Yvette Perez is a new york based vocalist, songwriter, keyboard player, and bandleader of two avant-pop groups h*e*r and birdbrain. Her work is influenced by the effects of everyday industrial environments on personal psychology, women, and ambiguous identity. the milieu of oppressive crowded freeways, burning refinery flames, and car dealerships in the restricted home environment of an obsessive, agoraphobic single-mother of her Southern California childhood permeates the stories in songs about the mysteries of housework and nature. This tradition continues as the overbearing brooklyn-queens expressway dominates the view and soundscape of her apartment in Brooklyn, NY.

Yvette studied jazz and avant musics at smith college with Yusef Lateef and Roger Reynolds while playing in local, western massachusetts rock bands.

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By John Kruth

“People were playing shells before there was written language. It goes way back to ancient times. It’s the roots of brass!” Steve Turre exclaimed. “Nobody knows what it sounded like. There’s no written notation or recordings available. The Spanish conquistadors destroyed the culture so we can only guess.”

Turre’s first exposure to the conch shell as a musical instrument came as a teenager when he sat in with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and the Vibration Society at the Both/And Club in San Francisco. Kirk, a master multi-instrumentalist, was famous for playing three saxophones simultaneously, along with flute, clarinet, and whatever else he could get his hands on. At any given time during a gig, Rahsaan’s music could abruptly spiral into a wild free-for-all, where anything could and did happen.

“He’d blow the shell and then hit the gong,” Turre recalled with a big grin. “The sound of the shell did something to me. It made me tingle.”

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John Kruth by Marilyn Cvitanic

(39 Years Hence)

by John Kruth

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