Balance Point Acoustics : Damon Smith

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Featured CD:

Firestorm is an intense and musically assaultive release of killer, balls-out free jazz that will appeal to those who long for the most bombasic works of Broetzmann, Ayler, Takayanagi and Cecil Taylor! This release reveals many shades of intensity and mood while remaining frenzied and inventive at all times. Featuring Taylor alumni Marco Eneidi (alto), Marc Edwards (drums), Lisle Ellis (bass), Elliott Levin (tenor), Sun Ra Arkestra legend Marshall Allen (alto), bassist Damon Smith and manic Austrian reedist Mario Rechtern, Firestorm is a delerious concoction of new energy music that pushes beyond the stratosphere of sound!

You can send a paypal for $15 pp to damon@balancepointacoustics.com If you would like one. Buy This CD

A few copies of "Healing Force" are available You can send a paypal for $15 pp to damon@balancepointacoustics.com If you would like one.

Vinny Golia-reeds
Aurora Josephson-voice
Henry Kaiser-guitar
Mike Keneally-piano, guitar and voice
Joe Morris-guitar and double bass
Damon Smith-double bass
Weasel Walter-drums

Seven major figures from the art-punk, free-jazz, brutal prog, improvisational and modern jazz world come together for a ROCKING tribute to the unfairly ignored, misunderstood and vilified late period works of Albert Ayler. These late period songs have always seemed to me like they may have been some of the most personally spritually resonant for Ayler, but the musicians and the culture of the late 1960s were possibly not able to successfully translate and perform his concept of spirituality, free jazz, boogaloo, nursery rhythms, marching bands, blues and r'n'b, and certainly the free-jazz following public was not ready to accept it. Now, 40 years and many stylistic mash-ups later, perhaps these works can be better enjoyed.

“Albert Ayler's later works (Love Cry, New Grass and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe) seem to be generally reviled. Through meditations, dreams, and visions, the players on this project were given the message to once again attempt to send the people of earth a message of love, peace, and spiritual understanding. We selected a representative set of tunes for this material and essentially let it play itself through us. We hope you will be as surprised as we still are by the results of this invocational experiment. We hope you will like this record.”
- Henry Kaiser, producer and guitarist Buy This CD

Limited copies of the "Noisy People" dvd are available here. It is a Film by Tim Perkis featuing Damon Smith and other Bay Area Musicians. Includes footage of Gratkowski/Bryerton/Smith and Wolfgang Fuchs' Six Fuchs Project. Buy This CD

Improvised music form Oakland and Tel Aviv from the Jerusalem based Kadima Label.
Aurora Josephson - voice
Ariel Shibolet - soprano saxophone
Jen Baker - trombone
Scott R. Looney - piano
Damon Smith - double bass Buy This CD

"Ghetto Caylpso" Peter Kowald/Marco Eneidi/Damon Smith/Spirit out now on NOTTWO records. Buy This CD

New from Nuscope Records: Biggi Vinkeloe, alto saxophone, flute; Damon Smith, double-bass; Kjell Nordeson, drums, vibraphone Buy This CD

Forthcoming CD's

BPA 013 "Pepper Spray" Ariel Shibolet/Jen Baker/Damon Smith/Jerome Bryerton

Bertram Turetzky/Damon Smith ThoughtBeetle

"MIRRORS - BROKEN BUT NO DUST - bpa001
THE SALE OF TICKETS FOR MONEY WAS ABOLISHED - bpa002
THREE OCTOBER MEETINGS - bpa003"
Players: Peter Kowald / Damon Smith - bpa001
Tony Bevan / Scott R. Looney / Damon Smith - bpa002
Wolfgang Fuchs / Jerome Bryerton / Damon Smith - bpa003
Reviewed by: Don Warburton -Signal To Noise

Peter Niklas Wilson, writing in the notes to "Three October Meetings", is right to take issue with Derek Bailey's longstanding assertion that improvised music is (or perhaps should be) "non-idiomatic". In each of these three fine albums, distinct codes and protocols are respected, in terms of individual vocabulary - extended techniques, and the like - and overall form and structure. Seasoned improvisors like Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Kowald and Tony Bevan can fly into the Bay Area and head straight for the studio or the gig with bassist Damon Smith and his friends and record several hours of high quality free improvised music with apparent ease. Though the conventions of a "language" are understood and appreciated by the performers (and experienced listeners), the music is fresh, energetic and appealing. Damon Smith is excellent throughout - there are some great bassists out there in the Bay Area, what with Matt Sperry and Morgan Guberman - and goes the distance with Peter Kowald most impressively on "Mirrors". It's less a battle of the bassists (it's clear that Kowald is a major influence on Smith's playing), more one of Peter And Damon Against The World. The trio with Scott Looney on prepared piano and electronics and Tony Bevan on bass sax is surprisingly agile, technically and idiomatically - Looney's eclectic style, somewhere between Benoit Delbecq, Michael Jefry Stevens and early Steve Beresford, joyously admits brief flashes of jazz as well as various crashes and wallops from inside the piano (which is, unfortunately, woefully out of tune). Culled from three dates last October, two live and one in the studio, "Three October Meetings" features the King Übü of clarinets and saxophones, Wolfgang Fuchs, and Chicago's outstanding Jerome Bryerton on percussion. It's a total triumph: the turn-on-a-dime reactivity of his younger sparring partners pushes Fuchs to deliver some of his best work for years. Check this out.