Thanks to Zorn’s amazing graphic designer Chippy I found out about this balkan vocal quartet called Black Sea Hotel that I went to see with her today at the Delancey. I was impressed by Black Sea Hotel: perfect pitch, great vocal areangments, haunting and beautiful, as long as you like Balkan melodies of course. Check out their latest CD for a taste of that or catch them live on May 21st uptown. This weekly Monday event is called Small Beast and is organized and hosted by Botanica’s Paul Wallfish (another NY musician who sadly is moving to Germany) also featured Paul himself on solo piano and vocals, Edison Woods and legendary producer/engineer Martin Bisi’s band The End Credits.
Also tonight I hooked up with drummer extraordinaire Jojo Mayer (who’s back in town and playing a Nerve gig at Le Poisson Rouge on May 16th; don’t miss that!) an together we went to Nublu to check out a band called Twelve, from Trinidad, who played some sort of stoner reggea-rock. They were ok and ex-Brazilian Girls/Scofield bassist Jesse Murphy sat in but reggea has never really been my thing, I guess you have to be a stoner for that and I’m definitely not at all.
Love NY.