Soundcheck

Meridian Brothers, founded by musician Eblis Álvarez, fuses a love of classic salsa with cumbia, vallenato, spacey psychedelia, and wacky samples for a playful dance party. With a body of songs containing some poignant social commentary about our obsession with technology, fear of war, police brutality, and other issues, the music hearkens to the salsa dura era (think Fania All-Stars); even the legendary Ansonia label took note and invited Meridian Brothers to be their first new signing in more than 30 years. With an interplay of sax, guitar, plenty of percussion, spoken/sung cartoon vocals (pitch-shifted and processed), and sound effects, Meridian Brothers plays their fantasy salsa-cumbia fusion, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Salsa Caliente” “Puya Del Emprasario”, “Metamorfosis” 

Watch "Salsa Caliente":

Watch "Puya Del Emprasari":

Watch "Metamorfosis":

The duo of Rachael & Vilray courtesy of Rachael Price, lead singer of the popular band Lake Street Dive, and the New York-based singer and guitarist Vilray may sound like classic guitar jazz right out of the 1920s-1940s; Vilray’s guitar chops dip into the style of the great “gypsy-jazz” guitarist Django Reinhardt; and Rachael Price croons into an old RCA ribbon mic, up close, warm and intimate, with no reverb. Rachael & Vilray’s new originals are equal helpings of literate and populist, with cutting observations and character studies that might be operatic and humorous, allowing for the way that people contain multitudes. Their latest record, I Love A Love Song, continues to draw on, and in their own sly way, extends the tradition of the Great American Songbook.  The duo joins us in-studio to play some of their new, old-sounding songs (with one even featuring a lyric about narwhals.) - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Is A Good Man Real?” “Hate Is The Basis (of Love)” “Join Me In A Dream”

Watch “Is A Good Man Real?”:

Watch “Hate Is The Basis (of Love)”:

Watch “Join Me In A Dream”:

The band called Ranky Tanky won the Grammy for best Regional Roots Album back in 2020.  The group is based in Charleston, SC, and their regional roots are in the Gullah music of the coastal southeastern states, the Sea Island music; their name comes from a Gullah phrase for “get funky”.  Gullah culture comes from the descendants of Africans captured along Africa’s rice coast [in West Africa], and while Gullah people today speak English, traditionally they’ve also spoken an African-American creole also called Gullah.

Ranky Tanky’s music is a kind of creole – a mix of jazz, American gospel, and soul, all with the through line of the original Gullah rhythms, game songs, praise songs, ring shouts, and songs of gratitude kept alive from slavery into the present day. Ranky Tanky has been nominated for another Grammy for their latest album, Live at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. They play in-studio for us, with all the joy they can bring.   

Set list: "Down in my Heart", "Beat 'Em Down", "Lift Me Up"

Watch "Down in my Heart":

Watch "Beat 'Em Down":

Watch "Lift Me Up":

Sax player Marcus Strickland has worked with many notable jazzers, including Roy Haynes, McCoy Tyner, Wynton Marsalis, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Dave Douglas, and Keyon Harrold. He also leads his own band Twi-Life, which inhabits an Afro-futuristic space at the crossroads of Hip Hop, Soul, and Jazz. Twi-Life's album, The Universe's Wildest Dream, conceptualized into being during the lockdown times, urges an awareness of how precious and miraculous and random and delicate our existence is here on Planet Earth, the vast universe, (and everything.)

On the album, Marcus Strickland & Charles Haynes stretch out into beat-makers and producers, fleshing out layered studio creations with found sound, guest artists, overdubs and electronics, and ultimately extend the Afro-Futurist tradition to far-out places. Strickland and Twi-Life bring a Hammond B-3 organ with hypnotic Leslie speakers into the studio to play some of the tunes, ahead of the record release, and shows in New York at the Blue Note on Jan. 17 & 18.

Set list: “Dust Ball Fantasy” “Bird Call” “You and I, an Anomaly”

Los Angeles-based band Dengue Fever blends 60's Cambodian pop and psychedelic rock with danceable grooves and ghostly noir romanticism. Cambodian Chhom Nimol fronts the band and sings mostly in her native language, she's basically from "a family best considered as a Cambodia pop music dynasty-- a not unlike a Cambodian version of the Jacksons", (Bandcamp.) She's backed by American rockers who play guitar, farfisa (a small, Italian-made organ), bass, drums, and saxophone. Dengue Fever joins us remotely, as they are about to play globalFest 2023 on Jan. 15 at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Set list: “Silver Fish”, “Uku”, ”One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula”

Hear unpredictable and graceful melodic lines traded by sax and strings, as tenor sax superstar Joshua Redman and string quartet Brooklyn Rider, along with all-star rhythm section of Scott Colley (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) take over the studio. It's chamber music with swoops, dives, groove and bite in original and newly-arranged music with one foot in the jazz world where sharps are optional. (This session is from the Archives, 2018.)  -Caryn Havlik

Watch the full session here:

Turkish-German singer and composer Alev Lenz has been something of a serial collaborator, working with sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar, Lisel (Eliza Bagg), Sand Dunes, synthesist and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, French-Cuban vocal duo Ibeyi, and Roomful of Teeth, to name a few. During the interview, Lenz describes her creative process, and when the words might come in, and shares her experiences in the world of “sync”, when composers license their music to film and streaming series. Plus, hear Alev Lenz and pianist Vana Gierig, recorded in the studio.

Listen to more highlights from this off-again-on-again year of live performances from the Soundcheck Podcast. These bright spots come by way of Mexican singer-songwriter and arranger Silvana Estrada, London-based tuba player Theon Cross, and the psychedelic cumbia of Combo Chimbita, recorded live at Brooklyn Bowl. Also, listen to music by Cuban-born pianist Omar Sosa and sax player Peter Apfelbaum, of the band Quarteto Americanos. Plus, playful and surreal British musician and songwriter Robyn Hitchcock riffs on an unrealized Raymond Chandler title.

ARTIST: Theon Cross WORK: We Go Again [5:49] RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Mar. 2022 SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.  INFO: A version appears on Theon Cross’ album, Intra I

ARTIST: Omar Sosa and Peter Apfelbaum WORK: umbo kondo  [5:47] RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Sept. 2022 SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.  INFO: https://omarsosa.com/

ARTIST: Robyn Hitchcock WORK: The Man Who Loves the Rain  [3:58] RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2022 SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.  INFO: The song appears on his 2022 record, Shufflemania!

ARTIST: Silvana Estrada WORK: Marchita  [4:35] RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Jan. 2022 SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.  INFO: The tune appears on her 2022 album, Marchita

ARTIST: Combo Chimbita WORK: La Perla [4:35] RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Sept. 2022 SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.  INFO: The song appears on the 2022 release, Ire.

Montréal’s Black Ox Orkestar has been making 'music of the Jewish diaspora not tied to any state' since the early 2000’s. Orkestar is a name you’ll see a lot in Balkan music; it’s simply Serbo-Croatian for orchestra or ensemble. But the musicians were also in much-admired post-rock bands like Silver Mt Zion, and Godspeed You Black Emperor, so after a while they went their separate ways, but came back together in 2021.

Their new album, called Everything Returns, "connects key current issues—from refugees forced to leave their homes, to the return of fascism and exclusionary nationalism—with the legacy of modernist Yiddish poetry and song", (Bandcamp liner notes.) The songs are a melancholic twist on traditional Jewish klezmer music, with vocals mainly sung in Yiddish – with piano, violin, upright bass, clarinet and cymbalom (a stringed instrument of the dulcimer family) – taking on hues of indie rock, experimental folk and avant-jazz. Black Ox Orkestar plays both traditional and original songs for us, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Tish Nign” “Body Keeps the Score”, “Mizrakh Mi Ma’arav”

Watch "Tish Nign":

Watch "Body Keeps the Score":

Watch “Mizrakh Mi Ma’arav”:

One of the marks of a dedicated and accomplished artist is that they continue to level up, testing their own limits and working to break out of habits and patterns. New York-based guitarist, singer/songwriter, and collaborator Steve Gunn is such a one; he can tap into Indian classical modes, inhabit the drone of minimalist founding father La Monte Young, pick like fingerstyle players Jack Rose and John Fahey, and coax the reclusive Japanese folk legend, guitarist and songwriter Sachiko Kanenobu, back to playing (NY Times.)

In Gunn’s songs -which float between the worlds of Philadelphia soul, British folk, DC punk, and the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra with ease- one finds unexpected chromatic lyricism, and keen lyric observations. He’s also done several challenging collaborations with a head-spinningly wide range of musical colleagues (Mary Lattimore, John Trusinski, Bridget St John, Mdou Moctar, Bing &Ruth, Kim Gordon, Kurt Vile) and continues to step outside of music into the worlds of film, line drawings, sculpture, or podcasts, in order to prevent tunnel vision (gathered from ToneGlow.substack.com.)

The ace guitarist and fingerstyle folk rocker Steve Gunn plays recent songs from Other You and its companion EP, Nakama, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Fulton”, “Morning River”, “On the Way”

Watch "Fulton": 

Watch "Morning River": 

Watch "On The Way":