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

"Sextessense"
Players: JOHN BUTCHER/AARON BENNET/ JEROME BRYERTON/ DANIELLE DEGRUTTOLA/ HENRY KAISER/DAMON SMITH, SEXTESSENSE
Reviewed by: Marc Medwin, Cadence
DANIELLE DEGRUTTOLA/ HENRY KAISER/DAMON SMITH, SEXTESSENSE: A Tribute to John Stevens, BALANCE POINT ACOUSTICS 11. So What do you Think about John Stevens / Deep Six for the SME / Beckett (Sam) / Immeadiate Pasts / Click Piece + Sustain = / Has Duration / Implies its Opposite / Six and One / Septessence. 79:54. Butcher, s; Bennet, s; Bryerton, d; DeGruttola, cel; Kaiser, g; Smith, ac b. Recorded 1999, other info not given. There are very few people I’ve heard discussed with such an overpowering mixture of admiration and reservation as John Stevens. Whatever opinions abound concerning the man, his contributions to improvised music and its pedagogy should never be underestimated, and this disc is a fitting tribute from Stevens’ colleagues and admirers. It’s fitting that Damon Smith’s label should house this session. Balance Point Acoustics has documented a deservedly acclaimed series of fresh encounters between some of the West Coast’s finest and several top-drawer European improvisers and Sextessense continues the tradition. I needn’t rehearse John Butcher’s contributions to later incarnations of Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and his presence on this set is a palpable link to a venerable past. The disc should not, however, be construed as some kind of SME copy, even though two of the pieces are in fact based on Stevens’ exercises. The improvisations on offer here are somehow denser, possibly even more fleet-footedly humorous, than much of the SME’s work, a momentary burst of raucous laughter driving the point home. Even what seem to be attempts to re-enact SME workshop strategies, like the click and sustain piece, sound advanced, proudly boasting the virtuosity gained from thirty-five years of practice and contemplation. It is especially gratifying to hear Butcher in this context, as the free-wheeling nature of the music here is in direct contrast to much of the more introspective work in which he’s been involved of late. The sax-and-strings-heavy lineup is wonderfully conducive to the pointilistically whiplash interplay for which the SME was always famous, and the disc is a joyful celebration from the beginning to its transcendentally hushed conclusion. Marc Medwin