Soundcheck

Afrofuturism and electronics meet ancient Yoruba rituals and spiritual practice in the music of the Puerto Rican band ÌFÉ, headed by producer and percussionist Otura Mun. ÌFÉ honors the ancestors through futuristic interpretations of traditional ceremonial Lucumi (Yoruban Diaspora) prayer songs, featuring trap beats, electronic triggers, and Autotune. All power to the ancestors.  

"Music for Egun Movement 3":

"3 Mujeres":

"Higher Love":

Buster Poindexter is the lounge-lizard alter-ego of David Johansen, one of rock’s most influential singers. After founding the seminal glam/punk band The New York Dolls and beginning a successful solo career, Johansen unveiled his Buster Poindexter character in the mid-80s, and you’ve been dancing to his version of “Hot Hot Hot” at weddings ever since. Buster has been known to sing pop standards, novelty songs, rock’n’roll, and old blues, and long ago in the before times he performed this set live in The Greene Space in 2015. 

Watch Buster Poindexter and his band perform a special bonus song "Heart Of Gold":

Hamiltones started out as the backing singers for singer Anthony Hamilton, but this Grammy-Nominated vocal trio has developed their own soul sound, combining sweet falsetto croons and smooth round harmonies with some funky grooves and trap beats, and a little vintage-sounding swagger in the production. Their 2020 release, called 1964, references the year that the Civil Rights Act was signed. What began as a Juneteenth song expanded into an album of song and story combining sampled speeches and interludes with tunes that reflect the Black Experience in America. Hear intimate arrangements performed remotely by the Hamiltones from North Carolina.

Set List: “The Warning,” “Celebrate” “Message to America”

"Celebrate":

"Message to America":

Ólafur Arnalds is an Icelandic composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work toes the line between classical music, electronic music and film scores, mostly with a delicate undercurrent of minimalism. For his latest introspective album, some kind of peace, which reflects on connections and rituals, he has incorporated piano, strings, and electronics, but also live and taped voices. There’s the recorded sound of a healing ritual of the upper Amazon, or piano captured via an Edison phonograph recording head so that he can make new cylinder recordings to get a nostalgic sound, or piano preparations that might make new sounds. (Ólafur is a collector of vintage music technologies.)

In the recent past, Arnalds has also played a Stratus piano, which is both an acoustic instrument and an algorithmic musical software that takes the piano sound and generates additional patterns and harmonies from it. For this Soundcheck Podcast, Ólafur joins us from home, in Iceland, solo on a pianette, or mini-piano, to play recent music. - Caryn Havlik

Watch "We Contain Multitudes":

Watch "Momentary - Saman":

Percussionist and songwriter Joachim Cooder rearranges traditional music made popular by songster and banjo player Uncle Dave Macon in the early 20th century (or so) for the completely unexpected and inventive choice of electric mbira (thumb piano.) These re-composed and re-worked tunes, much-admired by multiple generations of Cooders, get stunning makeovers for his debut record, Over That Road I’m Bound. For this Soundcheck Podcast, Joachim Cooder performs these tunes in new duo versions for mbira and electronics with his dad, Ry Cooder, who plays a guitar-like instrument - all remotely from California. -s Caryn Havlik

Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond tells tales without words with her fast and aggressive fingerpicking - adapting “American Primitive” style for "old weird Wales." The fast and aggressive part might be due to her having played in punk bands, but her musical roots extend to the blues, opera, and folk, while leaning into the darkness, goth imagery, and British paganism - and sometimes there's blood. She joins us from Brighton, England to play tunes from her new record, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, recorded at home during lockdown. -Caryn Havlik

Set list “Gwaed Am Gwaed,” “Eulogy for Dead French Composers” “Hell For Certain”

This Is The Kit is British singer and songwriter Kate Stables (lately based in France) and whoever joins her. Her early albums were rooted in the long British folk/rock tradition, but her new record, Off Off On, has a different sound – grander arrangements, with more flesh on them, for one - perhaps more so for her having toured (in the before times) and with The National. She joins us remotely to play some of these pre-pandemic songs in their intimate solo form, and invites us to be uplifted.

"Coming to get you Nowhere":

"This Is What You Did":

Kazakh-British violinist and composer Galya Bisengalieva plays music from her debut album Aralkum (released on Björk’s One Little Independent record label.) Aralkum is named after the desert that exists where the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to be, which used to be the world’s  fourth largest lake, but has been catastrophically shrinking due to irrigation and drought.

Bisengalieva has worked on albums by Radiohead and Frank Ocean, as well as Thom Yorke’s soundtrack to the remake of Suspiria. On Aralkum, her violin and vocals, combined with electronics swirl and rumble ominously, suggesting impending doom. She joins us from her home in London for the Soundcheck Podcast.

"Aralkum":

"Kantubek":

Elvis Costello’s new album, Hey Clockface, veers through all kinds of musical territory: melancholy ballads, spoken word soundscapes, abrasive rockenroll, and songs with an old time jazz flavor. While most of the songs were written in Helsinki and Paris before the Covid-19 lockdown, Costello also collaborated from a distance with New York trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader Michael Leonhart on some of the songs, as he provided words and vocals over music for Michael Leonhart's new material, like "Shut Him Down." For this Soundcheck Podcast, Costello and Leonhart discuss their ongoing and wide-ranging collaboration and remind us that there’s joy in the making of music - even the sad stuff.

For the 2.4 million veterans who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experience of war isn’t necessarily ended by coming home. Memories -particularly traumatic ones - stay with them for life, often manifesting themselves in dreams. The retelling of those dreams is at the heart of Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, a 2012 collaboration between pianist and composer Vijay Iyer and poet Mike Ladd. Together with Iraq War veteran, poet, and vocalist Maurice Decaul, they discuss the impact of modern-day warfare on the psyche and the decision to focus on veterans of color for this project. Plus, Ladd, Iyer, Decaul, along with percussionist Kassa Overall, bassist Guillermo Brown, cellist Okkyung Lee, and guitarist Liberty Ellman, play selections from the work, in-studio. 

Set List: