NEW ALBUM RELEASED MARCH 2019 "FROM UNTRUTH" > BANDCAMP
The second release by Amirtha Kidambi’s ensemble Elder Ones, From Untruth is comprised of four pieces grappling with issues of power, oppression, capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, violence and the shifting nature of truth. This music means to give the listener momentary relief from the anxiety and pain caused by living in our current reality.
From Untruth builds upon the bedrock foundation of Kidambi’s previous compositional and conceptual work with Elder Ones, while forging uncharted territory. After a journey into wordless abstraction on Holy Science (Northern Spy, November 2016), Kidambi felt the urgency of the political moment required a direct and verbal call to action.
The instrumentation adds a layer of technology as a metaphor for modernity, with Kidambi on analog synthesizer and Max Jaffe’s drumming talents extended to electronic Sensory Percussion. The frenzied improvising of Matt Nelson on soprano sax and gravity of Nick Dunston on bass, anchor the music in the tradition of free jazz, while it pushes into new futurist realms. The aesthetic seamlessly reels from modal meditation, atonal expressionism, free improvisation and melodic invention, to unabashed bursts of punk rock energy.
This is Elder Ones at an unadulterated breaking point; on the edge of a knife that cuts.
Amirtha Kidambi: Compositions, Vocals, Harmonium, Synthesizer Matt Nelson: Soprano Saxophone, Moog Nick Dunston: Bass Max Jaffe: Drums, Electronic Sensory Percussion
Recorded at Birdwatcher Studios, Big Indian, NY Engineer: Chris Weiss Mixing and Mastering: Matt Mehlan
Amirtha Kidambi’s idiosyncratic vision of improvised music has found a brilliant outlet, informed by new sounds, yet still maintaining its distinctive character. From Untruth ranks among the most interesting, intriguing and poignant musical visions of recent years. [...]
+ The Wire - April 2019, page 55 Emerging from New York's Brooklyn Raga Massive Rajna Swaminathan and Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones provide new contexts for traditional Indian musical strategies by Daniel Spicer [...] In 2016, her quartet Elder Ones – featuring Matt Melson on soprano saxophone, Nick Dunston on bass and Max Jaffe playing drums and percussion – released their debut album Holy Science on which Kidambi blended Carnartic vocal techniques with the free jazz ululations of Linda Sharrock to indulge in worldless ecstasies. On her new album “From Untruth”, however, she introduces fragmentary lyrical invocations to tackle themes of colonialism, violence and the inequalities of global capitalism [...] – Daniel Spicer
TJG: Could you talk about all the influences that are present in your music? AK: One of the most exciting things about the band was the fact that being a bicultural person, being an Indian-American, my experience in the world is already this really hybrid cultural experience. And then on top of that you add engaging with all these different types of music—since I was young, I have been exposed to Béla Bartók , and Tchaikovsky and Duke Ellington, everything. In elementary school, I sang Bach, St. Matthew’s Passion, when I was in fourth grade, and all of that was happening at the same time as I was studying Indian dance, going to see Carnatic music all the time, singing Indian devotional music, and my mom had Carnatic music on in the house 24/7. And then I was really into metal and punk and all this other stuff, and 90s R&B, was a huge vocal influence that was what I was singing all the time in the house. All of that is there, that’s my lived cultural experience as a person in America. [...]
+ Review Elder Ones' "Holy Science" @ Pitchfork Magazine A fixture of New York’s experimental scene, the vocalist Amirtha Kidambi makes her bandleading debut on Holy Science, fusing classical Indian music, drone, and free jazz with an original perspective. [...]
Mats Äleklint – trombone; Martin Küchen – altsax, leader; Johan Berthling – bass; Alexander Zethson – piano; Mattias Ståhl – vibraphone; Andreas Werliin – drums
This is a band you must see live, a “now or never” experience. Angles 9 has performed at leading festivals around Europe and released several CDs and LPs, earning them fantastic reviews throughout the world. With their insatiable urge for adventure, Angles 9 is ready to meet new audiences and confront new challenges.
The music is strong, cohesive and simple, performed by sophisticated players who can make any table turn. Any musical idea can come into full force in a fraction of a second. Everything is there: pathos, playfulness, energy and a certain kind of bliss, strong and emotional, that hits the audience every time.
The compositions by Martin Küchen are drawn from all kinds of influences: a memory of a certain instrument played during childhood; modern, lively jazz like Chris McGregor´s “Brotherhood of Breath”, Carla Bley, Charles Mingus and Lars Gullin; Balkan party music; Swedish folk music; watching female dancers in West Africa turning the world upside down. The mode of composition, however, is very distinctive throughout. Be sure not to miss this exhilarating experience!
* Representation only in Spain in collaboration with Danielle Oosterop Music Management www.oosterop.com
Available dates from October 14 until May 25, 2020
TIM BERNE, alto sax CHRIS SPEED, tenor sax REID ANDERSON, double bass DAVE KING, drums
Broken Shadows is a quartet of kindred spirits communing over shared loves and common inspirations, radiating not only homage but aspiration - to make music with deep roots reach out into the present moment, alive and attuned and moving through our air now. These four musicians hailing from the urban northern half of America - Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Reid Anderson and Dave King - have banded together to reinterpret the timeless sounds conjured by great men from the rural South and heartland of the country: Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden. These iconic figures created an ever-resonant avant-garde out of the folk-art influences of their early surroundings, a canon that comprises the hard blues and deep lament, keening celebration and hollering protest. Wound through the DNA of such avant-jazz classics as "Dogon A.D.," "Lonely Woman," "Civilization Day," "Walls- Bridges" and "Song for Ché" are the age-old sounds of back-alley bars and carnival midways, funeral processions and holiday parades, the rave-ups of Saturday night shading into the hymns of Sunday morning. The way saxophonists Berne and Speed perform this music with the bass-and-drum team of Anderson and King has a rocking, roughhewn harmonic convergence wholly in keeping with the source materials, even as their improvisations have a searching, burning modernism of their own. To channel the cultural history of this music, the players of Broken Shadows can rely on their personal history as friends and collaborators; among various associations, Speed played in Berne's Bloodcount band in the 1990s, while Anderson and King are two-thirds of the genre defying band The Bad Plus. This foursome is onto something special here - the emotive breath and beat of this music being undeniable, infectious; these are players known for their ability to take it out, but Broken Shadows gives them a vehicle to get down. -- Bradley Bambarger
* Representation only in Spain in collaboration withGluch.
Phicus is a trio from Barcelona composed of Ferran Fages (electric guitar), Àlex Reviriego (double bass) and Vasco Trilla (drums).
They speculate with silence, pull the noise out of joint, rearrange the timbre, scrap the tradition to explore their very own harmonic universe forged of the energy of a blazing forest into flame, where solely simple, lanceolate, obverse-shining leaves remain alive.
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