Tag: The GZA

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Renowned, iconoclastic and deeply influential filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is best known for his independent films 1984’s Stranger Than Paradise, 1986’s Down by Law, 1989’s Mystery Train, 1995’s Dead Man, 1999’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, 2003’s Coffee and Cigarettes, which featured cameos from Bill Murray, The RZA and The GZA and others, 2005’s Broken Flowers, 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive and 2016’s critically applauded Patterson. And as a musician and composer, Jarmusch has composed music for several films and released two albums with Jozef van Wissem, a Dutch-born, Brooklyn-based minimalist composer and late player. But along with that Jarmusch is the leader of a locally-based stoner rock trio SQÜRL, which features his colleagues/collaborators and friends Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback. Interestingly, the members of the trio can trace its origins back to 2009 when Jarmusch, Logan and Stoneback teamed up to write and record the original score for the film The Limits of Control. Echoing the varied Spanish landscapes captured within the film, the three wound up writing and recording a slow-burning set of psych rock, initially released under the band name Bad Rabbit. Following those session and a name change to SQÜRL, the trio wrote and recorded 3 EPS of originals that explored the boundaries of country, noise and psych rock.

In 2013, the members of SQÜRL collaborated with Dutch-born, Brooklyn-based minimalist composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem to compose, write and record the critically applauded score for Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive; in fact, the score earned that year’s Cannes Soundtrack Award from a consortium of film and music critics, and as a result the quartet performed the material off the film at a number of festivals including that year’s inaugural All Tomorrow’s Parties Iceland, Primavera Sound, Big Ears Festival, as well as a set at Jack White‘s Third Man Records, which was recorded and released as a live album.

 

Jarmusch and Logan followed their work on Only Lovers with performing improvised live scores of four silent films by American Dada and Surrealist artist and filmmaker Man Ray that employed the use of looping machines, synthesizers and pedal effected guitars — and the material drifted heavily towards experimental, ambient and drone-like soundscapes. The trio officially recovered to compose and record the ambient electronic music-based score for Patterson; however, with their forthcoming EP #260 slated for release through July 14th release, the trio reveal a return to form. And as you’ll hear on the EP’s first single “The Dark Rift,” the song features a droning and buzzing power chord-based riff paired with a simple yet propulsive rhythm section, which slowly twists, turns and morphs throughout the tracks four and a half minutes — and interestingly enough, the track manages to sound as though the band had been listening to the Melvins.

 

 

Summer Festivals by William Ruben Helms

Preview: SummerStage 2017

Back in 1986, the City Parks Foundation created SummerStage in the spirt of Central Park’s original purpose — to serve as a free, public resource to help culturally enrich the lives of New Yorkers through live concerts, dance performances, and other cultural events.  And the festival’s first few years revealed relatively humble beginnings as its first few years of live programming were at Central Park’s Naumberg Bandshell; however, with artists such as Sun Ra Arkestra and legendary South African vocal act Ladysmith Black Mambazo and an impressive list of others playing those first few years, Summerstage, SummerStage quickly developed a reputation for presenting one of the most diverse array of artists across a variety of cultures, genres and styles — and they’ve continued to do so throughout its 30 plus year history. Over the past handful of years, SummerStage’s organizers have expanded the festival beyond Manhattan with shows hosted in parks, bandshells and and makeshift stages across the city’s other five boroughs, and from covering the festival throughout most of the history of site, it’s a wonderful afternoon or evening with your friends and neighbors; plus, there’s nothing like catching acts that keep you in touch with your inner child.

2017’s SummerStage season will begin in earnest on June 3rd with the legendary and imitable Mavis Staples, a national fucking treasure if you ask me, with contemporary blues artist Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely Good Music to round out a night of soul, gospel and blues at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield. And the rest of the lineup for his year continues an incredible run of must-see acts. Some other highlights will include:

And of course, there are a handful of benefit shows presented by The Bowery Presents at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield to help support City Parks Foundation’s continuing efforts to present free arts programming to New Yorkers and that lineup is equally impressive.

SummerStage will also be expanding its family-friendly pre-show workshop offerings this year to include dance classes, beatboxing lessons and introductions to DJing and Latin percussion. These interactive workshops will take place prior to elect SummerStage shows throughout the summer and all ages are encouraged to come out to your local park to participate. This year, the pre-show workshops will being with a DJ lesson from Scratch DJ Academy and a beatboxing tutorial with beatboxer Exacto before Digable Planets’ Coffey Park show — and other workshops will include salsa dance lessons in St. Mary’s Park and a poetry class in Marcus Garvey Park.

For more information and schedules check out SummerStage here: http://www.cityparksfoundation.org/summerstage/
Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting over the past few days or follow me through Twitter or Instagram, the annual CMJ Festival, which presents new and emerging artists to music industry folks — namely, college radio programmers, bloggers, journalists, A&R and others, and the general public at a rather insane number of showcases and concerts across Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. For a music fan and journalist, it manages to simultaneously be the best thing in the entire world and a daunting and exhausting experience.

Last night, I walked out of my apartment at 12:40 to pick up credentials for the festival, saw seven — yes, that’s right, seven — different sets of music across three or four different genres and wound up walking into my door at 5:45 this morning. And I’m about to repeat some of that complete madness today. Fun times.

As you can imagine, as a result I just haven’t had a chance to post as much as I would have preferred over the past couple of days. But I’ll be back to more regular posting as we begin a new week. And yes, you can expect some CMJ-related coverage here shortly; however, in the meantime, let’s get to some necessary business  . . .

If you’ve been frequenting JOVM for a bit, you may be intimately familiar with the Austin, TX-based collective Grupo Fantasma. Since their formation 15 years ago, the collective has developed a reputation as being one of the US’s preeminent, independent Latin bands as the collective has been nominated for multiple Grammies and won a Grammy for their 2011 effort, El Existential, as well as praise from the likes The Wall Street Journal, Billboard and USA Today, who once called the band “Latin funk masters.” Adding to an extensive national profile, the collective has had music placements in a wide array of film and TV shows including AMC‘s Breaking Bad, ABC’s Ugly Betty, NBC‘s Law and Order, Showtime‘s Weeds and the John Sayles‘ film Casa de los Babys.  And the collective has also had a long-held reputation for being one of the best live funk bands in the country, and as a result they’ve backed Prince for The ALMA Awards, The Golden Globes and CBS‘ Super Bowl Bash, Fania All-Stars‘ pianist Larry Harlow, Sheila E., The GZA, Gina Chavez, and renowned indie rock band (and fellow Austinites) Spoon.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Groupo Fantasma. Perhaps because of the finances behind being a large band, the current lineup — now comprised of nine full-time members — has frequently split off into a variety of side projects and other musical concerns, including a Turkish pop-inspired project and the funk and heavy metal project Brownout, which has spent the better part of the past two years touring with a unique concept — Latin funk-based interpretations and reworking of Black Sabbath that the band dubbed Brown Sabbath. (Imagine some of your favorite Black Sabbath tunes with horns, congas and the like. Yeah, seriously. And it’s honestly pretty fucking awesome, as it adds an unexpected nuance and a different interpretation on songs that have long been familiar – without ruining the song’s intent and spirit.)

Grupo Fantasma’s soon-to-released  fifth full-length effort Problemas is slated for an October 30 release through Blue Corn Music and the album marks the first time that the band worked with an outside producer — in this case, Steve Berlin, who’s also a renowned horn player and keyboardist. As bassist Greg González explained in press notes, “We thought a new process would help us find a unique voice and create a story. It would’ve been easier and cheaper to record everything ourselves and reuse the same techniques which successfully garnered us a Grammy and two nominations for successive albums (Sonidos Gold and El Existential) but the desire was to push ourselves in new directions.”

During the writing and recording process, Berlin influenced the members of the band to streamline their music as much as possible so that the band’s songwriting and unique approach would come out to the forefront of their recorded sound — and to give voice to their experiences and influences without falling into being pigeonholed as merely a Latin, Texas or “World Music” album or be dismissed as a calculated attempt at crafting a crossover album. In fact, the album also reportedly draws from a variety of influences including heavy metal, indie rock, funk, hip-hop, jazz, African music, Eastern European music, gypsy music, South American. Cuban, Tex-Mex and others. Now you might have come across the album’s first single “Solo Un Sueno” revealed a stripped down songwriting approach, which naturally forces the listener’s attention to the song’s lyrics. Sonically, the song clearly draws from Latin music, funk and Eastern European music, as it possesses a twisting and turning song structure that’s spacious enough to allow for each section to do their thing.

The album’s latest single “Roto El Corazon” is a bit more of a straightforward-leaning percussive salsa song with elements of atmospheric psych rock towards the song’s coda, that sounds (for the most part) as though it could have been released during the Fania Records days. Obviously in this composition, the incredible horn and percussion sections are the heroes, pulling the heavy weight of the song’s muscle and melody throughout while being roomy enough for the vocalist and his lyrics to effortlessly flow through the mix. But interestingly enough the song manages to have a lot going on — while feeling unfussy and stripped down to nine guys sounding like they were jamming at a club.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Grupo Fantasma’s New Single, “Solo Un Sueno” Reveals A Challenging Yet Accessible Change in Sonic Direction

Since their formation 15 years ago, the Austin, TX-based collective Grupo Fantasma has developed a reputation as being one of the US’s preeminent, independent Latin bands as the collective has been nominated for multiple Grammies […]