Crypto Musings

Citybeat that!

Greg Burk of the LA Weekly has plugged so many of our CryptoNight shows in the last few months that I wonder if he's on Crypto's payroll unbeknownst to me. Apparently he's got a workmate in jazz critic Kirk Silsbee. Check out this glowing recommendation from the most recent issue of LA Citybeat:

Jazz Critic's Choice: Tropical Nights

As a cause for civic pride, one of the best things to happen to L.A. in the last couple of years has been Crypto Night at Club Tropical in Culver City.  By day it's a Salvadoran restaurant but Thursday nights it's a weekly new music showcase, curated by violinist Jeff Gauthier, CEO of Cryptogramophone Records.    A booking quirk offers two Cryptonights this week.  Thursday, Albuquerque tubaist Mark Weaver convenes his powerhouse small band, Brassum.  The L.A.-Albuquerque connection, first established by poet and KUNM disc jockey Mark Weber, and this booking is another example of that relationship yielding local rewards.  (For Angelenos, Weber's comprehensive Albuzerzque CD series gives a fabulous accounting for music and spoken word in that town.)  The quartet of cornetist Dan Clucas, trombonist Mike Vlatkovich, and drummer Harris Eisenstadt alternately punch, careen and float through Weaver's pieces.  With Weaver's bullish lines anchoring the ensemble, Clucas and Vlatkovich dance and slash in the frontline in delightful ways.  Wednesday, guitarist Nels Cline summons the trio he calls the Nels Cline Singers (bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola).  Nobody sings, of course, but the idea of the self-confessed 'noise hound' Cline collaborating with someone like, say, Anita Kerr is a hoot.  Momentarily off from his Wilco duties, Cline will be playing material for his all-over-the-map The Giant Pin CD (nobody asked me but it's the best-designed cover of last year).  Cline can play lyrical and soft or spew forth heavy slabs of sound, just what you want to complement that garlic-rich Salvadoran dinner.

If you've never attended a CryptoNight concert, it's about time. The lineup is pretty phenomenal this season. Check it out at www.cryptonight.com.

Get a load o' JunkMedia

There's a great new interview with Nels on junkmedia.org. Have ye time for perusal? Click ye yon link.

Bits 'n pieces

Los Angeles Nels heads, take note: the first week of February is Singers heaven, as the Nels Cline Singers play four LA gigs in three days. First up is a free Amoeba gig at 7pm, followed that same night by a show at Spaceland with Good for Cows, Devin Hoff's bass/drums duo project with SF-based drummer Ches Smith. Wednesday the Singers are playing at Club Tropical as part of our Cryptonight series, then on Thursday they're hittin' the books at Oakwood School (my alma mater). This is all in support of the Singers' second album for Cryptogramophone, The Giant Pin.

The album continues a strong radio presence this week, with multiple spins on WXYC 89.3 in Chapel Hill and adds on radiojazz.com. At the mighty KCRW, Giant Pin was the number one jazz CD last week, and number two this week.

For all you compulsive record review readers, here's a convenient link to all the All About Jazz reviews on Cryptogramophone titles.

We've got stickers...WAAAAAY too many of them. Order something from the Crypto website and you just might find yourself the proud owner of an adhesive Cryptogramophone logo.

Radio adds, radio schmads

Nels and Darek's new albums are setting the radio charts ablaze. Okay, so maybe that's exaggerating a bit. But the albums are definitely hot. Maybe not radio chart combustible hot, but at the very least feverishly warm. So here's the low down:

1) Last week, WXYC in Chapel Hill, NC played cuts from The Giant Pin 11 times, placing it at number 2 in the jazz charts, number 19 overall.

2) "The Voice" 88.7, out of Sacramento, CA played "Blues Too" and "The Ballad of Devin Hoff" on their "Still Another Jazz Show" program on January 10th. DJ Dick Crockett described the Nels Cline Singers as an "experimental phoneme," which I suppose is a compliment in linguistic circles, right?

3) Darek's Like a Dream was one of the top 10 most played discs at KUT-FM out of Austin, Texas.

4) Both Like A Dream and The Giant Pin were played in healthy doses this past week on Canadian university station CKUT 90.3. Can we work out an exchange guys? We send you CDs, you send us cheap prescription drugs?

5) For this week, CMJ reports that The Giant Pin debuted at #7, the highest debut of the week, and that Like A Dream was the third most added disk overall. In total, around 25 stations have Crypto tracks in medium to heavy rotation.

Call your local jazz station and request radio play! Time to improve the airwaves. If I don't see Darek Oles on SNL within a month, I will be very, very upset with you all.

Coming soon to a radio near you...

Sorry to go all Billboard on y'all, but sometimes good news comes in chart format. So according to CMJ, Darek Oles' Like A Dream was the number one most added album to jazz radio this past week, beating out the highly publicized Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra release. The Nels Cline Singers' The Giant Pin came in a respectable # 3. Strangely, the Spongebob Squarepants soundtrack was nowhere to be seen...

Snuggly cuddly wishes

Here's the kind of e-mail we like to get from radio hosts:

What a nice way to start the new year. Like A Dream is just that, a dream, and a damned good one, too! The tracks with Darek and Brad are outstanding but no flies reside on the others either! For sure air time on show. Thanks.

And thank YOU, Mr. Bob Bednar, host of "This is Jazz" on WJCT in Jacksonville, Florida! Anyone else care to make us feel nice?

Crypto at IAJE

If you're going to the IAJE conference in Long Beach this weekend, drop by the  Cryptogramophone booth for some swag, good conversation and a chance to meet Darek Oles, who will be signing copies of his new CD Like A Dream on Saturday the 8th from 2-4 pm. Also catch Darek later that same day with the Alan Pasqua Trio, performing at midnight. Cryptgramophone will release Pasqua's new trio disc, "Body and Soul," later this year.

As an added incentive for you to come by, Cryptogramophone has pledged to match all purchases of Cryptogramophone CDs at IAJE with donations to tsunami relief organizations. This is a no-brainer; purchasing a Crypto CD will stimulate your mind AND ease your conscience.

Like A Dream about the Giant Pin

The Nels Cline Singers' The Giant Pin received "best of 2004" nods from two opposite corners of the world in the past few days. Andrew Dubber, DJ for Auckland, New Zealand radio program "It's a Jazz Thing," ranked it #11 in his top 20 albums of the year. Closer to home, Jay Collins of US-based website One Final Note placed it at a lofty #4. And not to be outdone, Darek Oles' Like A Dream rounded out the San Diego Union-Tribune's top ten jazz list. Incidentally, these two albums are the #1 and #2 most written about items on the Crypto Blog site, with that whole Chinese censorship fiasco a distant third.

LA Times review

We hit the big time! No less than Don Heckman of the LA Times just reviewed The Giant Pin in Sunday's Calendar section. Here's the laudatory blurb in its entirety:

Call me irresponsible. At least that's the line from the song that came to my mind looking back at a full list of the jazz and world music albums released in 2004. But irresponsibility isn't the problem. The truth is that so many CDs are coming down the pike that it's virtually impossible to give equal attention to every deserving disc. So, in retrospect, here are a few that didn't make the original cut but should not be overlooked.

Nels Cline Singers
"The Giant Pin" (Cryptogramophone)

Guitarist Cline is a charter member of the Southland's minimal jazz avant-garde, crossing easily from improvisational music to edgy contemporary rock. Iconoclasm reigns in this second album from the Singers (who, in appropriately ironic fashion, consist only of instrumentalists — Devin Hoff, bass, and Scott Amendola, drums). There are intriguing musical pleasures to be found in tracks that rove between progressive rock, electronica, hypnotic grooves and straight-ahead jazz.

Next on our agenda: scoring a review in The Onion.