Bklyn Sounds 2/14/2024—2/20/2024
This week's shows: 'Donuts Are Forever 18' / Riley Mulherkar / Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba / 'Downtempo' / Love Injection + musclecars + Toribio / Speedway 29 / Caroline Davis' Portals / and more
Lotsa people joining the past couple of months — thank you! Hope you find Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds useful, and maybe important enough to upgrade to a paid subscription.
There’s lots of things a-brewing. So much so, I literally haven;t found a moment to write a dedicated post to announce a bunch of them yet. Yet! But it’s coming…
Gonna keep the exclusive product gratis, without a paywall, for one more week. Let me know what you think. Feedback is always welcome.
In the meantime, go support your local musicians and musickers. They (We) could use it!
This Week’s Shows:
From the Performance Space site: “Knowledge of Wounds is an autonomous gathering space, a ceremony, a fire, a calling to vibrate in good relations across Indigenous time and space. In this iteration, KoW presents a solo, improvisational noise performance by composer Raven Chacon (Diné), followed by a conversation with scholar and sound artist Hayden Ryan (Yuin).” Chacon, a recent music Pulitzer Prize winner (the first Native American to do so), is an incredible contemporary composer who also has a show at the Swiss Institute. (Thurs 2/15, 7p @ Performance Space, Manhattan - $0-$25)
Razor-N-Tape’s fabulous live-band-meets-DJs party, A Joyful Noise, makes its quarterly return to the Sound Room. The selectahs this time around are the excellent Bklynite Beewack and Eddie C, a Canadian secret hero who’s been creating massive disco edits for over a decade. As always, the Joyful Noise ensemble is made up of some of the city’s finest, dance-oriented improvising players, including Jason Lindner, Stuart Bogie, Brandon Markell Holmes, and Peter Matson. (Thurs 2/15, 8p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $20-$25)
Flora’s semi-regular Thursday evening Downtempo night at Jupiter Disco is one of my favorite ideas of what makes a good weeknight jam. Hopefully the name says it all, but in case the theme requires an explanation, it’s less about peak-time debauchery than steady manifesting of groove, heavy on hip-hop and soul. And always featuring some of the city’s best women DJs. Tonight that means cry$cross and Cosmo, as well as Flora. (Thurs 2/15, 10p @ Jupiter Disco, Bushwick - FREE)
A night I’ve been actively searching for! Heart Beats is an early-evening Friday monthly at Bossa run by “local legend” A. Sarr (a Queens musicker involved in numerous projects) that focuses on producers playing live, whether that means out-n-out live sets, or just test-driving their new creations on a club soundsystem. This month also features E-Conomy, Saywordstaz and e.g. Looking forward to it. (Fri 2/16, 7p @ Bossa Nova Civic Club, Bushwick - FREE)
Saxophonist/composer Caroline Davis calls her Portals music an “immersive sound and haptic experience, drawing upon the idea of mourning and ancestral communications as textural entities…written to offer connections to ancestors who have transitioned and elements they would like to explore through the life-cycle portal. Through this music, the ensemble engages in the connective tissue between dual and non-dual realms of existence.” Davis has been playing the Portals music often of-late; at Bar Bayeux, she’s with pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Chris Tordini, and drummer Allan Mednard. (Fri 2/16, 8p & 9:30p @ Bar Bayeux, Prospect-Lefferts - FREE + one drink minimum per set + tip the musicians)
A label but also a music collective, 29 Speedway has been key to many experimental pop and rave-oriented DIY gatherings events around Bklyn for at least three/four years. And whereas events at the Greenpoint IRL would ram 80-100 people into a one-room gallery, the last local one was at Pioneer Works. (i.e. Shit’s grown!) Tonight’s scales things back to the size of my favorite “secret Bklyn location.” The folks on the bill I am familiar with — DJ sets by Jacob Palto Flats and James K, live sets from Bookworms and Daniel Relaxer, there are others too — retain a high quality of beats, synthetic sounds, oddball DJ selections, and general weirdness. Follow the Speedway space. (Fri. 2/16, 10p @ secret Bklyn location - $25-$30)
Though launched back in 2018 to release what he heard as a new Black techno sound of Bklyn, MoMA Ready’s Haus of ALTR label hit me hardest during lockdown. Discovering numerous compilations featuring all these producers/DJs (not all NYC, but a large percentage) crystallized the fact that the community was more massive and stronger than imagined. The rest is a history still unfolding. Friday, Haus of ALTR is having a Nowadays night, featuring Detroit’s great The AM (aka AMX), longtime Dallas-to-Bklyn techno transplant DAIYAH, and of course MoMA Ready. (Fri 2/16, 11p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $25)
The Malian ngoni (lute) player and griot Bassekou Kouyate has been a boldface name on the global music circuit for a couple of decades, usually under the same the “blues of West Africa” cliche this deeply moving, rhythmic acoustic-string music has long been marketed as. Escape the cliche though, and what you hear is a wondrous set of melodies, as played by a master of the instrument, but also a soulful dance music, another one of those connections between rhythm, improvisation and community I keep harping about. Kouyate is making an all-too rare NYC appearance, with his longtime ensemble Ngoni ba. Highest Recommendation! (Sat 2/17, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $35adv/$40)
Last time was so good, they’re doing it again. Back in late September, the DJing super-friends (and major inspirations for Bklyn Sounds), Paul & Barbie Love Injection, Craig & Brandon musclecars, and Cesar Toribio rocked a tag-teaming all-nighter at H0LO that was one of pre-genocide autumn’s great parties. Here’s hoping lightning strikes twice. This quintet certainly knows a lot about musical majik. Highest Recommendation! (Sat 2/17, 10p @ H0LO, Ridgewood - $25-$40)
Longtime readers know how I stan DJ Tara’s sets, her take on what I would call song-oriented house (think more soul, R&B and vocals, than jacking minimalism) and a global diasporic embrace of Black dance music. On the other hand, Miss Alicia, ⅓ of the lovely Sweet Kicks party crew and ½ of the Middle Eastern electronics project Ūmboma, brings the roughness with aplomb. A perfect Saturday night combo in the intimacy of the Bad Room, while Occupy the Disco occupies the big one. (Sat 2/17, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $15)
Hot slide-trumpet hard-blower Steve Bernstein’s quartet Sexmob is at this point a quarter-century old, so you could understand if the Downtown jazz enfant terrible was downshifting. Yet 2023’s The Hard Way crackled and cackled — bassist Tony Scher and drummer Kenny Wollensen deep in the pocket, Briggan Krauss’ saxophone and guitar flying, plus a coterie of keyboard guests and producer Scotty Hard bringing the bonus ruckus. No jokeyness to be found, but smiles all around. And heavyweight style. (Sun 2/18, 8p @ Nublu, Manhattan - $20)
Founding member of the brass ensemble The Westerlies, trumpeter Riley Mulherkar is in the process of releasing his first solo album (full disclosure: I wrote the bio), one that flips his Julliard training and Jazz at Lincoln Center traditionalism on its head a bit. Produced by sound sculptors Rafiq Bhatia and Chris Pattishall, it places Mulherkar’s horn inside a highly electronic, studio-built space, completely recontextualizing both the original compositions and the songbook repertoire. Tonight is the record release show for Riley. (Sun 2/18, 8p @ Littlefield, Gowanus - $12adv/$15)
The original (and still-annual) party in the memory of the legendary hip-hop producer J Dilla, Donuts Are Forever is hitting its 18th installment, continuing to balance classic selectors with community members, with the next generation’s finest. The big names this year are Philly’s magnificent Cosmo Baker and DMC’s femme standard-bearer, DJ Perly; joined by Red Corvette, Luv, Dokbrass, DJ Kayla and DJ Shinobi Shaw. Some TBA guests are also game-time decisions. But the focus is, as always, on James Yancey, whose influence on the music world keeps growing and growing. All proceeds going to the Building Beats non-profit. (Sun 2/18, 9p @ Baby's All Right, Williamsburg - $30)
For the last few years, it’s been easy to spot trumpeter Ryan Easter involved with a ton of great music — playing with Nu Jazz and Wrens, in saxophonist Alfredo Colon’s recent quintet, helping out with the Brackish series, guesting on digital-noise jams, making hip-hop tracks, and on and on. But I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen him booked under his own name — until now. I am not familiar with the rest of this Barbés sextet — Maxx Spinelli (bass), Jose Benjamin Escobar (piano), Jackson Bell (guitar), Marcelo Perez (drums) and Ojiik (tenor saxophone) — or know the direction of their music, but I’ve come to trust that Easter is a talented sonic omnivore who isn’t fooling around. (Mon 2/19, 7p @ Barbes, Park Slope - $20)
Like black liquorice, this set of jams is not for everyone, but the ones who know they like what they like, will crowd in to hear drummer Joe Russo, keyboardist John Medeski, and guitarist Nels Cline scale the psychedelic heights. The evening is called “This Is Gonna Be a Blast,” and I believe there’s truth in that advertising. (Tues 2/20, 10p @ The Sultan Room, Bushwick - $45)