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

"Yclept"
Players: Ulher / Shibolet / Snir / Brenner / Meyer / Smith / Bymel Yclept
Reviewed by: Johan Redin
n addition to the duo with Gino Robair, Blips and Ifs, yet another album with Birgit Ulher has recently been released: Yclept, together with the American bassist Damon Smith and a bunch of Israeli musicians: Ariel Shibolet and Adi Snir on tenor and soprano saxophones, Roni Brenner and Michel Mayer on guitars and Ofer Bymel on percussion. The recording took place in Tel Aviv last year and proves to be an outstanding set of musical creativity. It is in other words quite a large ensemble and there are many things happening on all fronts. But there is room enough for everyone, with a fine balance of higher and lower register (the record is by the way exceptionally mastered). Smith plays a very physical bass; he knocks it, wrenches its strings, so you get full aware of its body. Ulher’s trumpet clicks and hisses on its distinctive way and the fact that there are two guitarists also turn out with great success I think. The mixture of wind and strings increases the intensity in such a way that any uncertainty produces ideal opportunities for the development. The effect is short and long passages that generates a sort of inward and outward movements to the improvised music, something that is quite difficult to manage in larger ensembles, and especially since this is their first get together. Ofer Bymels plying also impresses me, sparse and suddenly explosive in the tradition of Paul Lovens, but with individuality and innovative moves.

Yclept is a meeting of Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Hamburg – quite an unusual map with many cultural differences. But, as Klaus Janek emphasize in his liner notes, it is as evident as it is incredible that they all speak the very same language, instantly. For those who doubt this, just listen to the fifth track (they have no titles) where an almost frightening timing and perceptiveness develops into a musical discourse where all voices are of equal importance and all gestures immediate.

Originally in Swedish on soundofmusic.nu 2009-11-06 --