Category Archives: Reviews

Concert Review: Death ain’t dead!!! But who’s following them in their footsteps?

Date: July 1, 2013
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)

Review by Dawoud Kringle

Hailing from Detroit, Death is one of those bands whose innovation and fearless trailblazing was lost or ignored by history. They were founded by the Hackney brothers (Bobby, bass and vocals, Dennis, drums, and David, guitar; who died of lung cancer in 2000, and was succeeded by Bobbie Duncan) in 1974, and after decades in the shadows, they return with new music, new life in their classics, and are the subject of a new documentary.

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CD Review: “Dig In” to Some Tasty Comfort Food

a1796888558_2Artist: Comfort Food
Title: Dig It
Label: self released
Genre: experimental-funk-jazz-noise-progressive

CD Review by Matt Cole

Dig In is a recent EP by the Chicago bass and drums duo Comfort Food. The band consists of Daniel Wolff on bass and vocals, and Jake Marshall on drums. The group describes their sound as experimental noise jazz; Dig In also has funk, psychedelia, and blues as part of the recipe. Dig In is a promising appetizer from a young band, still a little raw around the edges, which will leave the listener hungry for more. (OK, enough with the food analogies…)

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A Personal Concert Review: SoSaLa…Sohrab…love to pursue his challenging sounds…

IMG_3465Date: June 28, 2013IMG_7969
Venue: Clemente Soto Velez Center (NY)
Text and photos by Mehran Farahbakhsh

Most musicians bring their sounds into music, that is what music making is about. Sounds to refine to the musicians imaginations, in case of this young man:). SoSaLa‘s Sohrab. Somewhat there is a different jazz in play, Sohrab takes the music and brings it to his sounds, by that I mean, he uses the established sounds of music and evolves it to outside boundaries of recognition, it is his rebellious nature, against the ideas of entertainment, or danceable, or may be your ordinary expectation of sounds, musical tunes are used nostalgically as he is taking you somewhere, an unknown edge of imagination, the high energy state of chaos.

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CD Review: NYC Artist Tomas Doncker Pays Tribute To Howlin’ Wolf, Brings “GLOBAL SOUL” To The Masses

Text by Dawoud Kringle

New York mainstay Thomas Doncker was recently asked to be the musical director for Diablo Love (a love story by Mando Alvarado, directed by Alfred Preisser, featuring live music that features Dockner’s re-imagining of songs by Howling Wolf – a.k.a. Chester Arthur Burnet. It will be presented at Central Park SummerStage, in honor of Wolf’s 103rd birthday), and released an EP of music by Howling Wolf. And in doing so, he was taking on a great burden.

a0464342006_2Artist: Tomas Doncker Band
Title: Howlin’ Wolf EP
Format: CD & download
Label: self released
Genre: Blues/Global Soul/Future Roots
Release date: July 2, 2013
Streaming link: http://tomasdonckerband.bandcamp.com/album/howlin-wolf-ep
Produced by Tomas Doncker & James Dellatacoma for True Groove

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Vision Festival 18 Report P.4:…all of the bands managed to balance individual pyrotechnics and skill with the collaborative spontaneous creation of interesting and engaging music.

image003Date: June 15, 2013
Venue: the Roulette (NY)

Review by Matt Cole  – All photos courtesy of the Vision Festival

The Vision Festival is perhaps the most prominent and important ongoing festival of avant-garde and free music. This year, it took place over five days at the 2-year old Brooklyn home of the long-standing art and performance space, Roulette. With panels, and performances by many prominent masters of free music, it is a must-attend for aficionados of radical spontaneous composition.

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