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

"DOMO ARIGATO DEREK SENSEI!"
Players: Henry Kaiser
Reviewed by: Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic
At least Henry Kaiser's honest: if it hadn't been for Derek Bailey he probably wouldn't have picked up a guitar in the first place. ("Would you have become a scuba diver instead?" wonders Damon Smith.) So there are few people better placed to curate a Bailey tribute album than Kaiser, especially since, just glancing at the photos in the digipak interior, it looks as if he's got every record the man ever made, including of course his (Kaiser's) own duet outing with Bailey, the splendid Wireforks (1993, Shanachie). In addition to three fine solo tracks, Domo Arigato consists of duets and trios featuring Kaiser and a host of guests: Kiku Day (shakuhachi), Sang-Won Park (changgo), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet), Greg Goodman (piano), percussionists Andrea Centazzo and Charles K. Noyes, bassists Smith and Motoharu Yoshizawa, saxophonists Henry Kuntz, Larry Ochs, John Oswald and Mototeru Takagi, and guitarists Davey Williams.. and Bailey himself. Wait a sec, how come Derek Bailey gets to play on his own tribute album? Easy – because his track was recorded in 1993. In fact, as you've probably guessed while casting your eye through the list of featured musicians, many of whose names come as something of a blast from the past (Centazzo, Noyes..), the pieces on offer span Kaiser's entire recording career, from 1978 – the duos with Kondo and Centazzo – to this year's duo with Smith and "Metalanguage Trio" with Goodman and Ochs. As well as doing a pretty nifty Bailey imitation when he wants to, Kaiser has also adopted the late guitarist's habit of telling a story while he plays, so that the album is as much a spoken tribute to Bailey as a musical one. For the most part the spoken bits are of the order of fan mail ("So what does Derek Bailey mean to you? What do you get from him?" he asks Smith), and Kaiser can't resist having a go at the Ben Watson biography (though he recommends people read it nonetheless), but the music is what matters most. There's some fabulous playing here, most notably of course by Kaiser, who despite being a self-professed Baileyphile has always cultivated his own idiosyncratic approach to the instrument. A fresh and touching act of homage to a great musician.–DW