SOUNDTRACK: MOSES BOYD-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #207 (May 7, 2021).
Moses Boyd is a jazz (primarily) drummer from England.
The Church Studios in North London is an institution, home to some of the most iconic records of the last three decades…. From the hallowed Neve Room, Moses Boyd and his band remind us that the U.K. jazz scene still bangs. They also remind us that COVID-19 regulations are much stricter across the pond: physical distancing is the name of the game in this at home concert.
The set begins with “Stranger Than Fiction,” a bouncy grime tune that features saxophonist Quinn Oulton, whose pedals lend his horn a dark and haunting quality.
The song starts with Moses playing some fabulous rhythms. Renato Paris plays a choppy but funky bass line that melds into a groove while there’s some lead sax soloing from Quinn Oulton. Later in the song both Paris and Oulton play the same melody giving it a really big sound. The guitar goes almost unnoticed until nearly four minutes in when Artie Zaitz gets a cool solo.
Boyd humbly introduces the band and slips right into “2 Far Gone,” and we get a chance to sink our teeth into his virtuosic drumming. Dynamic, at times explosive, and always tasteful, he lays down a bed of rhythm that gives keyboardist Renato Paris and guitarist Artie Zaitz plenty of room to shine. T
It’s fun to watch Moses play from over his shoulder from where you can see all of the interesting things he’s doing including rim shits, paradiddles and even a drum stick flip that appears more functional than fancy. It’s a pretty lengthy intro before the keys and sax come in, sounding echoing and far away. Paris’s solo has a total space synth vibe—it’s great and feels very proggy to me.
“BTB” is a funky Afrobeat tune with an infectious melody that serves as the perfect closer.
Zaitz plays a looping guitar melody while the bass note pulses. Then the sax comes in and takes over the main melody while Zaitz plays filigrees between. And of course, all the while, Boyd’s drumming is fantastic. Although, focusing on him while Zaitz is playing some cool solos is a bit uncool. But I love the wall of sound the band generates by the end.
[READ: June 1, 2021] “Immortality”
The June 11 issue of the new Yorker had several essays under the heading “Summer Movies.” Each one is a short piece in which the author (many of whom I probably didn’t know in 2007 but do know now) reflects on, well, summer movies.
Gary Shteyngart became a man in 1985 (according to Jewish tradition) while he was summering in the Catskills.
During the work week the cabins were inhabited by grandmas and their charges. An unhappy local middle aged woman would shout “Bread! Cakes!” and the week old raspberry Danish on sale for a quarter tasted as good as anything he had ever known.
His grandmother has always been tough
women who had come of age under Stalin, whose entire lives in the USSR had been devoted to crisis management, to making sure the arbitrary world around them would treat their children better than it had treated them.
His father was at the apex of middle age and loved to fish. Each year he caught hundreds if not thousands of fish out of streams, lakes and oceans with a three dollar bamboo fishing rod and a chilling competence. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 