Nation Beat Bring Carnaval to Mardi Gras, and Vice Versa

Before the lockdown, Brooklyn group Nation Beat had a long run as one of New York’s top party bands, mixing up Brazilian sounds with New Orleans second-line shuffles, Americana, and in the early days, even surf rock. Happily, this rotating cast of musicians from around the world is are still together and releasing records. Their new album The Royal Chase – streaming at Bandcamp – is their most New Orleans-flavored and best release yet.

The opening number, Forró de Dois Amigo has Joe Correa’s sousaphone pulsing behind drummer’bandleader Scott Kettner’s surprisingly subtle mashup of Brazilian and Mardi Gras shuffle beats, reggae-tinged, bronzed horns, and solos from trombonist Mariel Bildstein and tenor sax player Paul Carlon. That sets the stage for the rest of the album.

Morô Omim Má has a more hypnotic groove, with resonant horns and spare guitar, Rob Curto’s organ anchoring a pensive Mark Collins trumpet solo. The album’s title track has a brisk strut: it’s practically ska, a mashup of rustic 19th century marching band music and a little dub.

They follow with a muscular, brassy reinventino of the Meters’ Hey Pocky Way with impassioned vocals and a slinky tuba solo. The group edge back toward reggae with the moodily vamping, minor-key Paper Heart, a brooding trombone solo at the center.

Forró no Escuro is a playful blend of Brazilian forro rainforest folk with bright frevo brass band flavor and more than a hint of calypso: down in the tropics, sounds get around fast. Ciranda for Lia is the album’s most lyrical number, a syncopated, pulsing ballad: it’s a song Grover Washington Jr. could have heard back in the 80s and thought to himself, “I’ve got to cover that.”

A tricky circling sax riff kicks off the jubilantly strutting, bluesy Big Chief, a launching pad for bright trumpet and suave trombone solos. With its rapidfire, icepick rhythm, Feira de Mangaio is the most specifically Brazilian tune here, although the sousaphone adds beefy flavor from further north.

Algunas Cantan has gentle Portuguese lead vocals from “Carolina Mama” over what sounds like an African balafon. The band wind up the record with Roseira do Norte, its pounding maracatu beat, jubilant brassiness and hints of vintage Burning Spear.

The Berlin Mallet Group Ring In a Unique, Imaginative, Colorful Debut Album

One of the most imaginative and unique albums to reach the front page here in recent months is the Berlin Mallet Group‘s debut album Sogni D’oro, streaming at Spotify. It rings, and pings, and whirs, and whooshes and bubbles in ways few other groups ever have, no surprise considering the instrumentation. Bandleaders David Friedman and Taiko Saito play vibraphone and marimba, respectively, along with Julius Heise and Hauke Renken, who alternate between those two instruments, and Raphael Meinhart, who sticks with the marimba here. The world is full of percussion ensembles and vibraphone jazz groups, but this crew sound like no other band in the world, part precise orchestra, part outside-the-box jazz ensemble. This is very lively, colorful music.

The opening number, Friedman’s Penta e Uno, is a mini-suite full of playful twists and turns, from a rapturous, minimalist ballad, to tantalizingly brief, bouncy swing and bossa themes and fleeting moments of Lynchian suspense. What’s most fascinating about it is the group’s meticulously orchestral intertwine. There’s a thicket of tremolo and ripples, but also a steady bassline, and circling low midrange.

The second number, by Saito, is Komodo No Kodomo, a vampy, distantly Asian, cleverly polyrhythmic web anchoring a series of terse vibraphone solos that finally mingle down into hypnotic rivulets. The group reinvent Kenny Wheeler’s Sea Lady as an epic bell choir: Saito’s evocative arrangement gets the group bowing oceanic ambience, right down to coy shorebirds and waves leisurely washing onshore. From there they take turns drifting and ringing out a summery tropical tableau.

Carousel, another Friedman tune, shifts from warmly hypnotic to emphatically assertive, with both motorik and west African balafon flavors and catchy solos from the vibes. The group dedicate this album to the late composer and percussionist Rupert Stamm and follow with two of his compositions. Friedman’s spare phrases resonate broodingly over suspenseful marimbas as Xylon 1 gets underway, the group maintaining a tight but mysterious pulse as a more tropical rhythm picks up. Xylon 4 is the album’s most anthemic track, with some breathtaking interplay in the highs as it peaks out.

Friedman’s title track shifts between summery atmosphere, a puffing pulse and a casual, shuffling bounce, with lushly expanding textures as it goes on. Scharfenberg, a fond ballad by Heise, concludes the album, the ensemble’s keening, pinging layers rising to a cheery series of waves that underscore the song’s sly resemblance to an old Elvis hit.

Funny and Troubling Songs For a Funny and Troubling Time

Good things come in fours today: here’s a mini-playlist of videos and streams to get your synapses firing on all cylinders

The woman who brought you the devious Tina Turner parody What’s Math Got to Do With It, singer/sax player Stephanie Chou has a provocatively philosophical new single, Continuum Hypothesis. It’s sort of art-rock, sort of jazz – a catchy, dancing, anthemic duo with pianist Jason Yeager, dedicated to mathematician Paul Cohen. According to this hypothesis, there is no set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and the real numbers. This seems self-evident, but, based on Cohen’s work in set theory, Chou sees it as essentially unknowable, at least with what we know now. Snag a free download at Lions with Wings’ Bandcamp page while you can.

Here’s Erik Della Penna – the guitar half of erudite, lyrical superduo Kill Henry Sugar with drummer Dean Sharenow – doing a very, very subtle, rustically shuffling, Dylanesque acoustic protest song, Change the Weather:

I’m gonna make predictions
I’m gonna make it rain
I’m gonna put restrictions
On hearing you complain…
I’m gonna change the language
To make you change your mind
I’m gonna make predictions
That you can get behind

Swedish songwriter Moneira a.k.a. Daniela Dahl has a new single, The Bird (Interesting to See) It’s almost eight minutes of minimalist, anthemic art-rock piano and mellotron vibes, an oblique memoir of a troubled childhood, “a bird trapped in an open cage.” Sound familiar?

Natalia Lafourcade sings a slow, plush, epic take of the brooding Argentine suicide ballad Alfonsina y El Mar with Ljova orchestrating himself as a one-man string ensemble with his fadolin multitracks. You’d never know it was just one guy.