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About Club d'Elf
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
NY Free Quartet, Michael Gregory Jackson & Marc Jufer
by Maurice Hogue
There's a wide variety of great tunes this episode: Club D'Elf kicks it off with the title track to their latest live set, saxophonist Muriel Grossmann and her quartet acknowledge the musical and mystical paths of John Coltrane, the New York Free Quartet's Dream Time marks their return to releasing excellent work, and the very influential guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson's latest debuts. There's more, of course, from Swiss tenor player Marc Jufer and trio, and the Frenchmen Stéphan Oliva and ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Night Sparkles
by Karl Ackermann
For the Boston, Massachusetts-based Club d'Elf, the boundaries are long gone; they may never have been there to start with. Almost twenty years ago, the group debuted with Live at The Lizard Lounge (Grapeshot Media, 2000), an amalgam of jazz, electronica, hip hop, and funk. At times, the group (always a fluid entity) has included accordion, oud, didgeridoo, doumbek and qaraqab standing comfortably next to guitars, bass, keyboards, and horns. If it weren't obvious from the instrumentation, this is not ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Live at Club Helsinki
by Chris M. Slawecki
Club d'Elf and their sprawling live records present a unique challenge to folks who write about them. This double Live at Club Helsinki set reveals every modern style and multiple Moroccan rhythms (except for opera and bluegrass--maybe). But often we want so much to relate or explain these sounds, and there's so much going on in so many different combinations, that our explanations eventually grow so complicated that they lose their soul. Soulless is no way to address this music. ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Live at Club Helsinki
by Maurizio Comandini
Il gruppo mutabile di elfi che si raccoglie abitualmente attorno al bassista Mike Rivard ha colpito di nuovo. Questa volta però il gruppo Club D'Elf non è stato registrato nell'abituale Lizard Lounge di Cambridge, nella immediata periferia di Boston, che ospita praticamente ogni settimana (o giù di lì) i loro lunghi concerti. Per questa importante occasione discografica, Mike Rivard e i suoi degni compari hanno invece scelto di utilizzare i nastri di un concerto che li ha visti spostarsi dall'amato ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Live at Club Helsinki
by Mark Sullivan
The Boston-based collective Club d'Elf seems to attract genre labels like nobody's business. Moroccan-dosed dub-jazz, trance, psychedelia, free jazz, electronica, hip hop, avant-garde, jam band, rock...what other styles have you got? At one point or another any of these labels could apply, but the distinctions are blurred in the joyous sonic stew. The band has hosted a dizzying array of players: their website includes long lists of “Special Guests," “Rotating Cast," and “Occasional Conspirators." But the core group of bassist ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Live at Club Helsinki
by Doug Collette
It's not really necessary to be a dervish dancer to appreciate Club d'Elf, especially because, on Live at Club Helsinki, the prominence of varied sounds from Duke Levine's electric guitars, combined with the keyboard wizardry of John Medeski, is enough to capture and hold the attention of (almost) any contemporary music-lover. It's as effortless to fall into a dreamlike trance as a visceral spell in response to these extend Moroccan-influenced grooves. The cumulative intensity, however, is almost indiscernible, ...
Continue ReadingClub d'Elf: Live at Club Helsinki
by Karl Ackermann
Who (and what) defines the Boston-based, dub-jazz Club d'Elf is an enigma. At the core, the “group" is bassist and composer Mike Rivard and drummer Dean Johnston. Rivard has far-flung history ranging from Either-Orchestra to the Boston Pops Orchestra and the cult rock group Morphine. Johnston had perused a career in the Athens, Georgia music scene before returning to the Northeast. Club d'Elf is as much a performance entity as a musical group and with each performance, the surrounding sphere ...
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