Bklyn Sounds 4/17/2025—4/22/2025

This week's shows include Gang of Four / 'Julius Hemphill: Blues & Ballads / Anish Kumar + Paula Tape / 'Sound Check: A Trance Atlantik Affair' with Gavilan Rayna Russom / sinonó / and much more

Clockwise from upper left Julius Hemphill, Gang of Four, Rayna Russom, Anish Kumar

A special offer for Dada Strain readers, particularly those living in the northern parts of the city — or, gulp, Westchester and the upstate ‘burbs — who are into post-punk legends.

A few days before playing an already-sold out Sony Hall on Thursday, April 24th, Gang of Four opens their “The Long Goodbye” tour with a special one-off gig to benefit the Westport (CT) Library on Friday, April 18th. And because I’ve known one of this gig’s producers, an ardent Dada Strain reader and supporter, for a dog’s age, 20 tickets have been set aside for this newsletter’s subscribers, at a discount price. (Details below.)

Over the past few days, Gang of Four’s farewell tour — with a line-up that includes original singer Jon King and original drummer Hugo Burnham, as well as bassist Gail Greenwood and guitarist Ted Leo — has also become a wake for Dave Allen. Allen, the band’s co-founder and “ace of bass,” passed away in early April at the age of 69, after a short battle with early onset dementia. The gig at the Westport Library will be the band’s first since Dave’s passing, with the band performing two sets, the first will include its seminal debut album, Entertainment!, and a second set that will feature other great hits from its formidable catalog. Expect extra-heavy vibes for the occasion. The night will open with a special DJ set by my old friend Tim Fielding, who was behind the classic turn-of-the-century DJ-mix label, Journeys By DJ.

If it seems odd for one of the more proletarian post-punk bands of its generation to be playing at a library in an upper middle-class community, consider that Gang of Four’s agitprop pop was always more literary than that of its colleagues; and that in recent years, the Westport Library has developed a next-level music-related program called VersoFest. Launched in 2022, VersoFest is an off-shoot of the Library’s Verso Studio, a full recording studio, media resource and production hub. It has been a magnet for original podcast and live music recordings, an archive for performances and talks, a development tool for community programs. And since its inception, the annual VersoFest has attracted an increasingly impressive roster of artists and authors to come speak and perform at the library. In just the past month, VersoFest has hosted talks with Black Thought, Patti Smith and Henry Rollins.

On the afternoon of Friday, April 18th, a few hours before the concert, Go4 vocalist Jon King will appear in conversation with Talking Heads/Tomo Tom Club drummer Chris Frantz to talk about his brand new memoir, To Hell with Poverty! A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four. Tickets are still available for the talk too.

Gang of Four: The Long Goodbye Tour Kickoff at The Westport Library (Fri 4/18, 6:30p @ Westport Library, Westport, CT - $55.) The discount code for Dada Strain readers is “Bklyn,” and is applicable to the first 20 people who use it, as long as the show is not sold out.

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS:

With its individual members off doing a plethora of other projects, sinonó, the magnificently droning goth-folk trio of Spanish-language vocalist isabel crespo pardo, double bassist Henry Fraser and cellist Lester St. Louis, has not played many gigs recently. But it has brand new music dropping shortly, and will be performing some of it at the excellent Lower East Side jazz basement. (Thurs 4/17, 7:30 & 9:30p @ CloseUp, Manhattan - $20)

Though she lives and teaches in Virginia, we are beyond blessed to have one of the world’s great flute players and creative-music composers, Nicole Mitchell, regularly in New York, playing in a variety of contexts, with countless young improvisers and veterans. The Nicole Mitchell Quartet that appears at Roulette is very much the latter—a killer group featuring pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Rashaan Carter and drummer Chad Taylor—and will be performing new music Micthell wrote that celebrates her Godmother, Minneapolis-based champion of culture in the arts and humanities, Jean Ann Durades. (Thurs 4/17, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25adv/$30)

The mighty drummer Ryan Sawyer occasionally puts together great pop-up improvised gigs at Ore Bar on Graham Avenue in East Williamsburg. At times, I am lucky enough to run into him and find out about one via hand-drawn flier. This week was one of those times. Thursday’s gig is a mouth-watering trio with a pair of string-playing multi-instrumentalist Jessica Pavone and More Eaze. No socials, so tell a (good) friend. (Thurs 4/17, 9p @ Ore Bar, East W’burg - $uggested)

Speaking of new and mouth-watering: Gena is the name of a fresh collaboration by two musicians with the capacity of invoking any contemporary corner of Great Black Music, drummer/producer Karriem Riggins, whose extended stay in NYC this winter/spring is bearing all sorts of incredible fruit, and Dallas vocalist/producer LIV.E, cornerstone of the Dolfin Records community. Expect electronics, soul, high-levels of creative improvisation, and a dash of the unexpected. LIV.E will also perform a DJ set. (Thurs 4/17, 10p @ Nublu, Manhattan - $22)

Chicago-based vocalist-pianist-polymath Alexis Lombre concludes her two-week-long FourOneOne residency with a pair of events that spotlight her musical future. Thursday night, Lombre will participate in a listening party, playing new unreleased music and speaking with the vocalist-flutist-producer Melanie Charles (whose Make Jazz Trill Again podcast is worth your time; with bonus beats from DJ OOOchild. Then on Friday comes one of the residency’s main events: Alexis playing in a duo with Georgia Anne Muldrow, the intergalactic producer, singer, beatmaker and songwriter who, Lombre says, “has fundamentally shaped [her] mind.” (Thurs 4/17, 7p @ Cassette, Ridgewood - FREE + Fri 4/18, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25adv/$30)

The last night of the Black Composers Upsouth program, co-produced by Andrew Drury’s Continuum Culture & Arts' Soup & Sound organization, is an evening honoring the late, great composer and saxophonist Julius Hemphill, focusing on his Blues & Ballads. The magnificent group which will be playing Hemphill’s compositions will be led by one of his primary archivists, the saxophonist Marty Ehrlich, joined by Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Jerome Harris on bass guitar and Pheeroan Aklaff on the drums, with special guest Amina Claudine Myers on piano. Beyond gutted to be out of town for this. Highest Recommendation! (Fri 4/18, 7:30p @ Greenwich House Music School, Manhattan - $25)

Full disclosure: Among the folks behind the new Sound Check party is a former student of mine, who, after being involved in the DIY club scene in London, is putting their heart and soul into creating great club spaces in NYC. A Trance Atlantic Affair, at the magnificent old supper club on the corner of Nostrand and DeKalb, set to be outfitted with a custom soundsystem and illuminated by lights c/o sch_lx, feels like an excellent start. Headlining is the mighty Gavilan Rayna Russom, modular-techno queen of LCD/DFA/Black Meteoric Star, and co-founder of the forward-thinking trans culture organization, Voluminous Arts. She’ll be joined by formidable rising talents Very J (A-1/Duty Free) and Downloadable Content (Mansions/Effervescence), plus Sound Check residents Leafy Greens and 98dots. (Fri 4/18, 10p @ Sugar Hill Disco, Bed-Stuy - $35)

A dubwise techno triple-bill headlined with a live set by one of Detroit’s third wave of dub soundscape explorers, DeepChord (aka Rod Modell). The warm-up will be a special deep listening B2B featuring local DJ/producer Eden Aurelius, whose dubby minimalist set last Friday at LSD was a thing of beauty, and Millia, one-third of the “ambient boy band” Purelink. Late-night close-out duty falls to one of my favorite young techno DJs currently working, the mighty livwutang. (Fri 4/18, 10p @ Nowadays, Ridgewood - $10-$26)

Wonderful triple-bill of young instrumentalists in Ridgewood. You may remember guitarist Mike Haldeman by the untraditional sounds he coaxed from his six-string playing with Kalia Vandever at Dada Strain’s Winter Jazzfest show, but his solo guitar+electronics sets are inter-dimensional. Montreal experimental-pop polymath Thanya Iyer is celebrating the release of her gorgeous new album TIDE/TIED. And clarinetist/vocalist Adelyn Strei, whose Original Spring LP has been in constant Dada rotation, also works at the intersection of sound experiments, bedroom-pop and small-scale improvisations. Highest Recommendation! (Sat 4/19, 7:30p @ Cassette, Ridgewood - $18)

Eucademix is the newish, electronics-heavy moniker of the great multi-instrumentalist and musicker Yuka Honda. One of Eucademix’s recent collaborators has been Butoh dancer azumi O E. Their latest collaborative set will also feature light designs by Waldo Walle. Presented in partnership with AvanTokyo. (Sat 4/19, 8p @ Issue Project Room, Downtown Bklyn - $20)

JDH & Dave P’s seemingly ageless Fixed nights rumble on, with two great young producers/DJs. Topping the bill is the Chilean Paula Tape, a recent Mixmag cover star whose recent Acid Latino EP exemplifies her percussive, global-minded techno. A star-in-the-making! Though I’m almost more excited to see the British South Asian Anish Kumar, who’s now spent a couple of years veering between epic disco-house and his own ideas about worldly percussion, which took full flight with Kino, two-parter he recently made with the great Hagop Tchaparian. Also: Alex McCracken. Highest Recommendation! (Sat 4/19, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $22)

A top-to-bottom, immaculate Saturday-night takeover at the Gowanus club: In the Sound Room, one of Detroit’s many secret weapons Scott Grooves will pull from three decades worth of wonderful house productions, supported by the mighty Lovie. An excellent visitor+local combo in the Atrium too, where next-level Colombian house producer Felipe Gordon is joined by Dance to the Music’s Mari Ella. Upstairs, Donis will…play to the lounge crowd? Instigate a party? Seriously great choices all over the building. (Sat 4/19, 11p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $36)

Excellent Los Angeles-based DIY jazz label Minaret Records rolls into CloseUp to present Doubles, a weekend-long festival of sets of local sounds adjacent to label founder Yousef Hilmy’s broad vision of the improvised music landscape. (Spoiler: it’s very similar to Dada Strain’s!) Among the performers will be a pair of duos, Kalia Vandever & Michael Haldeman and Zekkereya El-Magharbel & Or Bareket; Caroline Davis Quartet; plus a quintet of Henry Solomon, Zekkereya El-Magharbel, Simon Martinez, Kanoa Mendenhall and Savannah Harris. A great two-day primer on jazz-not-jazz. (Sat 4/19 & Sun 4/20, 2p @CloseUp, Manhattan - $125 festival pass, $20per-set tix available)

As electronic artists who’ve looked to “jazz” for improvising inspiration and found something of their own, Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler have been conjuring a heady idea that is often invoked but rarely matched. Jelinek’s 2001 classic Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records was a clicky, cutty, synthetically textured lodestar with nary a recognizable “jazz” sample in sight; and his 2005 release, Kosmischer Pitch, initiated a live collaboration with Pekler, whose own sound~scape records fell in between quiet lunacy and living organism. People operating in post-techno microtones are still trying to sound like them. (Sun 4/20, 7p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $$$)

A rare visit from Afrobeat/highlife legends. The partnership of Ghanaian guitarist and bandleader Ebo Taylor and vocalist Pat Thomas stretches back into the ‘60s. When Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat caused an immediate reaction among the West African highlife musicians, Taylor’s bands, often marketed as Funky Highlife, with Thomas as vocalist, were right behind Afrika 70 in terms of popularity. (The excellent Strut compilation Life Stories (Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980) is a massive place to start.) Both Taylor and Thomas have never stopped working, especially in London, and Taylor recently made an excellent record for Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead series. For lovers of classic West African dance rhythms and instrumental jaunts, this will be a treat. With the homeys Little Dynasty and Names You Can Trust as opening DJs. Highest Recommendation! (Sun 4/20, 8p @ Webster Hall, Manhattan - $$$)

Excellent trio alert: Drummer Vinnie Sperrazza and electric guitarist Brandon Seabrook (who is an occasional banjo/mandolin player) are local-jazz perennials, evidence of both traditional ideas and potentially strange territories. They’ll be joined by DoYeon Kim, whose mastry of the gayageum, an ancient Korean zither, has seen her become a stalwart in Bklyn’s improvising circles. (Mon 4/21, 8p @ iBeam, Gowanus - $20)

MORE RECOMMENDED EVENTS:

• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds + St. Vincent (Thurs 4/17, 7p @ Barclays Arena, Atlantic & Flatbush - ) - at this point, I think of Cave as the “Goth Springsteen,” so two nights in a hockey arena (second one sold out) seems about right

• Fire Over Heaven: Yuniya Edi Kwon + Gushes (Thurs 4/17, 7:30p @ Outpost Artists Resources, Ridgewood - $15) - one of the best DIY series in the city, tonight featuring the immaculate vocalist/violinist Kwon, and the art-prog electric guitar shredded Jennae Santos.

• DFA presents: James Murphy b2b Shit Robot (all night) ++ (Thurs 4/17, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $40) - Mr, LCD and one of DFA’s most under-heralded disco-techno beatmakers try to turn back time - honestly they’ve got the records to do it.

• Terrace Martin feat. Kenyon Dixon (Fri 4/18 - Mon 4/21, 8p & 10:30p @ Blue Note, Manhattan - $$$ with minimum) - LA saxophonist Martin is the secret sauce in jazz’s influence on 25 years of SouthCentral hip-hop and so much more, with vocalist Dixon.

• Heartbeats (Fri 4/18, 7p @ Mood Ring, Bushwick - FREE) - my favorite “producers play all-original beats” happy hour in Bklyn, back at Mood Ring.

• Italomatic (Fri 4/18, 10p @ Gabriela, W’burg - Free before 10p/$10 cash after) - the party that gets the good part of “Eighties™ dance music” right, at a club tailor-made for it.

• ​​Goldie + Takuya Nakamura (Sat 4/19, 7:30p @ Elsewhere, Bushwick - $$$) - Metalheadz king x Space Tak, in a monster jazz-meets-drum’n’bass double bill.

• Future Black Fusion (Sat 4/19, 8p @ Dead Letter No.9, Williamsburg - $22) - not sure about a serious cultural conversation at a weird, themed Williamsburg bar, but the whole thing ends with musclecars and Anthony Nicholson DJing in a small back-room, so…

• Eli Escobar (Sat 4/19, 9p @ Signal, East Williamsburg - $22-$28) - NYC club rule: if there’s a new venue with decent soundsystem, Eli **must** play an all-nighter to break it in

• Reginald Chapman’s Chaphouse (Sat 4/19, 9p & 10:15p @ Bar LunAtico, Bed-Stuy - $10suggested) - one of the city’s most in-form, jazz-meets-hip-hop-meets funk bands, led by trombonist Chapman, with trumpeter Ryan Easter as wing-man.

• The Pharcyde (Sun 4/20, 8p @ Brooklyn Bowl, W’burg - $$$) - once regarded by us dull East Coasters as LA’s contribution to Native Tongues (not really), with great tunes for days. Can it be that it was all so simple then?

• Buckethead (Sun 4/20, 8p @ Sony Hall, Manhattan - ) - is he the only guitar shredder to collaborate with members of Funkadelic, AACM and Guns’n’Roses? He certainly has a big enough posse to pay Sony Hall ticket prices.