack amid the mango trees and plumerias on Hawaii’s Big Island (and featuring Martin’s artwork on its cover); the funked-out 1998 Blue Note disc Combustication, which enlisted two radically different engineers to create complementary sonic approaches; the acoustic live set Tonic (2000), recorded in New York, and its plugged-in twin, 2001’s Electric Tonic; 2004’s End of the World Party (Just in Case), produced by John King of the Dust Brothers; their two collaborations with guitarist John Scofield, A Go Go (1998) and OutLouder (2006, under the name Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood); the 2008 children’s record Let’s Go Everywhere; and the 2008-09 Radiolarian series, a trilogy of albums generated according to a strict policy of “Write > Tour > Record > Repeat,” as the band noted in an online announcement. They’ve also founded and run their own label, Indirecto.
The band members also have kept things fresh by pursuing scores of other projects. Medeski produced two albums by the Wood Brothers, Chris Wood’s rootsy partnership with his brother, Oliver, as well as work by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and performed as a solo pianist. He and Martin also have performed and recorded as the duo Mago.
Martin, for his part, has recorded several solo discs and an album of breakbeats (under his own name and as Illy B), collaborated with DJ Logic, DJ Spooky, Dave Burrell and other artists, authored a book, pursued his own visual art, and produced and directed “Fly in a Bottle,” a feature-length documentary about the making of the Radiolarian series.
The Wood Brothers have released three LPs and an EP of cover songs and toured with the likes of Zac Brown Band, Levon Helm, Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers and k.d. lang.
We’ll see you at the show on October 6th at 7:30 for this intimate performance.
Jimkata embarked on their ‘Die Digital’ Fall Tour last week and made a stop in Albany at Red Square to get things rolling, and opener Dirty Paris was a perfect selection as their electronic dance music finds a great groove and sticks with it, not looking for an easy out. Take a song and they’ll make a rager of it, and damn well at that. You can get lost in their jams for the longest time before the jam changes tempo and you’re catching up to pace. Dirty Paris is traveling and writing but expect them to be back in Albany and surrounding areas as winter approaches.
Jimkata drew quite a crowd for a Thursday and treated the crowd to much of their new albumDieDigitaland some classics. The intro bled into “Release” followed by a great duo in “Feed”->”Chalice”. “Fiction” was an immense highlight, with Eric shredding through a jam, an extended explosion of Super Mario coins. Intense, thorough and patient jams could be found in LegoLand, Electronic Stone and Chainstore. An encore of an older number, “One to Ten” was met with great thanks after the show from the crowd, while “Die Digital” makes the album version seem basic by comparison; this song mutates into a huge set closer live. While Die Digital is a great album, live > studio, and that’s a good thing.
Of note, the band has some impressive lighting, especially for an up and coming band. In the back of Red Square, the back wall was lit with rows of small twinkling LED lights that moved in waves as a perfect accent to the music, while the low front stage lights gave the band their own 5th member, in sync throughout the show.
Setlist: Intro, Release, Feed->Chalice, Punches->Fiction, Niteshade->When The Day Comes, Legoland, Place of Dreams, Electronic Stone, American Cars, Chainstore
Philly-based Brothers Past returns to Albany this Friday night, September 28th with Timbre Coup. This four piece jamtronica band has been described by The New York Press as “the square-jawed, bastard child of Pink Floyd with a gigantic stage show.” Summing up their music with a few catchy adjectives won’t do them justice though… their songs vary in style and crossover many genres. You’ll just have to judge for yourself.
Timbre Coup, Albany’s favorite prog-rock act, has had a very busy summer, holding an awesome stage presence at festivals such as Catskill Chill, moe.down, Cabinfest, Strangecreek, and Bellstock. Pronounced “tam-ber koo” (see: music theory), this talented four piece experiments with crazy time signatures and tripped out experimental prog-rocky funky beats that get you off your ass and spinning around.
Valentines (upstairs) is located at 17 New Scotland Ave in Albany and the show is 18+. Doors are at 8 pm with Timbre Coup taking the stage at 9:30 pm and Brothers Past at 11pm.
Early afternoon is a tough time to get moving and grooving, but that didn’t stop the masses from arriving on Pearl St. in Albany. Once again for 2012, WEQX presented the day-long street festival, Pearlpalooza, with Cobblestone allies led into the downtown urban scape where high-rise brick and mortar buildings provided a periphery to the event. There were two stages located at each end of the street. The EQX Main stage was reserved for the national acts and the second stage was reserved for the popular local acts.
On a breezy and sunny, but still warm autumn day, the music hit the walls of the buildings and fell to jovial ears. The time slots for the bands to play were balanced so that not one artist would be missed. I arrived just in time to grab a spot for Eastbound Jesus. In spite of the early time slot, they had amassed large crowd in front. Now becoming an Albany area staple, they have gained steam and a large following. Giving the shortened time, as most festivals require, their truncated set still allowed for the boys to weave in and out of a mix of new songs and familiar hits. Eastbound Jesus played crowd favorites, “Holy Smokes!” and “Gonna Go Down.”
Mirk is a seven-piece outfit mostly composed of hip-hop songs that teased every other genre of music. Each song hit on just something a little different, with horns, a keyboardist and electric instruments; Mirk leaves room for a variety of sound. Wild Adriatic played a bit of rock and roll and closed out with a crowd sing-a-long,” With A Little Help From my Friends.”
The EQX Main Stage included mostly pop artists that fit the bill of radio friendly electronic acts. Robert Delong takes his drum kit, gaming unit and laptops and fuses electro-beats with rock and roll. Most notable were his vocals. Local turned national artist, Phantogram enjoyed playing to their hometown fans with their electronic rock and roll beats. A rainstorm rolled in at around 6:30 pm when Conehead Buddha was set to play the small stage, but the rain began to saturate their equipment and they only made it through a few songs. Meanwhile, the rain delayed headliners, Matt & Kim, but that didn’t stop the busting-at-the-seems crowd from chanting, “Matt and Kim.” The duo catered to their crowd in big ways. The boy/girl team popped on stage to Jay-Z and Alicia Key’s, “Empire State of Mind,” wielding drumsticks like Kim was a ninja and elevating themselves above the crowd ramping up the fans. Much of their set included covers and sing-a-longs such as Biz Markie’s, “Just a Friend.” The duo incorporated their instrumental talents on drums and keys into fast tempo electronic beats with much gusto and energy. The team made their on stage workout seem effortless.
Overall, there was a variety of music and therefore something for everyone. One fan in the crowd stated how she enjoyed that it wasn’t overly populated with the college kids. The most enjoyable aspect was the kid friendly atmosphere in spite of the bar-lined street.
Amid a circus of DJs, 20-somethings with computers and dubstep bands, the art of live electronica has been lost. The creation of electronic dance music by a band and not solely on a computer, is an art form few have mastered. Kraftwerk, Justice, Simon Posford, The Chemical Brothers, Sound Tribe Sector 9 and the Disco Biscuits are in a class of their own. However, from the decreased touring schedule of the latter has grown a 2004 side project that has taken itself and audiences to new heights in the development of live electronic music. Conspirator, fresh off the release of their live album Unlocked: Live from the Georgia Theater, tour 60 or more shows a year from coast to coast, opening the door for the band to make a case as the best live electronic touring act in America today. Numerous festival appearances this summer will likely cement this journey that founding Biscuits’ Aron Magner and Marc Brownstein (who joins us for an interview) has taken with guitarist Chris Michetti and a rotating cast of drummers.
While the show itself was outstanding and a cadre of intensely dancing fans came to check out Dirty Paris and Blockhead open up, the interview with Marc Brownstein shed light on Conspirator, electronic music, and the current state of The Disco Biscuits. Marc said at one point, ‘It’s great to be inAlbany’, even though we were in Clifton Park. This just goes to show how big the Albany music scene is, stretching to Troy and points north, meeting up with the high peaks sounds of Saratoga.
Setlist: So Much More > Step Inside, Hands Up, Countash > Feed the Wolf >Brooklyn Bridge> Hard Acid > Commercial Amen > Caves > Orch Theme > Liquid Sawyer, Gypsy Lane, Neck Romancer E: Fascinate
Interview with Marc Brownstein:
Your new live album, Unlocked: Live from the Georgia Theater was released recently. What is it about the creation of live electronic music that leads to such a kinetic response from the crowd?
Electronic music in general gets a kinetic response from the crowd. Doing it live just brings in that element of surprise, and that’s the thing that we’ve always been used to having in our world, so that’s one thing that I’m not ready to give up and moving into just playing electronic music with an element of surprise in there. You can create it DJing for sure without instruments; really great DJs are great because they construct their sets the way the great bands of all time have constructed their sets and they’ve made the show flow through, they’ll play half of one song then go into another song then maybe they’ll bring in a little piece of one song over another song, and its like they’re doing the same stuff at this point that the great jambands did back in the day, and still do.
What is the origin of the band name Conspirator?
It’s mostly about collaboration. The whole idea was just to collaborate with everyone out there that we know, Joe Russo to the guys from Umphrey’s to the different drummers we’ve used, Lotus, The New Deal, KJ SAWKA and Adam Dietch. It’s about Aron and I having the chance to bring in these different influences and elements over the tracks that we produce and interpret them differently with different musicians.
There are quite a few songs that stretch from Conspirator’s debut album, The Key, have been played by The Disco Biscuits as well. Is there a difference between playing them with two different bands, even though two members are common between them?
It depends on the song. For Portal (to an Empty Head), the difference is that we’re not singing but we’re playing without any tracks, but (Digital) Buddha we’re not singing but we’re playing a whole different version, a computerized version of it and made a track for it. We made a computerized backtrack of Buddha and broke it up, it can be triggered and its totally loose, we’re not stuck on it, we can use it and improvise with it and tweak it, but it makes them completely different from the Buddha that we play in the Biscuits. And then there’s the ones in the Biscuits that we do without any track like Commercial (Amen) or Liquid Handcuffs or Orch Theme but over in Conspirator we play them the way they were written. In the Biscuits we interpret these electronic songs into rock form but in Conspirator we’re playing them as electronic tracks and adding rock instruments to that but staying true to the fact that they’re electronic tracks.
What are the origins of Orch Theme? How did the song develop into such a slow building aria?
The song was named for the sound on the keyboard that it’s based around, so the actual sound of the theme of OrchTheme was called orch theme on the computer so he (Aron Magner) named the song after the sound, which happens sometimes. It’s not the first time its happened where a sound has dictated the name of the track; after all it is music.
So Chris (DJ Omen) and Aron wrote the theme together, then we brought it into the Biscuits, dropped everything except that Orch Theme sound and then we turned it into what we do, which is stretch it the fuck out. Sometimes we even play it without ever playing the theme, we’ve actually put it on the setlist and just played through the whole entire thing and never got to the theme and just left it and went somewhere else. Then at the end of the show we’ll be like ‘we never played that’, and we just got so far out in the jam that we felt like the actual song didn’t even get played.
(After the show, I asked Aron Magner for his take on the origins of Orch Theme and he gave some more details to the creation of the song)
“Orch theme I wrote in 2005 and at that time Lord of the Rings was the best thing ever, as it still is right now. I was working in the studio with DJ Omen and I was wondering if we could make some thematic and cinematic music, I wanted it to sound like electronic, like the orcs are coming in. as I was browsing through patches, I was like ‘oh my god!’, ‘Orch theme’. The motif is trying to say orchestra theme because it has layers and layers, the bottom half of the keyboard has tympanis and the upper half has violas and in between has brass, there are 36 instruments laid out throughout the keyboard that double each other depending on their range so that’s the Orch Theme. So that’s how it came about.”
Recently, electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk performed their albums at MOMA. Did their music hold and influence over your early interest in electronica and if not, who were the first bands that turned you onto electronic music?
Well, Kraftwerk was a thing I found out about later when people used to say that we were the first band to play electronic music, when Kraftwerk was doing this decades before we came along. So they had no influence, it was like a collective unconsciousness of ‘dude, people have been doing this for a long time”, but for us it was mostly for us, Simon Posford, the person who was our earliest influence, via our friends from England who were friends with Posford and were playing us Hallucinogen and Shpongle back in the mid-late 90s. We had heard house music but it didn’t appeal to us as much as psychedelic music. Clearly, that was the bridge, between rock and electronic, that’s why Posford was the bridge, for all of this, for real. A lot of people attribute us as a bridge in America for bringing rock and electronica together, for pushing the styles together at Camp Bisco and by forging a rock and electronica festival, but the bridge came from similarities between the psychedelia of trance and the psychedelia of the jamband world; it sounded very different but the idea was the same, to try to tweak people out.
Your drummers rotate, including Lane Shaw, Mike Greenfield, Darren Shearer, Adam Deitch and KJ SAWKA, currently playing this tour. How hard has it been to interlace through different drummers and keep the music consistent from one night/tour to the next?
It’s been much better since we’ve had KJ for the last six months. Having one drummer is what we want, it’s preferable, and the band is getting better and better. Last night was one of the best shows we’ve ever played, we know each other now, and we can communicate with each other. It’s great.
Is Conspirator, initially conceived as a side project becoming the main touring act? Will we see Disco Biscuit tours again?
Well, when the Biscuits aren’t playing this is certainly going to be the main act. But I’m assuming there’s going to be more Biscuits tours. That’s the assumption I’m running my life on. Of course there’s going to be more Biscuits tours. We wanted 2011 off and we didn’t get it, it just didn’t happen. We wanted to take the whole year off
You mean including Camp Bisco as well?
Yeah we were going to take the whole year off and then we talked Jon into doing Camp and we talked him into doing Inferno and then we talked him into doing Nokia and Identity and before you knew it we played 50 shows and said “Well that wasn’t a year off.” I played another 80 on top of it, I played 130 shows and so at the end of that I think we were just like “OK that didn’t work, the only way to do this is to legitimately try to not to talk anyone into playing any shows. For me, I have to be very disciplined, “OK, I’ll book myself to play with Conspirator and play these shows because I have a lot of energy and I put a lot of effort into trying to get The Disco Biscuits out on tour all the time for years and years and years, I’m always just driving it forward and pushing shows, booking shows, pushing festivals, so for me I just have to be disciplined and say “We’re taking time off, I have to accept that we’re taking time off.” I don’t know if I’ll ever take time off myself, personally. I just don’t see the point in taking time off. I get for other people they have to but for me personally, I just don’t…yeah, there’ll be more Biscuits shows.
Update 4/30, 11pm: This article has been updated to correct the name of a co-writer of Orch Theme. It was Chris Edmonson, AKA DJ Omen. Apologies for the confusion
