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Club d'Elf

Club d'Elf has been helping audiences lose track of time for almost twenty seven years with its mesmerizing synthesis of Moroccan traditional music and electronic, dubbed-out funk. Circling about bassist/composer Mike Rivard, each Club d'Elf performance features a different line-up, drawn from a constellation of some of the most creative improvisers from the jazz, DJ, rock & world music scenes of Boston, NYC and beyond. Named Jazz Act of 2023 in the Boston Music Awards, the bands music draws from a startlingly wide spectrum of styles that go beyond a single category, including hip hop, electronica, avant garde, prog-rock and dub. Under the tutelage of member Brahim Fribgane (who was born in Casablanca) the band absorbed Moroccan trance music, which is now an essential part of the mix. Fribgane passed away in early 2024, but his spirit lives on in the music, particularly in Rivard’s commanding playing of the Moroccan sintir - an instrument he learned to play through the guidance of Fribgane, as well as Gnawa masters Hassan Hakmoun and Mahmoud Guinia. Trance forms the central core of the Club d’Elf aesthetic, weaving together the band’s various influences.

The bands most recent album, 'You Never Know' (2022), garnered critical acclaim and rose to #2 on the Relix chart. The record unfurls upon kaleidoscopic clouds of spiced smoke, shifting from chopped dub-jazz through trance epics that reimagine Boston as a city of bazaars. Club d'Elf pay tribute to the music and musicians who have been primary influences, with half the album being covers of Gnawa, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, Moroccan band Nass el-Ghiwane, and Frank Zappa. The other half consists of original music inspired by Rivard's personal journey into darkness following a near death experience in the remote jungle of the Peruvian Amazon. Sessions for a new album began in January 2024, with a release date of Summer 2025 expected.

Awards

2023 Boston Music Award: Jazz Act of the Year

Club d'Elf At Foam Brewers

by Doug Collette
June 13, 2023

Club d'Elf Foam Brewers Burlington, Vermont June 3, 2023 Less than a week before the formal commencement of Burlington Vermont's Discover Jazz Festival, Club d'Elf set the bar high for the fortieth anniversary celebration of that annual event. Currently in the ongoing process of recognizing a significant milestone of its own--a quarter century mixing exotic strains of rhythm and melody into an ever-so-heady blend--the Massachusetts-based band also continues to make up for lost time visiting ...

Radio & Podcasts

Club d'Elf, Naïssam Jalal, Bill Laurance, Michael League, George & New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
March 14, 2023

This week we put together a set which is centered around jazz influenced by Gnawa music, and musicians and bands which know how to “develop and envelope," i.e. develop a melody and mood which envelopes the listener. Happy listening! Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Bill Laurance, Michael League “Tricks" Where You Wish You Were (ACT) 0:16 Host talks 4:59 Club d'Elf “In a Perfect World" As Above ...

Album Review

Club d'Elf: As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge

Read "As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
February 20, 2023

The music of Club d'Elf's debut album, As Above, speaks volumes in terms of the group's mystical and stylistic roots. In fact, it is perfectly reflective of the actual ancient quote from which the title is taken; 'As above, so below...' suggests how the rhythm motifs are as fully and completely developed as the melodic themes. Recorded in 1999 and 2000, at the Lizard Lounge in Boston, which has become Mike Rivard and company's home base over the ...

Album Review

Club d'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 19, 2022

You Never Know is the Club d'Elf studio album that captures the whirling, overlapping orbits of acoustic, electric and exotic sounds of the floating improvisational collective, which has recorded and performed together for more than two decades, with crisp studio clarity. But more importantly, You Never Know celebrates light born from darkness. Bassist and bandleader Mike Rivard, the sole constant in the collective's 24-year run, suffered a near-death experience from a pulmonary embolism which struck him while he ...

Album Review

Club D'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 7, 2022

Near-death experiences can reboot the mind, separating the important from the trivial. It seems to have worked like that for bassist and composer Mike Rivard, founder and leader of Boston's world-dub-jazz band Club D'Elf. A few years back, Rivard was nearly felled by a pulmonary embolism while seeking spiritual insight in the Amazonian rain forest. A long, dark period of depression followed, before Rivard emerged recharged into the light, having been sustained in large part by gnawa, the Moroccan trance ...

Album Review

Club d'Elf: Night Sparkles

Read "Night Sparkles" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 1, 2019

On December 16, 2011, bassist and bandleader Mike Rivard and the rest of the floating Club d'Elf instrumental ensemble assembled at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge (MA), for their regular gig at the regular location in the extended live residency that the band began at the Lounge back in 1998 (and continues to this day). Guest musicians often dropped in after finishing their own Boston area gigs to join the Club and this evening would prove no exception, as Boston ...

Album Review

Club d'Elf: Night Sparkles

Read "Night Sparkles" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
June 28, 2019

Night Sparkles follows bassist/sintirist Mike Rivard on his continuing adventures into the “Moroccan-based psychedelic dub" style he initiated with Club D'Elf in the 1990s. It's altogether remarkable he's managed to formulate such a novel approach to improvisational music while juggling the near-perpetual rotating cast of personnel, but it is to the great credit of the titular leader that his stewardship encourages invention from his bandmates, whoever they may be (in the not so recent past, keyboardist John Medeski and guitarist ...

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Recording

Club d'Elf: New Albums & Tour

Source: rock paper scissors, inc.
March 16, 2011

Deep Trancing: The Hypnotic Grooves, Camel-Skin Bass, and Unifying Spirit of Club d'Elf

The music of Club d'Elf flies through North African trance, glitchy turntablism, improvisation, and rock psychedelia, but it's playfully altered states of musical consciousness that truly guide the band. Witness founder Mike Rivard's first night in Morocco, the country that had fired his musical imagination for more than a decade: In a strikingly vivid dream, he felt himself swimming upwards in the air as fantastic landscapes, mountains, ...
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Performance / Tour

Club D'Elf | 06.06.09 | Boston

Source: JamBase
June 23, 2009

By: Tim O'Keefe

Club d'Elf :: 06.06.09 :: Paradise Rock Club :: Boston, CA

Club d'Elf Sonorous notes emit from the stage at Boston's Paradise Rock Club. Its source, a Moroccan sintir, lies in the hands of Club d'Elf's bandleader, Mike Rivard. Animal skins stretch across the oblong-shaped, hollow cavity of this bass-like instrument, the neck, somewhat resembling a wooden stick, juts from the body and contains three ...
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Event

"This is Our Music" Series Continues on April 16 in Brooklyn with Knucklebean, Club D'Elf and Jim Campilongo!

Source: All About Jazz
April 2, 2008

Any and all friends of sound are invited to attend “This Is Our Music II," the second installment in a monthly series at the Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “This Is Our Music II" is set for Wednesday, April 16 at 8PM. This month, the series welcomes the legendary Club d'Elf, from Boston, the incredible Jim Campilongo Electric Trio, featuring Brad Jones on bass, and Knucklebean, the funkiest free band in the land. Tickets are only $10. The schedule ...
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133

Recording

Club d'Elf To Release Long-Awaited Studio Debut "Now I Understand"

Source: All About Jazz
August 24, 2006

Boston's CLUB d'ELF to Release Long-Awaited Studio Debut NOW I UNDERSTAND on Accurate Records

All-star collective includes Mike Rivard, John Medeski, Billy Martin, DJ Logic, Reeves Gabrels, Mat Maneri, Duke Levine and many more

“The sound of the future is here." - Boston Magazine's “Best Of Boston"

“Club d'Elf combines the roaring avant-funk of electric-era Miles with the legato drift of the Grateful Dead...heady music that doesn't neglect the tail." - Time Out New York

Brooklyn, ...
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"You Never Know is a wide ranging romp, full of serenity, chaos, longing, improvisation and peerless musicianship inspired by music from India and Morocco as well as the maverick jazz of Miles Davis and Frank Zappa." - Banning Eyre, Afropop Worldwide

“Crushed between the borders of Morocco, jam band land and the kingdom of avant-garde jazz lies Club d’Elf...James Brown-meets-Sun-Ra.” – Jed Gottlieb, Boston Herald

“Sounds like the lovechild of Pink Floyd and George Clinton, dropped in Marrakesh...some deeply psychedelic music.” – Marlon Bishop, WNYC