Showing posts with label Kai Eckhardt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kai Eckhardt. Show all posts
Mondo Garaj by Garaj Mahal feat. Fly Agaric 23
Mondo Garaj is the debut studio album and fourth album by the jazz/rock/funk/fusion/jam band Garaj Mahal.
Recorded in late 2000 and early 2001 at In The Pocket Studio in Sonoma County, CA, then subsequently mixed/mastered over 2001 and 2002 at Talcott Mountain Studio in Simsbury, CT, The Plant Studios in Sausalito, CA, Phelps Studios in San Francisco, CA, and Fluffland Studio in San Anselmo, CA, and finally released in 2003 on Harmonized Records as the band's first studio effort (after three live discs), Mondo Garaj captures Garaj Mahal in its relative infancy. Keyboardist Eric Levy had recently joined, and although he's prominent on these songs, his contributions have grown considerably since. In fact, only two songs from this album appeared on any of the subsequent live discs. But with musicians of the caliber and experience of bassist Kai Eckhardt, drummer Alan Hertz, and Fareed Haque on guitars, there is nothing tentative about this recording.
Sounding like a combination of Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra in their '70s heyday, Garaj's jazz-rock fusion requires chops and innovation to stay interesting and avoid aimless noodling. They succeed, and even though the primarily instrumental cuts average seven minutes each, they never become repetitious or overstay their welcome. All four musicians are extraordinarily talented, but each adds his own instrumental prowess without hogging the spotlight.
Not surprisingly, Haque's guitar, especially his "sitar guitar," takes center stage and infuses an East Indian feel to songs like "Beware My Ethnic Heart." But he leaves plenty of solo space for Levy, whose fleet-fingered synthesizer work — reminiscent of Jan Hammer — trades licks with speed and precision on the opening funky workout "Mondo Garaj." Michael Kang (musician) of The String Cheese Incident is featured as are DJ Fly Agaric 23 and DJ Roto (a.k.a. musician/journalist James Rotondi) who add turntable scratching, loops, and samples to keep the sound contemporary, but this is really a showcase for the jaw-dropping talents of the four band members.
The band gels on all the tracks, but shows what it can do on "Hindi Gumbo," which features Haque's acoustic sitar/guitar solo. Nothing takes the place of seeing the band pull this off live, but Mondo Garaj provides a snapshot of how these four gifted individuals — each of whom could be a band leader in his own right — combine into a fine-tuned unit.
Track listing[edit]
- Mondo Garaj (Eckhardt) - 5:33
- Hindi Gumbo (Haque) - 5:31
- Be Dope (Hertz, Levy) - 6:11
- Junct (Haque) - 6:22
- Poodle Factory (Hertz) - 3:51
- The Big Smack Down (Eckhardt) - 0:35
- New Meeting (Hertz) - 8:04
- Beware My Ethnic Heart (Haque) - 9:11
- Madagascar (Hertz, Levy) - 5:21
- Gulam Sabri (Haque) - 7:47
- Bajo (Hertz) - 7:07
- Milk Carton Blues (Levy) - 3:06
Personnel[edit]
Musical[edit]
- Fareed Haque - Guitar, Guitar (Electric), Guitar (Steel), Sitar (Electric)
- Alan Hertz - Drums, Art Direction, Mixing, Photography, Cover Photo, Roland Synthesizer
- Eric Levy - Keyboards, Organ (Hammond), Clavinet, Fender Rhodes, Mini Moog, Oberheim OB8, Prophet 5, Sequential Circuits
- Kai Eckhardt - Bass
- Michael Kang - Fiddle, Mandolin
- DJ Fly - Agaric 23 Turntables
- DJ Roto - Turntables, Sampling, Effects
Technical[edit]
- Garaj Mahal - Arranger, Producer, Art Direction, Mixing
- Christian Weyers - Producer, Executive Producer
- Toni Fishman - Executive Producer
- Justin Phelps - Engineer
- John Cuniberti - Mastering Engineer
- Jason Andrew - Assistant Engineer
- Mark Fassler - Assistant Engineer
- Theresa Reed - Photography
- David "Hot Rod" Shuman - Mixing Assistant
Garaj Mahal 2002: Great American Music Hall. set 2. w/ dj Fly Agaric.
set two W/ Dj. Fly Agaric.
Collection: : GarajMahal
Band/Artist: Garaj Mahal
Date: April 5, 2002 (check for other copies)
Venue: Great American Music Hall
Location: San Francisco, CA
SET LIST:
Never Give Up
7Up
Junct
Mondo Garaj
Be Dope*
Material Girl
Madagascar
Gulam Sabri
Poodle Factory
e: Kiss
http://www.archive.org/details/garaj2002-04-05.shnf
Collection: : GarajMahal
Band/Artist: Garaj Mahal
Date: April 5, 2002 (check for other copies)
Venue: Great American Music Hall
Location: San Francisco, CA
SET LIST:
Never Give Up
7Up
Junct
Mondo Garaj
Be Dope*
Material Girl
Madagascar
Gulam Sabri
Poodle Factory
e: Kiss
http://www.archive.org/details/garaj2002-04-05.shnf
Time Munching And The Ear Doctor Sessions.
TIMUCIN SAHIN: Fretloze Gitaren, Compositions. http://www.timucinsahin.com/home.html
TYSHAWN SOREY: Drums, water, brushes.
JOHN O'GALLAGHER: Alto Sax.
THOMAS MORGAN: Bas
BIMHUIS. PIET HEINKADE 3. AMSTERDAM. http://www.bimhuis.com/
Timucin Sahin, Kai Eckhardt, AND Owen Hart JR. Grew me a nice new set of ears at the Badcuyp, Amsterdam in 2007. So i returned to witness the spacetime technician's once more, this time at the Bimhuis with his new line up. Out the gate, out the traps, launch, go, straight off i felt i was in the right place for the evening, Timucin weaving his subtle cosmic tones and background radiation with a truly awesome flurry of fingered equations, while Tyshawn instantly abducted my ears to at least 9 simultaneous rhythm patterns, fluxt timespace signatures and all the accent and groove-feel to pull out the lilt and swing of the different junctions, at the phalanx of - intersection points - in the Plutonium jazzy-gass, splitting ears and brain-body barriers with the aroma of no-time, new time. All punching time on the chin. In a nutshell, i felt abducted by the soundscape, and the grooves satisfied by own personal glittered-jazz, drum and bass/jungle tinged taste buds like a well aged Sativa. Mwah! The show in 07 was a trio of sonic magicians, and so Timucin had all the upper register and midrange amidst Owen's intelligent drum orbits, last night however John O'Gallagher was very much with Timucin - up there - and for me pulled out, and defined like a sharp pencil line; the intricate and beatiful pan-modal Astro-neuro attainments being shared, freely with the Audience. Thomas Morgan moved with the flow and ebb of the swirling vortex, his bass talking the talk and walking up the stairs to Jupiter, Saturn and other planets that seem under investigation by the tribe of timespice engineers and sonic-fiction poets. The undertones and light whispering voices emanating from Time-munchin's calculations continue to crop up in all the right places for me, the quantum jumping compositions unveiling layer after layer of timespace, like an audio fabrige egg, with each new layer and complete new groove, feel and seemingly mode, to my ears. Now on fire, little flames symboling the tiny hairs in my ears, travelling and movement, verbs and echoes of just past places, remixed live, and brought back again, back to front, in the flickr of an eye or two. And when you think your used to the jumping around and technicolor sheets of sound, Tyshawn introduces another hot pepper, BANG BOOM,
Slamming, out of nowhere, then caress, then hyperbolic jungle-jazz-swing, then a stunning trip hop flex, all comfortable and innovative at each turn, playing snare with a bottle of water, rolling it across the snare getting the plastic crackle and fizz, then twizzling the bottled water through the space just above his set, between the two overhead mics, creating further mysterious sounding artcore entertainment, symbolic gesture, in short, Tyshawn owned everything he touched, my ears and everyone else's. Abducted by 10'000 variations on the 8 or 9 breakbeats i danced and lost my mind to in the dancehalls of Britain many years ago, which left a trace, picked up again tonight in the hardcore Drum and Bass and Sax and Guitar wisdom language. Like some of the writing of James Joyce, or Finnegans Wake, by the end of the show the 4 had put the Universe back together again, but in a whole different way using music and human ears and brains to their maximal potential, follow this! You dig! Now the street traffic sounds different to me after the show, percussive shards and trace fragments follow me out the Bimhius and down the Damrak, and the clatter of the trams is building something, i am waiting for the next launch date of Timucin (time-munching) to help me put the Universe together again and witness the tearing down, reconstructing and rebuilding of the life of the mind, or the life of the mind as i see it in 2008, fragmented times, bits and pieces and all culture and languages sirred up, whisked and baked into things, soundbites of the 21st century and all those bits and Bobs that have come before, and, i might add, the sense of the things of the future, included. In the sense of spaceways to other worlds, in the sense that vibration and Astro-Neuro attenuation through cosmic tones for cosmic culture, is out there for your to be a part of, if you can listen and trane your earwiggs. The snowballing angular turns and switching sequence puzzles ride. Together on the crest of the wave of expanding Universes, musical red shifting, and counterpointing, intersecting and jump-back assaulting of the equation. The collective whirring and mixing of pattern, rhythm, and polytonal, multiphonics flashes through the sounds spectrum in dashes and stoccato flashes, bewildering pace, slow and fast and everytime inbetween, always inbetween. Through and beyond my own comprehension, and then once more, your abducted again, sucked through a Noh-Wave Wormhole and brought home to your seat, at the show, clapping but keeping very still, but inside your wanting to dive off the roof into the cold Dutch waters below, something, to exstinguish the fires and flares started in my ears by these cats.
I hope you get to hear this group soon, too. Get some new ears for the holiday season. New music and new ways of hearing it, Timucin and his band of spacetime explorers, gathering the limbs and languages of outer-planetary entities, i like to think. How else can i put it, i was moved in new ways.
--Fly Agaric 23.
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