Heard Too Late 2023 :: Dosh, Ismaily, Young

in , , , , , , ,

Yesterday we began a short series of posts highlighting 2023 albums I didn’t get a chance to spend enough time with prior to compiling my year-end list with Lee Gallagher and the Hallelujah’s “The Falcon Ate The Flower.”

Next up is the self-titled release from Dosh, Ismaily, Young. Featuring “drummer Marty Dosh (Dosh, Andrew Bird, Fog), bassist Shahzad Ismaily (Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, Secret Chiefs 3, Arooj Aftub), and guitarist Tim Young (Wayne Horvitz’s Zony Mash, David Sylvian, Michael White).”

With Shazad already appearing on the 2023 round up with Love In Exile by Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily, this marks Ismaily’s second appearance on my favorite albums of 2023.

This is not so much a review as a profile, so I take no shame in quoting the Bandcamp page to help you get a picture of this wild ride: “On their debut self-titled release, these master musicians effortlessly deliver six solid tracks including an 11-minute krautrock mindblower, a meditation on the end of the world, and explorations into Stax-soul, space-rock, and free-jazz.”

If you’ve taken the time and effort to read this far, it’s probably because we share the same music vibes. I highly recommend this release, especially since physical copies are in short supply.

Watch the official video for the opening track, “Blast:”

  • Support Dosh, Ismaily, Young at Bandcamp

  • Purchase Dosh, Ismaily, Young’s music at Amazon

Goose :: OK, They're Good! (Plus Trey Anastasio!)

in , , , , , , ,

I’ll be honest: I’ve tried to dig Goose several times. I’ve watched several live sets and lots of people I respect dig them. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t connect with them. I think it may have something to do with the moustaches and my own biases. You see, my Dad had a mustache, and any time I try to grow one, I just see my Dad in the mirror, and I love my Dad, but that’s not what you want to see when you look in the mirror.

Anyhoo: (as always), I’m on a big Kurt Vonnegut kick, and I just watched the 2021 documentary which included the quote from Cat’s Cradle: “As Bokonon says: 'peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.” That’s when Pitchfork decided to review the bands newest album Dripfield and I decided to give them another try.

Brady Gerber’s review includes this short section:

Watching their viral set at Peach Fest 2019—which, like many Goose sets, you can stream in full on YouTube—I thought wow, these guys can play. But it wasn’t just their virtuosic performances: Between the sprawling solos, they had actual songs that I walked away humming.

So, like any good Bokononist would, I went and watched that “viral'“ 2019 Peach Fest set. And I ended up digging it. A Lot. I sent it to my brother and a friend with the caption: “I think I might have been won over.” You see, they too had tried Goose before and found it not to their taste. But this set won them both over just like it did me. Maybe it will do the same for you. Maybe not. Either way, I hope you enjoy and occasionally stop along to remember that “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”

The Deets:

Goose plays Peach Fest 2019 in Scranton, PA.

Setlist:

  1. Madhuvan

  2. Time to Flee

  3. All I Need

  4. Wysteria Lane

  5. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo

  6. Arcadia

  7. The Way It Is

  8. Hot Tea

Trey Anastasio of that band from VT sat in the other night with Goose in NYC and thanks to the wonders of the technology, you can watch it right here right now:

The Deets:

  • Goose - Hungersite → Arcadia (feat. Trey Anastasio) - 6/25/22 Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY

Here is the band’s official video for Hungersite:

Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismaily, and Ryan Sawyer :: Live Improv Set at Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY 9/4/21

in , , , , , , , ,

Thanks so much to the amazing Bryon Whitley for posting this amazing set.

Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismaily, and Ryan Sawyer performing a live improv set at Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY 9/4/21.

“A set of wonderful improvisational music created by three sensational musicians.”

  • Visit Steve Gunn’s website

  • Follow Steve Gunn at Facebook

  • Follow Steve Gunn at Twitter

  • Support Steve Gunn at Bandcamp

  • Purchase Steve Gunn’s music at Amazon

  • Read about Shahzad Ismaily at Pi Recordings

Phish Live at Ak-Chin Pavilion (10.22.21)

in , , , , ,

Phish live at Ak-Chin Pavilion. Phoenix, AZ. 10.22.21.

My wife and I hadn’t seen Phish live for 22 or 23 years (they haven’t played Phoenix in 18 years!). I think the last time we saw them was in San Diego? Anyway, that drought ended the other night with a phenomenal show.

Enjoy.

Setlist:

Set One:

  1. Julius

  2. Martian Monster

  3. Soul Planet

  4. My Friend, My Friend

  5. Bouncing Around the Room

  6. Scent of a Mule

  7. More

  8. Ghost

Set Two:

  1. Loving Cup

  2. Mike's Song--

  3. I Am Hydrogen--

  4. Weekapaug Groove

  5. Everything's Right

  6. A Life Beyond the Dream

  7. Cities

  8. Harry Hood

Encore:

  1. Suzy Greenberg

  2. Cavern

The Deets:

  • Phish 10/22/2021 Ak-Chin Pavilion - Phoenix, AZ

  • Source: DPA 4011a(PAS/40mm split/OTS@8')--Portico 5012--SD788t(24bit/96kHz)--MBit(16bit/44.1kHz)--FLAC

  • Recorded and transferred by Scott Schneider

EOTO Live at Sonic Bloom (2014)

in , , , , , ,
SonicBloom.jpeg

EOTO is the electronic improvisational duo of Michael Travis and Jason Hann (Both of String Cheese Incident). Sonic Bloom is a CO music festival. This was 2014. It’s all live and improvised, so I don’t think there’s a setlist. That’s about all I know. You?

Özgür Baba and Hamed Habibpour :: Improvisation

in , , , , , ,
Screen Shot 2021-03-13 at 5.35.56 PM.png

“We had an improvised musical journey with my Iranian musician friend Hamed Habibpour, and it was a nice tour, we enjoyed it very much, I hope you enjoy it as a listener and a watcher, I wish you pleasant views and listening.”

Important People:

  • Özgür Baba: Cura

  • Hamed Habibpour: Santur

  • Video: Duygu Bostancı

  • Yer-Place: Uludağ Orman Çiftliği

  • Follow Özgür Baba at Facebook

  • Purchase Özgür Baba’s music at Amazon

  • Purchase Hamed Habibpour’s music at Amazon

Wordless Flight Emerges

in , , , , ,
oj1Rn6EO.jpeg

Caleb Nei bills himself as: “Washington DC Area Event & Cocktail Pianist,” usually playing “about 180 jazz dates each year throughout Virginia and Washington DC.”

Nei’s newest project Wordless Flight. “Emergence,” Nei’s first release under the new moniker is a collection of improvisations “Recorded on a felted upright piano, a Mason & Hamlin reed organ, and a collection of analog synths.” Nei says that “Emergence” is the first of several releases in this vein, with lots more music already recorded.

“Recorded in the early-morning hours before the family wakes,” Nei’s improvisations are meditative pieces walking the border between minimalism, new age age, and contemporary classical.

Opening track “Another Morning” is representative of the rest of the album in all of the good ways. Interesting melodies over ambient background noise unfolding and swirling up and around to greet the day before folding back into itself.

“Murmur” propels these themes forward, while “1997” begins to push into Ambient territory and “Landscape From A Bus” pulses with an Ambient loop and “Moored Boats” makes you wonder if this wasn’t an electronic album the whole time.

This is music created with the sun rise to fill your while day.

  • Visit Caleb Nei’s official website

  • Visit the Wordless Flight website

  • Purchase Wordless Flight’s music at Bandcamp

Elkhorn's Acoustic Storm

Fe6jhr3g.jpeg

I don’t live somewhere with seasons. I live in a place that is hot or less hot. In the middle of a desert and I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to build a major metropolitan city here, Phoenix (or its adjacent suburbs.

But I still have a soul. And I miss seasons. I mean, I have experienced them, they’re just currently part of my imagination and not my life.

And even though I don’t like Christmas music, music, music often has a strong seasonal element for me. Not that this is Christmas music, but it was recorded in the midst of a snow storm. Elkhorn (usually a guitar duo made up of childhood friends, Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner was scheduled to play a show with (third guitarist) Turner Williams Jr. but the show was snowed out as the group was snowed in (see what I did there?). Making the most of the night, the group hunkered down in Gardner’s home studio and improvised some jams. The first installment, The Storm Sessions was released earlier this year and we are now treated to the acoustic counterpart, The Acoustic Storm Sessions.

The resulting two pieces evoke the crispness of winter and the crackle of a first snow. Meditative but not lulling. Meandering but not lost. These are musicians at ease with themselves and the music flowing through them. Slowly unfolding, the first song plays with interlocking and intertwining patterns that sometimes resolves themselves and sometimes simply morph into something else.

The record is hitting mailboxes this week and I can’t wait for you to hear this one.


  • Visit Elkhorn’s official website

  • Follow Elkhorn at Facebook

  • Follow Elkhorn at Twitter

  • Support Elkhorn at Bandcamp

  • Purchase Elkhorn’s music at Amazon

  • Browse all Holiday at the Sea Elkhorn posts

Grateful Dead: Playing In The Jam (A Holiday At The Sea Mix)

in , , , , , , , , , , ,
Screen Shot 2020-06-03 at 12.52.41 PM.png

Ever wonder what “Playing In The Band” might sound like as an extended instrumental free-jazz-space-rock suite? Well, I did.

Inspired by Save Your Face and their various Grateful Dead mixes, I edited six different performances of “Playing In The Band” into an instrumental suite.

I’m not entirely happy with a couple of the transitions, but I dig how it turned out overall, seeing as how I am not a professional, I didn’t actually spend that much time on this, and I really only made this for myself to listen to either while I work or commuting. Enjoy.

Here are the deets for the six pieces making up the Suite:

  • 00:00 - 11:39 :: 09.21.72 at the The Spectrum in Philadelphia, PA (released as Dicks’s Picks 36)

  • 11:39-25:45 :: 03.24.73 at the The Spectrum in Philadelphia, PA

  • 25:245 - 34:47 :: 11.10.73 at Winterland Arena in San Francisco, CA (released as part of Winterland 1973: The Complete Recordings)

  • 34:47 - 44:09 :: 05.17.77 at Memorial Coliseum, U of Alabama, MS (released as part of May 1977)

  • 44:09: 52:31 :: 05.28.77 at at Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT (released as To Terrapin: Hartford '77)

  • 52:31 - 56:27 :: 05.28.77 at at Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT (released as To Terrapin: Hartford '77)

I chose these performances for no real reason other than that this is the time-period of the Dead that I listen to most and these shows happened to be on my laptop when I decided to try out this idea.

And if all that weren’t enough goodness, here’s an instrumental edit of the mammoth “Playing In The Band” from the Pacific Northwest '73-'74: Believe it If You Need It (Live) set (Live at Hec Edmundson Pavillion, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 5/21/74).

Enjoy.

  • Visit the Grateful Dead’s official website.

  • Follow the Grateful Dead on Facebook.

  • Follow Grateful Dead on Twitter.

  • Purchase Grateful Dead music on Amazon.

Terry and Gyan Riley Live At Oval Space (Not At the MIM Where I Saw Them)

in , ,
unnamed.jpg

Thanks to a friend of mine, I had the opportunity to see Terry and Gyan Riley at the Musical Instrument Museum.

Of course I was familiar with the elder Riley’s work, and I have the The Book Of Abbeyozzud album (which Amazon tells me I’ve owned since 2003), but I didn’t really know what to expect since the evening was billed as an evening of improvised music. The website for the evening’s performance quotes Terry Riley as saying:

“Nothing I have done in this life has given me more satisfaction than improvising on these songs with Gyan. Nothing I have done can match the intuitive synchronicity we have shared, many times, on the stage.”

The evening’s music was sublime, challenging and rewarding. It spun circular rhythms and balanced scales as each player was propelled by the other. I have never seen another night of music quite like it and I will be forever grateful for the experience.

Here is video of Terry and Gyan Riley from a totally different 2018 performance presented by NTS; Live At “Oval Space.”

  • Visit Terry Riley’s website.

  • Visit Gyan Riley’s website.

  • Purchase Terry Riley’s music at Amazon.

  • Purchase Gyan Riley’s music at Amazon.


The Necks in Three Performances

in ,
download.jpeg

The Necks are a piano jazz trio from Australia. Though it’s probably a bit misleading to let you think that they are filling smoking bars with jazz standards. “Avant-Jazz” might be a bit more appropriate. The Necks specialize in long-form improvisational pieces that blur the lines between jazz and minimalism.

As you might expect, they develop a theme and then deconstruct and recreate that theme. Their typical track is about an hour long. The Free Music Archive has made available three different radio appearances, which you can stream or download below.

The Necks Live at WFMU 2/10/2009 

  • Visit the Necks official website.

  • Visit the group at Facebook.

  • Purchase The Necks’ music at Bandcamp.

  • Purchase The Necks’ music at Amazon.