| damon smith | balance point acoustics | buy cd's | contact | links | other cd's | Balance Point Acoustics at Emusic |

CONCERTS

calendar

NEWS

reviews
workshops
projects

MULTIMEDIA

audio
video
visual

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

"Preview For a Trio Concert in Chicago"
Players: Guillermo Gregorio/jerome Bryerton/Damon Smith
Reviewed by: Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader
JEROME BRYERTON, DAMON SMITH, AND GUILLERMO GREGORIO With his rich tone and unerring technique, Bay Area double bassist Damon Smith sounds equally apposite tracing ghostly harmonics around Birgit Ulher’s agitated trumpet on the trio record Sperrgut, underscoring Richard Thompson’s melancholy guitar on the soundtrack to Grizzly Man, or asserting order against the woolly, anarchistic playing of reedist Vinny Golia, guitarist Henry Kaiser, and drummer Weasel Walter on the Albert Ayler tribute Healing Force. In this otherwise local trio, which has a couple recordings in the can but no releases yet, he straddles the fault line where improvisation and composition meet. Clarinetist and alto saxophonist Guillermo Gregorio is an old hand with graphic scores, not just as a performer but as a composer and conductor, and here he plays all three roles: in the studio the group has worked from his graphs, Christian Marclay’s deck of cards, and the Roscoe Mitchell piece “Cards.” Smith and Gregorio play isolated shapes as starkly demarcated as architectural drawings, and percussionist Jerome Bryerton—one of Smith’s longtime collaborators—creates a sense of ceaseless motion with his restrained, jazzy flourishes and arrhythmic crashes. The Hats headline and Blink opens. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $7. —Bill Meyer

This Site Copyright ©2010 Balance Point Acoustics. All rights reserved.