Bklyn Sounds 10/11/2023 + 10/17/2023

A break for grieving + Shows: "The Harvest Time Project: a Tribute to Pharoah Sanders" / Savannah Harris Quartet / The Ritual with Anané & Louie Vega / Say She She / Lady Wray / + more

As many readers noted from a recent addendum, the Dada Strain family has been grieving recently due to an impending loss that finally took place this past week. 

So I’ve lacked the emotional energy to finish the feature I’d earmarked for this week’s column. My apologies. Look for it next week. And for a tribute to our departed beloved.

In the meantime, this week’s listings are free. Please consider upgrading your free subscriptions. And spreading the word about Dada Strain.

Thank you for reading, listening, following and musicking. Dada Strain is praying for peace, but also freedom for those people who’ve been imprisoned by colonialist nation-building. 

DANCE: Over the past few months, it’s been a joy to note how GENG PTP (aka King Vision Ultra, of the excellent noise hip-hop Purple Tapes Pedigree community) has been stretching out to accompany artists in different mediums. (maybe he’s been doingit longer, and I haven’t noticed.) Tonight at historic Judson Church, his music backs up the dancer Lamb. (Wed 10/11, 7:30p @ Judson Church, Manhattan - FREE)

Over the past decade, guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski have stitched together an interesting duo practice, that bears the instrumental lineage of classic New York punk psychedelic noise (think: VU > Television > Sonic Youth). Theirs is a heady, fuzzy hoot. The pair has now hooked up with likeminded guitarist Bill Nace for a new group they call Glass Band. Also on the bill: the industrial grays of MV Carbon and Baltimore-based psyche-folk singer-songrwiter Wheatie Mattiasich. (Wed 10/11, 8p @ Union Pool, Williamsburg - $15adv/$20) 

Another week, another musical context in which to find tenor saxophonist Zoh Amba. This time she’s appearing in a trio alongside the jazz-metal guitarist and Kiwi expat Sally Gates, plus Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase. In what one figures will be a stormier, more driving situation. With: the Baltimore duo Darsombra, who describe their music as ““trans-apocalyptic galaxy rock,” and Ala Muerte, who performs medicinal drones. (Wed 10/11, 8p @ Mama Tried. Sunset Park - $10suggested)

My recent experiences of young drummer Savannah Harris — adding unerring backbeats during a great set with Caroline Davis’ electronics-amended Alula a few months ago at public records, a fantastic new trio album with saxophonist Angelika Niescier and cellist Tomeka Reid — has been one of top-notch propulsion. Which makes me excited to hear what she’ll do with the quartet she’s bringing into Sisters, featuring saxophonist Nicole Glover and guitarist Nick Pennington. With special guest, vocalist Bria Monet. (Thurs 10/12, 8p @ Sisters, Clinton Hill - $20suggested)

In existence for over a year now, the trio of violinist gabby fluke-mogul, pianist Mara Rosenbloom and drummer Tcheser Holmes now has a name: XXE. They are very good at the ethereal outsideness of improvised music. At iBeam on Thursday, XXE share the bill with violist Melanie Dyer’s Siren Xypher, another innovative trio that features Rosenbloom, and vocalist Kyoko Kitamura. (Thurs 10/12, 8p @ iBeam, Gowanus - $15-$20)

Soul belter Nicole “Lady” Wray broke through commercially as a teenager in the late ‘90s, thanks to a Missy Elliot co-sign, but then got caught up in layers of major-label bullshit that essentially shelved her career. In the mid-’10s, Wray returned on the Bklyn-based old-school soul label, Big Crown, and hasn’t looked back. If you dig the Daptone vibe, her live shows are not to be missed. My disco-soul faves 79.5 are the opening act at Sunday’s show. (Fri 10/13, 7:30p @ David Rubinstein Atrium, Lincoln Center, Manhattan - FREE and Sun 10/15, 8p @ Brooklyn Made, Bushwick - $25adv/$30) 

After what sounds like a triumphant stint in Europe and having closed up the sold-out-all-summer-long season of Tiki Disco, Eli Escobar is back on his never-endeing tour of the city’s clubs, playing all night long (if you’re lucky). On Friday, one of New York’s best and hardest-working dance-floor DJs goes start to finish at Silo. The crowd will be big and into it, the records will be maximalist and fire. Bring stamina for a good good time. (Fri 10/13, 10:30p @ Silo, Bushwick - $20-$25)

According to the European dance-music press, The Ritual with Anané & Louie Vega, a Wednesday residency at Club Chinois, was one of Ibiza’s best parties this summer. Master at Work/NYC-music legend Vega, and his Cape Verde-born life/creative partner Anané have previously brought The Ritual to the haunted warehouse that is Avant Gardner, but chances are pretty good that a community deep-house party lends itself better to the intimate confines of a Ridgewood basement. (Fri 10/13, 10p @ H0LO, Ridgewood - $25-$35)

FILM + DANCE: First off, Party Line is one of the best occasional underground parties going, great music and selectors, knowing diverse crowd, comfortably scuzzy locations, no price-gouging. Nothing but wins. Saturday’s DJs — Chicago’s forever-underappreciated Traxx, and the very excellent Detroit-to-Bklyn transplant Nicole Misha — are sure to make the whole thing move in directions both rhythmically familiar, and wondrously “WTF?”! Get there early for the screening of “Panoramic Colorsound,” a film Traxx made to accompany an album he created under the name Creative Technology Consortium; friends say it’s a great watch. (Sat 10/14, 7p film/10p dance @ secret Brooklyn Loft - $10 (film only)/$35) 

Ostensibly a mass birthday for some of Bklyn’s finest imporvisors, Council of Venutian Libras is also a gathering of said one-more-year-round-the-sun celebrants who will all play music. Birthday folks include Smootaphilia, Samantha Riott, Luke Stewart, Lester St. Louis, Isabel Crespo Pardo and Drew Wesely. Expect other players to join the extravaganza. (Sat 10/14, 7:30p @ secret location - $15suggested)

The annual Ragas Festival at Pioneer Works — formerly “24 Hours of Ragas” (the title has changed, the concept remains) — is one of my favorite Bklyn music events. Presented by the good folks at Brooklyn Raga Massive, it is a joyous and contemplative celebration of time-keeping and -passing, with a globally diverse musical landscape. Among the participants at “Ragas Live Festival 2023” are sitar player Gaurav Mazumdar, a trio of Amirtha Kidambi, Qasim Naqvi and Rafiq Bhatia, Mind Maintenance (aka Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor),  tabla player Suphala, trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, the trio of Bang on Can players Vicky Chow, David Cossin and Mark Stewart, a program “Celebrating John McLaughlin & Mahavishnu” and more. Highest Recommendation. (Sat 10/14, 8p runs for 24 hours @ Pioneer Works, Red Hook - $50)

A little over a year after his passing, the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders is receiving his flowers far and wide because of the recent Luaka Bop reissue of what was considered a lesser-known work of his, the 1977 album Harvest Time. (An excellent piece by Adam Schatz on the subject.) Under the direction of Joshua Abrams (of Natural Information Society), The Harvest Time Project: a Tribute to Pharoah Sanders program unites some excellent musicians to celebrate this music. Players include guitarists Tisziji Munoz and Jeff Parker, drummer Chad Taylor and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. Highest Recommendation. (Sat 10/14, 8p @ National Sawdust, Williamsburg - $30)

Excellent Saturday-night world-wide-of-techno session at Good Room. LIES Records major domo Ron Morelli, and Scott Zacharias, one of Detroit’s best-kept DJing secrets, are tag-teaming in the big room. Our brother from another mother, Toribio, goes it solo all night in the smaller room. Will be properly sweaty and weird. The world burns, love is the message.  (Sat 10/14, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $15)

Monk-One and DJ Prestige’s 45s-and-wax-heavy Shake! monthly at Friends & Lovers is always a low-key good time before midnight, when it generally begins to simmer. This month’s secret ingredient is Bay Area soul-and-funkateer E da Boss whose long-ass history of helping make hard-groove records and spinning them, from Blackalicious to Star Creatures, is like it’s own alternative timeline. Headz will know, and headz will show. (Sat 10/14, 10p @ Friends & Lovers, Crown Heights - $5w/RSVP/$10)

When I first saw “Essential Tremors” listed on the public records calendar, I half-hoped that it was tied to the excellent interview podcast that my old friend Lee Gardner runs out of Baltimore. Nope! This day-long “celebration of musicians navigating the boundless nature of sound, highlights the challenging, the esoteric and the bold” is just a good-ass (and highly economical) way to hear some of the odder corners of the electronic, contemporary avant-garde landscape that Bklyn Sounds reps for. You already know about Liars, you’ve read about HxH and Akai Solo here. But there’s nine other artists, from LA’s Detroit-informed machine-noise merchant Pod Blotz, to Bklyn no-waver Andrya Ambro (aka Gold Dime), who are here to push your boundaries and prove Jason fuckin’ Farago dead wrong. (Sun 10/15, 2p @ public records, Gowanus - $20)

UPSTATE: A potentially excellent coming together of idea programming, musicians, organzation and space. Taking place at The Falcon, a first-rate live music room (and OK restaurant-bar) 75minutes north of the city, “Celebrating the Musical Spirit of Codona & Creative Music Studio” unites drummers Billy Martin and Cyro Baptisa, with Sexmob’s Steven Bernstein, global music virtuoso Steve Gorn and cornetist Kirk Knuffke, to salute the music of the all-too-short-lived trio of Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott. All under the flag of CMS, among the standard-bearing organzations of improvising in the New York area. If you’re nearby, don’t miss it. (Sun 10/15, 7:30p @ The Falcon, Marlboro, NY - $TBD)

As I understand it, the discodelic vocal trio Say She She — Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown — have their roots in 79.5, a band I write about often on Bklyn Sounds. Malik and Parker Brown left that group and formed their own. Theirs is a familiar aesthetic sway: great songwriting, female harmonies, late-’70s/early-’80s disco, global soul, new romantic wave, grrrl group downtown vibes. They’ve been dropping singles for two years, and have just released Silver a pretty fucking great full-length. Also: the Bogota-to-Bklyn dance duo, Salt Cathedral. (Tues 10/17, 7p @ Bowery Ballroom, Manhattan - $25)

The global psyche-folk avant-garde massive will be at Union Pool next Tuesday for Alvarius B (aka Alan Bishop, co-founder of Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies recordings) and Byron Coley, writer-critic-distinguished culture collector. Bishop is a helluva guitar-playing conceptualizer and jester, while Coley could be on-board to do any number of things, from playing to reading to DJing. There are “guests” promised, and four decades of thrift-store arts-downtown cognoscenti are likely candidates. Won’t be boring. (Tues 10/17, 8p @ Union Pool, Williamsburg - $20-25)