Weekly Music Roundup: BCUC, Paul Simon, and dragonchild

Week of April 24: This week, South African funk, dragonchild’s Ethiopian-tinged pop, and news about Paul Simon’s newest music. Plus, Interpol, remixed, and modern string trio music.

Paul Simon’s “Seven Psalms” – A Chance To Hear It First

Paul Simon has made a career of zigging when you expected him to zag, and the results have included some of his most consequential works: from the Jamaican and Latin tinge in his first solo album in 1972, to Graceland with its South African sounds, and his Brazilian sojourn on The Rhythm Of The Saints, both in the 80s. Now he’s planning to release Seven Psalms, a 35-minute suite (if he were a classical composer we’d call it a song cycle) of seven related songs. Most of it is sung and played by Simon himself, on a surprising array of instruments, but there are guest appearances by Wynton Marsalis, Edie Brickell, and the fine London vocal group Voces8. On Tuesday, May 2, I’ll be hosting a listening party where we’ll play the full suite – and then, after a break, we’ll hear it all again. I can tell you that that second hearing will reveal things the first perhaps doesn’t. It’s free, but WNYC listeners are being offered first crack at places. Click here for more, and check out the trailer where Paul Simon discusses some of the project’s inspiration.  

BCUC Presents Indigenous Funk From South Africa

BCUC is a Soweto band that blends the traditional sounds of South African communal singing with funky bass lines and a punky, hip hop attitude. The band’s name stands for Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness – ‘Bantu” means “people” and “uhuru” means “freedom,” and their songs present a kind of Afropsychedelia that seems both earthy and cosmic. Their new album, Millions of Us, comes out on June 2, but they’ve just dropped this single called “Ntuthwane,” which has a skeletal arrangement– just that deeply funky electric bass and some relentless hand percussion, and of course the multiple lines of song/chant. The result is a hypnotic, almost shamanic sound, and so, when there’s a shift in the rhythm about five minutes in, and some traditional flute or pipe sounds are added to the mix, it somehow feels momentous.  

Makaya McCraven Remixes Interpol’s “Big Shot City”

Indie rockers Interpol have announced a set of remixes/reimaginings of some songs from their latest album The Other Side Of Make-Believe. Called Interpolations, it kicked off with a remix of “Big Shot City” by drummer/producer Makaya McCraven, who has become a central figure in Chicago’s productive and prolific improvised music scene but who got his start making beats. His version of the song doesn’t cross into hip hop, but it does clear away the texture a bit, leaving some space around Paul Banks’ typically dark lyrics (“stop the operation/help me off the table”) that paradoxically makes them feel even more dramatic. Tortoise guitarist (and fellow Chicago fixture) Jeff Parker and Water From Your Eyes are also among the artists who will be part of this project as it unfolds over the next couple of months. 

A Modern Take On Ethiopian Pop From dragonchild

dragonchild is the new project of DA (or Danny) Mekonnen, who was the sax player and leader of the Debo Band back in the twenty-teens. The Debo Band took the sounds of Swingin’ Addis – the Ethiopian pop music of the capital Addis Ababa in the early 70s – and made their own music in that style. With dragonchild, Mekonnen is still rooted in the scales and rhythms of Ethiopia, but with a more contemporary, refracted musical approach. Opening track “Unicode 1200” is built around a lo-fi, choppy organ sample, which along with handclaps sketches a minimal, lurching 6-beat rhythm. Over this Mekonnen’s sax weaves a sinuous melody, bursting into a full-throated cry at the very end. The album is also called dragonchild, and in addition to its usual digital formats, Mekonnen is releasing it as a 4LP set – and apparently, if you play all four LPs at once, it reveals another 20-minute piece of music. 

dragonchild plays on May 10 at Shift in Brooklyn.  

A Stellar, And Very Modern Take On The String Trio

Violinist Caleb Burhans and cellist Clarice Jensen have been ubiquitous on the New York new music scene for some years now, playing with contemporary classical outfits like Alarm Will Sounds, ACME, Wordless Music Orchestra, as well as side gigs with The National, Arcade Fire, Björk, and Taylor Swift. Richard Carr is a former violinist with the Boston Philharmonic and has played with Brooklyn Raga Massive and percussionist Adam Rudolph, among others. The three have just released an album called August Dreams that takes the classical string trio idea and explodes it. First, the music was all improvised – although each piece has a readily accessible form and actually sounds quite carefully considered; second, the violins, violas and cellos are often played through electronic effects, creating a sense of a soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made yet. One track, “Merritt Parkway,” sees Burhans switching to piano, and the other two playing pizzicato over the top. (Singer/composer Gabriel Kahane wrote a song called “Merritt Parkway” a few years back – I had no idea the road was so inspiring.) The piece makes steady, relaxed progress, which could be infuriating to anyone listening to this while stuck in traffic on that Connecticut route but which will probably work for the rest of us.