Bklyn Sounds 10/25/2023 - 10/31/2023

Shows: Ben LaMar Gay + Tomin'Em / Chester Higgins "Black Pantheon" / Tama Sumo & Lakuti + Mike Servito / Ben Hixon + 8ulentina + Silk Web + LOKA + Vixen / Craig Taborn / and more

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Dada Strain. Your wonderful notes and words of encouragement about the overall project, and about the Bklyn Sounds listings in particular, have been a beacon at a difficult time.

As Bklyn Sounds inches closer to its one-year anniversary at Dada Strain (having grown almost three-fold during that period), I am trying to figure out how to balance a variety of demands. Yours and mine, which actually often overlap. But also incorporate my own urgent needs when it comes to this project’s production.

Many of you applaud the insight of local-events listings and new music coverage that I have traditionally kept behind the moderately priced paywall, and which I recognize to be the greatest public need that Bklyn Sounds serves. Many of you have also saluted the community-culture context which the Bklyn Sounds long features often provide, and which will remain free content for the foreseeable future. That is, when they appear in the future, because my personal standards of creating meaningful well-written, -thought-out and -researched work runs up against the wall of weekly deadlines but also against daily requirements. 

What I am now trying to evaluate is how all this Bklyn Sounds work must make time-is-money sense in my life. At the moment, the unbalance leans too heavily towards no compensation. As a freelancer struggling to make ends meet, it is currently an impossible burden. I love this work deeply and have no intention of stopping. But the need to make sense of these challenges, and the desire to develop a strategy that keeps giving readers what they want, while also developing new readers and new aspects of Dada Strain (a few of which have long been in the works), is something that I must do.

What does this mean to you, the subscriber? It means that while full Bklyn Sounds listings will remain as weekly paid content, Bklyn Sounds features may be more sporadic. It means that, maybe some listings peek out from behind the paywall (as they do this week), but most do not. I will play around with the format of this weekly publish, and I will gladly respond to all your suggestions.

What can you do? Well, I’d love for you to be a paid subscriber. Full Stop. But I recognize that this doesn’t make sense for everybody. In the case that you can’t, I’d love for you to tell your friends who might value knowing about what happens in New York music, or in rhythm, improvisation and community culture at-large. Mostly, I just want you to know what’s going on here at Dada Central, and to keep reading, following and commenting. 

Thanks as always for your time. More soon…

This Week’s Shows:

Two groupings of diverse-minded local imporvisers in one of the city’s best small-room venues:  Sally Gates, Trevor Dunn & Greg Fox (guitar, bass, drums) bring an experi-metal fusion energy to much of their work, and it’s there on Deliriant Modifier their debut as a trio, which this evening’s gig celebrates. The saxophone-drums pairing of Zoh Amba & Chris Corsano has been mapping the outer limits of free music exploration together for a couple of years now, knowing where they wanna go and looking for new ways to get there. Also: Antinomie who call themselves “freak math rock.” (Wed 10/25, 8p @ Bar Sundown, Ridgewood - $15)

Pique-nique Recordings’ famed “Take Two” series — wherein audiences gathers to quietly and attentively listen to a classic album, before the improvising musicians who are the evening hosts interpret that album’s music — returns to public records. This time around, producer/multi-instrumentalist Sly5thAve and keyboardist Jesse Fischer tackle the electronic funk masterpiece that is Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters. This could be drum-machine fun. (Wed 10/25, 8p @ public records, Gowanus - $40)

Los Angeles producer Nosaj Thing (Jason W. Chung) is one of the longtime constants of that city’s great experimental beat underground which layers hip-hop beats, electronic hardware sounds, and ambient compositions to create a distinctly heady downtempo music. Based on its massively impressive list of contributors, Nosaj Thing’s newest album Continua is an attempt to jump popularity levels. At first blush, it’s a beautiful, multifaceted work. Wednesday’s show will be a chance to recreate the album’s sonic complexities live. (Wed 10/25, 8p @ National Sawdust, Williamsburg - $35)