July, Uninterrupted [**UPDATED]

Plenty of wacky, beautiful & interesting music under the summer moon...

July 5: Seagrass Recordings Night w/ Coup Pigeons, Faraday Trippers Orchestra & Pathways @ The Homeroom....July 6: Rickey Woodard Sextet @ LACMA...July 7: Joe LaBarbera Quintet @ Alva’s Showroom....Jazz Mafia @ Grand Performances....Azar Lawrence w/ Alphonse Mouzon, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Theo Saunders & Henry Franklin @ The Seabird....July 8: Polarity Taskmasters @ Alva’s Showroom....Kamasi Washington/Brandon Coleman Septet at Levitt Pavillion....July 11: Dan Clucas/Ted Byrnes Duo & Beth Schenck, Devin Hoff, Corey Fogel & Vinny Golia @ The Blue Whale....Charles Owens Quartet @ Catalina’s....July 12: Peter Erskine Trio @ Vibrato....Tangerine Dream @ Club Nokia....The Anthropic Ensemble @ Muddy Waters Café....July 13: Slumgum w/ Hugh Ragin @ LACMA....David Witham, Jeff Gauthier & Norton Wisdom @ Alva’s Showroom....After School Special w/ The Vespertines, Maston. Free Moral Agents & Raw Geronimo @ The Homeroom....July 14: Angel City Arts Presents Slumgum w/ very special guests @ The Blue Whale....July 15: Tribe Records 40th Anniversary Concert w/ The Phil Ranelin Jazz Ensemble, Gaby Hernadez, DJ Carlos Nino @ Levitt Pavilion....July 18: Stanton Moore Trio @ The Mint....July 20: So Many Wizards @ The Smell....Gil Scott-Heron Tribute w/ Dwight Trible, Trevor Ware, Derf Reklaw, Kamasi Washington, Carlos Nino & others @ Grand Performances....Morris Tepper @ TAIX....July 21: Leni Stern @ The Blue Whale....Meeting of the Masters w/ Radha Prasad, Lili Haydn, Joel Ector & Cornell Fauler in Topanga Canyon....July 22: April Williams w/ Alan Pasqua, Darek Oles & Peter Erskine @ Vitello’s....Dwight Trible Cosmic Band at Holy Nativity Parish....July 27: Upsilon Acrux @ The Smell....Chuck Manning Quartet @ Vibrato....July 28: String Theory @ the Bootleg Bar....The 17th Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival w/ The Gerald Wilson Orchestra, Phil Ranelin, Poncho Sanchez & Ernie Andrews....The Breakestra @ Grand Performances....July 29: Screening of The Reach of Resonance: A Meditation on the Meaning of Music @ The Egyptian.

SPOTLIGHT
TANGERINE DREAM @ Club Nokia (7/12)

 

“What kind of person goes to a Tangerine Dream concert?” wrote the legendary music scribe Lester Bangs in 1977. “Here’s a group with three or maybe even four synthesizers, no vocals, no rhythm section; they sound like silt seeping from the open-floor.” Such was the general rock critic assessment of “The Tangs” for the next twenty years—basically ambient wallpaper for Laserium/Planetarium light shows by a lineup of faceless Germans that have changed members more times than Spinal Tap. (In fact, their album Tangram sits on the shelves in a famous “empty record store” scene from that film.) Now it’s a different story: The Orb, EDM, IDM, Radiohead, Hot Chip and the crackling Cliff Martinez-Johnny Jewel soundtrack for the 2011 noir film Drive are just a few of the current cultural touchstones that have drawn upon TG’s sleek excusions into propulsive futurism. Indeed, they made a lucrative transition from being the Teutonic Pink Floyd of the ‘70s to one of the preeminent film soundtrack composers of the 80s – it was their Jaguar-smooth pulses and hypnotic drone workouts that provided the neon-noir backdrop for Thief, Risky Business and Miracle Mile, among many many others. Not as edgy as Neu! or Can or as “critically acclaimed” (at least in its heyday) as Kraftwerk, TD’s time for reappraisal arrives in its 45th year (!!) and over 100 albums (!!!) as a band. Mad scientist guitarist Edgar Froese, the group’s only consistent member, is leading the new lineup – which includes the organic instrumentation of newbies Iris Camaa’s Cuban hand drums and Hoskiko Yamane’s electric violin and guys with pricless names like Thorsten Quaeschning and Bernhard Beibl – on a North American/European tour. They may tip their hat to L.A. Thursday night with their cover of The Doors’ “Crystal Ship.”

SPOTLIGHT
TRIBE RECORDS 40TH ANNIVERSARY @ Levitt Pavilion (7/15)

Oh Detroit, you came and you gave so much to L.A. without taking….You gave us Mike Kelley, you gave us Bennie Maupin and Kenny Burrell, you gave us Iggy during his classic Fun House-flameout period, you given us Chad Smith and J.Dilla and Don Was and Mayer Hawthorne and George Clinton and Elmore Leonard. But what about jazz music? Case in point: trombone virtuoso Phil Ranelin, who arrived in Los Angeles just after the heyday of Tribe Records (1972-1976), the Afrocentric jazz/funk record label and magazine he founded with reedman Wendell Harrison when the riot fires were still cooling in Motor City. In 2004, the venerable Soul Jazz reissue label gave Ranelin & Co. some L-O-V-E with the reissue of A Message from the Tribe, a specially-packaged compilation that is also part of the larger critical reappreciation of regional jazz movements from the 1960s. (Many of the Tribe stable of players also played on Motown Records, and Tribe launched the year Berry Gordy, Jr. moved Hitsville U.S.A. out to La-La Land.) Sponsored by the local DJ collective Dublab – in many ways a spiritual inheritor of Tribe’s D.I.Y. aesthetics – this celebration of Tribe’s 40th Anniversary will feature Mr. Ranelin revisiting the labels’ catalogue with an ensemble that includes Pablo Calogero (saxophone), Mahesh Balasooriya (cello), James Leary (bass) and Kenny Elliot (drums).