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

"Thoughtbeetle"
Players: Bertram Turetzky/Damon Smith
Reviewed by: Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure
By the time Damon Smith was born in 1972, Bertram Turetsky had permanently expanded the role of the double bass in new music through watershed recordings like The Contemporary Contrabass (Nonesuch; ’70). By the time Smith, inspired by Peter Kowald’s Duos: Europa (FMP), left punk and art rock in ’94 to focus on the double bass and improvised music, Turetsky was frequently improvising with Vinny Golia and others. Smith’s rise in the past 15 years has been impressive, both as an improviser and organizer; the scope and the impact of his Balance Point Acoustics imprint increases with each release. There's grit to the music of Smith and his cohorts that is very much of its time and place (the latter being the Bay Area, though BPA releases have included musicians from throughout the US, Europe and Israel). Though his persuasive technique is, to some degree, attributable to occasional studies with Turetsky (who, during his distinguished tenure at UCSD taught Mark Dresser and others), that grit is central to Smith’s slant on what is now commonly called extended techniques; it goes a long way in parsing Smith's sensibility from Turetsky's, who first tested the capacities of the instrument outside a tradition-based genre or practice, and understanding the quality of the music on Thoughtbeetle. Granted, Turetsky's experiments are now central to the lexicon of the improvising bassist; but, their original context is now afield from current applications like Smith's. In this regard, Turetsky's energy in playing to and playing against Smith is endorsement enough. But, these seven improvisations – five of which were recorded in studio, while two are from a concert – convey a larger, heartening message about the long-term prospects for improvised music. –Bill Shoemaker