Bklyn Sounds 10/2/2024—10/8/2024
This Week's Show's Include: Antipop Consortium / Juliana Huxtable / PTP Vision presents 'A Generative Home Gathering' / Nabihah Iqbal / 'Assembly #22' / Ocean People / 'Heart Beats' / and more
I am out of town for the next few days, so the listings paywall stays down. Missing so much great community shizzz late this week and over the weekend, but will be back for an unusually stacked beginning of next week. Scroll down for the details.
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This Week’s Shows:
The second anniversary celebration of my favorite original-productions monthly, Heart Beats, helmed as always by the excellent A.Sarr and e.g., is taking place at Mood Ring and has a nice clubby line-up for the big night. A set by El Blanco Nino, b2b’s from Jialing x Third Self and Chenoa Torin x nothing_neue, as well as the hosts. A.Sarr and e.g. were excellent on Dada Strain Radio earlier this year, and it’s always a pleasure hearing what new community work they big-up! (Wed 10/2, 10p @ Mood Ring, Bushwick - FREE)
Ganayva Doraiswamy is a New York-born vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who sings in the Tamil language of her parents. She came upon my radar thru her involvement in Shabaka’s ensembles—the pair did a magnificent set at BRIC last year—and the sinuous ecstatic way they showed how the tonalities and melodies of Indian classical music are a cornerstone of the global improvised music tradition. In a turn, Ganayva’s newest single is co-produced by Nils Frahm, and its textures are something else entirely. (Wed 10/2 & Thurs 10/3, 7:30p @ National Sawdust, Williamsburg - $30)
At the turn of the century, NYC rap trio Antipop Consortium (Beans, High Priest and M. Sayyid) represented a different pathway for hip-hop: more heady, less outwardly commercial, not necessarily conscious or poetic (though they got tagged that), but placing artistic and community desires ahead of material aspirations. Antipop’s increasingly electronic productions, spearheaded by Earl Blaize, ended up on UK electronica labels like WARP and Ninja Tune, which aligned them with post-genre outsiders. Of course it was a cult act, but the people who cared (especially in NYC) really cared. Antipop got back together for King Britt’s Blacktronika last year—triumphantly, in front of old friends— and it seems like they’re continuing to work together. (Thurs 10/3, 7p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $35)
Both guitarist Wendy Eisenberg and multi-instrumentalist More Eaze (Mari Maurice) have just released excellent new albums. The former’s Viewfinder is a thematic song-cycle with a quintet/sextet and includes an absolutely magical piece of long ensemble music. The latter’s lacuna and parlor is full of gorgeous drone-centered, chamber minimalism. Each play in so many configurations with different musical partners, it’s hard to catch Wendy and Mari together in the same place. But tonight’s your chance to convene with two of the best we’ve got in the city, on a lovely bill alongside two jazz-influenced songwriters, Ryan Power and Lina Tullgren. (Thurs 10/3, 8p @ The Owl, Prospect-Lefferts - $15suggested)
Singer Suzanne Langille is the long-time creative and life partner of the stripped-down electric guitarist, Loren Mazzacane Connors, a beloved practitioner of spare, hushed, unnervingly soulful tones. Alongside Connors, Langille has collaborated with a who’s who of experimentalist and lo-fi community players, and many of these folks will be in attendance to celebrate her at an evening called the Suzanne Langille Songbook, including Alan Licht, Bill Nace, Byron Coley, Daniel Carter, Laura Ortman, Neel Murgai, Tom Carter and William Hooker. The program will also commemorate New Zealand guitarist Dean Roberts, who was supposed to play the event, but passed away in August. (Fri 10/4, 7p @ Artists Space, Manhattan - FREE)
Alcove is the duo project of woodwinds-player Alfredo Colón and electronic musician Hank Mason, which debuted as a gorgeous piece (also called “Alcove”) at Roulette last Spring, sounding like somewhere between a late-romantic symphonic work and the pretty parts of a Vangelis score. (Start at around 56mins of the video above.) Bringing this music, and whatever Colón and Mason have come up with since, into the LSD Loft’s four-point sonic-space sounds like a great trip. Also: singer-songwriter Zack Villere (fka froyo ma). (Fri 10/4, 8p @ Light & Sound.Design Loft, Greenpoint - $20-$30)
One of my favorite things about the polymath artist Juliana Huxtable is that, even though their visual art career continues to spiral upwards, they’ve never ever stopped going into the clubs to get back to what they do so well: slam the techno. Deeply adore anyone who continues to play the neighborhood techno club, when they could easily be at some kunsthalle. Everyone is welcome, but trans and femmes to the front, please. Also: DICAP. (Fri 10/4, 10P @ Bossa Nova Civic Club, Bushwick - $TK)
The urban hangar of Silo isn’t my favorite place for dancing, but when the music is piping, it can get vibey as hell, especially when locals are involved. I can’t think of a recent b2b that features two as-large musical personalities as Jubilee x Lauren Flax, great collaborators who I expect will wrap the Caribbean bass traditions and the acid around one another and smile the whole while. There’s also Sepehr, a young Iranian-American producer relatively new to Bklyn, whose beautiful (not always dance-oriented) techno veers towards the abstract; and Sister Zo, a KC-to-NYC transplant who produces crisp, hi-BPM ravey bass music. Also: Ardalan. (Fri 10/4, 10p @ Silo, Bushwick - FREE - $20)
There’s plenty to grumble about with Brooklyn Museum as an institution, but it continues to be involved in excellent exhibits (see: the current Elizabeth Catlett retrospective), and its First Saturdays program is great at supporting local musicians. This Saturday, as part of the museum’s 200th Birthday Celebration it’s producing live sets by Ahmed Abdullah’s Diaspora (2p), and a Burnt Sugar Smokehouse session (6:30p), which features acts fronted by individual members of the mighty Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber band. (Sat 10/5 @ Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway - FREE)
COMMUNITY FUNCTION: There are very few local organizations doing the work of Geng’s PTP (once Purple Tape Pedigree, now Protect That Peace), releasing music, exploring the purposeful meaning of communities and archives, bringing people together, pushing the paradigm. Now, after the triumph of PTP’s sold-out The Kitchen debut, Geng and the peeps are moving to more familiar environs: a house show in Bushwick called A Generative Home Gathering, co-presented by Ten Cartwheels and PTP Vision. There will be dialogues and praxis shares, art installations, and, of course, music, featuring noisy live sounds by Centennial Gardens (aka Geng and Dreamcrusher), Emize, OHYUNG, and Yaz Lancaster, plus DJing by Sola System. Tickets in advance only, please RSVP at the link >>>. Highest Recommendation! (Sat 10/5, 6p @ secret location, Bushwick - $15advance only)
After a youth of listening to rap with hard-rock loops, I’m pretty sure it was Stetsasonic’s 1988 single “Talkin’ All That Jazz” that made me understand that any samples could be made into hip-hop; the Bklyn group also introduced me to the name Prince Paul. (And I **just** noticed that the above video is dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat…!) That’s a lot of history worth remembering. At this old-school reunion show, they’ll be amongst other local greybeards: Funk Flex, who’s still going bold-faced, and Smoothe Da Hustler, whose “Broken Language” was a ‘94 anthem but whom I haven’t heard mentioned in two decades (though maybe it’s the company I don’t keep). Also: Ruste Juxx. (Sat 10/5, 8:30p @ Brooklyn Bowl, Williamsburg - $38)
SHAKE!: Monk-One and DJ Prestige’s, all-vinyl NYC classics monthly, welcomes as its special guest, Ocean People. AKA Sampo, AKA DJ Anonymous, a Helsinki head who was a hip-hop/boogie/disco DJing staple at the great Meatpacking District club APT, in the first decade of Y2K. Magnificent selecter: 100% guaranteed that he’s got classics you know, and classics you don’t. (Sat 10/5, 10p @ Friends & Lovers, Crown Heights - $5-$10) Bonus Beat: Ocean People is also playing at Gabriela on Friday night, with the house-music archivist, There is No Planet Earth.
Nabihah Iqbal’s musicking career has been full of great twists and turns. Where she first made a name as a singer (on Sophie’s “Lemonade”) and electronic producer (as Throwing Shade), Iqbal really came to renown as a DJ on NTS (graduating to the BBC), which led to the increasingly popular indie and shoegaze-noisy songs she’s been producing the last few years. Her club DJ sets weave it all together—open ears get well-rewarded. (Sat 10/5, 10p @ Nublu, Loisaida - $20)
NYC free-jazz institution Arts For Art continues its annual set of autumn InGardens shows around the Lower East Side and East Village community spaces, with three or four acts performing each Saturday and Sunday afternoon, through mid-October. This week it’s at the First Street Green Park, the northeast corner of Houston and 2nd Ave. Saturday’s highlights include the violin duo of gabby fluke-mogul and Charlie Burnham, and the solo electronics of LaFrae Sci. Sunday closes with a duet between dancer Miriam Parker and bassist Luke Stewart, plus a solo performance by saxophonist Joe McPhee. (Sat 10/5 & Sun 10/6, 1:30p @ First Street Green, NoHo - FREE)
The Sunday morning/early afternoon slot of this week’s Nowadays Nonstop is an extra-special pleasure. Longtime readers know the high-esteem in which I hold livwutang’s mixing skills; it’s always a pleasure to bask in her unorthodox transitions, a novel idea of techno. Shanti Celeste, a Chilean who came of mixing-records age in Bristol, is another DJ/producer who’s brought a fresh outlook on a DJ set; in her case, it’s the warm, sunny outlook of her selections, reaching for the “pop” and happiness of dance-music, while remaining fixed on the outside. If that doesn’t describe a perfect Sunday noon-time DJ, I don’t know what does. (Sun 10/6, 9a @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $10-$30)
A Dada Strain fave, trumpeter Takuya Karoda is a cornerstone of Bklyn’s rare grooves-meets-deep improvisation community. A nicely random Sunday evening set at Sultan Room (whose bookings seem to be getting further and further into the sound) projects that he’s either got something new to workout, or is breaking in a new band before tour. (Sun 10/6, 7p @ Sultan Room, Ridgewood - $20)
Saxophonist Ned Rothenberg is a card-carrying veteran of NYC downtown’s free-jazz set, having collaborated with three generations (and counting) of academic experimentalists and good troublemakers. For this Roulette commission, he’s put together and is premiering the all-star Bucket Brigade, with Craig Taborn (piano & keyboard), David Tronzo (slide guitar), Stomu Takeishi (electric bass), Marcus Rojas (tuba) and Billy Martin (drums). On band alone, this should rip! (Mon 10/7, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25/$30)
Over the last two decades, Los Angeles-based, Canadian singer-songwriter Imaad Wasif has written and produced a few excellent indie rock-leaning albums, while also collaborating with the likes of Lou Barlow/Folk Implosion and Karen O/Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Here Wasif is playing a set with a band that includes Shahzad Ismaily and Zoh Amba. Those are helluva collaborators on a Monday evening. (Mon 10/7, 8p @ Heaven Can Wait, East Village - $12)
Excellent triple-bill of leftfield improvised sound: Opening is a solo set by Jason Nazary, maybe best-known as jaimie branch’s partner in Anteloper, but whose multitude of work stretches back to the legendarily chaotic Little Women and forward to his current touring with Helado Negro. Nazary’s mixture of drums and modular synths is massive. Adnata Ensemble is a quartet of creative-music double bassists (Scott Colberg, Ari Folman-Cohen, Michael Isvara Montgomery and Ran Livneh). But thevening’s centerpiece may be the duo of Turkish drummer/producer Berke Can Özcan and baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson; their new album It Was Always Time is a magnificent expression of joyful, electronic-minded play. (Tues 10/8, 7p @ Nublu, Loisaida - $20)
Assembly #22, co-curated as always by Lester St. Louis and Luke Stewart, is a biggie. The main draw is the Camae Ayewa-less Irreversible Quartet—bassist Stewart, drummer Tcheser Holmes, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and what promises to be an NYC sighting of trumpeter Aquiles Navarro (who’s moved to Europe). But that’s not all: there will also be a rare NYC set by Neuringer, one by vocalist-electronics producer Miss Olithea and DJing by the homey, NYNIK. Community vibes. Highest Recommendation. (Tues 10/8, 8p @ Sisters, Fulton Street - $15-$20)
Mong Tong is an instrumental duo from Taipei, the brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi, who create a wondrous psychedelic music out of samples and voices, looking to Taiwanese and global folklore, pastoral Krautrock, ambient and dub minimalism, swirling it all together like the good art-school students they once were. Opening sets from Brother Geng as King Vision Ultra, and from Emize. Highest Recommendation. (Tues 10/8, 7:30p @ TV Eye, Ridgewood - $18)
What a stacked week!