Sunday, April 6, 2014

Red Baraat at Smith's Olde Bar, Atlanta, April 4, 2014

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Still catching up . . .  here's my pics and commentary (such as it is) on the Red Baraat show at Smith's Olde Bar last Friday night.

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The show opener, Atlanta's The Dialect Trio, were a revelation.  Where have these guys been hiding, and why haven't I heard them before?  The "trio" took the stage as a quartet and played a great amalgam of various world musics, incorporating elements of Hindustani pop, Afro pop, reggae, Cumbia, and various Afro-Cuban rhythms, with pleasingly Santana-esque guitar.  They described their style as "Chichia," a psychedelic, surf-inspired form of Cumbia popular in Peru.  Their Bandcamp site lists a full dozen albums and EPs, so they've obviously been around for a while - perhaps they've just been playing in an alternative universe of clubs and venues than I've been attending.



Here's a great video of them set to a memorable scene from Rodriguez' From Dusk 'Til Dawn (written and featuring Quentin Tarantino), posted here for The Dialect Trio's music and because you can never get too much Selma Hayek.


Headliners Red Baraat may be from Brooklyn, New York, but their music is from the Asian subcontinent by way of New Orleans, which is to say this is what a second line brass band might sound like in the India Quarter of the Crescent City, if such a thing even existed.  

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To say they got the party started and the audience up and dancing would be an understatement - it was clearly the band's singular aim and mission in the very same manner as, say, the Dirty Dozen or Rebirth Brass Bands.  

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There was a large contingent of Indians in the audience - I've never seen more turbans in an audience at any show before - engaged in a friendly, South Asian form of moshing, which involves two or more people locking feet or hands in the center of a circle, and then spinning around the center as rapidly as possible.  It was fun, and I speak from personal experience as late in the show I got pulled into one of those circles by an outgoing young man.


The band is led by percussionist Sunny Jain, whose hard driving North Indian bhangra rhythms merge with the five-man horn section's elements of jazz, funk, and hip-hop, and if you've never experienced a Sikh rapping over brass-band funk before, then you've got to catch Red Baraat.

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This is the kind of band that really needs to be experienced live in order to be appreciated, so here's a little taste of Friday's show and a video below from a show in their native Brooklyn to give you a rough approximation of the joyful multiculturalism of their performance.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision

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Before I start falling too far behind, let's recap last Thursday night's Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event at The Goat Farm.  I've already posted pictures of some of the visual offerings from the event over at the other blog, so here's a summary of the musical portion of the events.


When I arrived, Florida's The Dewars were on stage.

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I hadn't heard of The Dewars before and wasn't quite sure what to expect - they describe themselves as "adult sing-along."  What they performed was witty and entertaining folk pop, as in their song Switzerland, the video of which was also periodically projected outside on a large screen.


Atlanta's electronic band Jungol were up next, and they brought a friend on stage with them.

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The friend is a character from their short film/extended video Go Softly, which seems to fall somewhere in the Animal Collective-to-Bjork continuum of strangeness for strangeness's sake that doesn't need to be explained.  



Anyway, the friend lent an enigmatic and powerful presence to the stage while Jungol performed.  

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Here's the entire Go Softly film, which was also one of the featured "experimental films" being screened in the building across from the band's performance.


Atlanta's eight-piece Faun And A Pan Flute took the stage sometime around 10 pm.  FAAPF play an indescribable brand of music that's equal parts Harry Partch, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, jazz fusion, math rock, minimalism, and prog, and I'm probably leaving out a half-dozen or so other genres that they covered.  It can be pretty adventurous and avant garde stuff at times, and I think it says a lot of good things about Atlanta's musical audience that the band seems to be so well loved and appreciated.

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The weather was absolutely lovely the whole night - warm and dry, with a pleasingly low pollen count.  But despite the weather, and despite the terrific performances, fascinating films and videos, and fantastic art installations, I still called it an evening after Faun And A Pan Flute so that I could get home at an early enough hour to get a good night's sleep and be ready for another evening of live music on Friday.    

Friday, April 4, 2014

Meanwhile, Back at the Goat Farm

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The Dewars performing at the Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event last night at the Goat Farm.  More on this soon.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Oxygen


Another new song from Swans' To Be Kind. . . featuring Thor (Shearwater) on percussion and clarinet.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

A Little God In My Hands



Here's the first song released from the new Swans album To Be Kind, due May 13th. But right now, you can download a copy of A Little God at http://www.self-titledmag.com.  You've been warned . . .

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Real Estate at Terminal West, Atlanta, March 31, 2014

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The fine band Real Estate performed at Atlanta's Terminal West last night, the last evening of March Madness.


If you don't know what March Madness is by now, or if you think that it has something to do with a collegiate basketball tournament, then you haven't spent much time at this blog before.

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The band Pure X opened, one of the quietest bands I've heard since, well, since the Dum Dum Girls.  They played fine, jangley dream pop not at all unlike Real Estate, and it was pretty obvious why they were chosen to open for and tour with Real Estate. Despite the low volume, however, the sound sounded muddled and incoherent at times, marring what was otherwise an interesting and enjoyable performance.

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Following Pure X's set, Real Estate played on one of the loveliest stage sets I've seen since, well, since Purity Ring, and had the volume and mix exactly right from the very beginning of their set.

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They sounded terrific, with the twin guitars of Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile chiming and harmonizing perfectly.  Their joy and enthusiasm for playing guitar together was obvious through the set, which turned out to be an energetic one from a band that can sound laid back on record at times, and the enthusiastic audience cheered and egged them on throughout the show.

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Sometimes I feel like I think that every show I just saw was the best of the year, which is actually a really nice way to experience these shows, but leaving last night's Real Estate set, I really did feel like I was present at something really special - a great, great show by a great, great band.

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After a surf-rockish instrumental, the band teased the audience with the introduction to Black Sabbath's Iron Man during the encore, before settling in to play It's Real, probably their best known and most loved song.

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Monday, March 31, 2014

To Be Kind


The first track from Swans' new album To Be Kind has been released to Pitchfork in 192 kbps format, and I've already heard the entire album, not scheduled to be released until May 2014, in a 92 kbps leak.  Despite the limitations of the latter bit rate, the question is not if this is the best album of the year.  Even though we're only a quarter of the way through the year, the answer, obviously, is yes.  

The real question is, is this the best album ever?