THE EDGEWOOD SAX TRIO: Ben Davis (from left), Jeff Crompton, and Bill Nittler. Photo by Jeff Crompton.
In December of 2022, the passing of baritone saxophonist Bill Nittler left a hole in the heart of Atlanta’s extended musical family.
As a tribute, his former Edgewood Saxophone Trio bandmates Jeff Crompton (alto) and Ben Davis (tenor) have launched a Gofundme campaign to release the group’s second full-length album, Heard.
Over the years, Nittler served as the Education Director for the Atlanta Young Singers youth choir. He also played a vital role performing with various jazz-based ensembles including Kingsized, Greasepaint, Nuzion Big Band, Lie And Swell, the 4th Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra, Shaking Ray Levis, and more. He performed with Southern Culture on the Skids, and was known for crafting a bustling ska arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight” and an avant-garde take on the Butthole Surfers’ already twisted number “Cherub.”
Heard is the follow up to the Edgewood Sax Trio’s 2014 debut, Snake Nation, and marks the group’s final offering, which is expected to arrive this summer.
“I spent hours editing the existing studio material for side one of the LP,” says alto saxophonist and EST co-founder Jeff Crompton. “Some high-quality recordings from a live broadcast on Atlanta radio station WREK provided three of the tracks on side two. The final track is a special one—a live recording from our favorite gig ever: a 2015 concert at Atlanta’s Trinity House. The recordings have been expertly mastered by Chris Griffin of Griffin Mastering.”
Fresh off of releasing his brilliant 2022 album Music For Four Guitars (Palilalia), punk-blues and no wave-inspired improv guitarist Bill Orcutt returns to play a solo set at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery on Sunday, February 19.
Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery has announced a new location opening in early 2021 at 515 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd., in a historic industrial corridor near the West End, Pittsburgh, Mechanicsville, and Adair Park.
In a press release issued September 29, Eyedrum states that this new location will feature a “flexible 3,000 square-foot interior including a small dedicated gallery, an outdoor stage, and a courtyard for programming.”
The press release also states that Eyedrum will carry on with its legacy as “a home to underserved, emerging artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers. In times of uncertainty, members of the community need arts spaces now more than ever.”
In June of 2018, Eyedrum, along with fellow DIY arts and music space Mammal were forced to close after a nearby fire on Broad Street SW left one man dead. Soon after, both business were forced to leave their Downtown locations permanently.
Two years later, Eyedrum’s announcement comes as a beacon of hope for an underserved community of artists and musicians. In a 2011 CL cover story that I co-authored with Wyatt Williams, title Eyedrum: An Oral History, we described that scene as “those willing to embrace music and arts that are as contemptuous as they were conscientious. Indie rock acts as varied as Oneida, Don Caballero, and the Black Heart Procession to Simeon Coxe of the Silver Apples to DJ Cut Chemist all performed there amid exhibitions with titles such as The Penis Show, Switch, and Liquid Smoke.”
With the recent closure of the Bakery in Oakland City, Atlanta needs a venue that this community can call home, now more than ever.
515 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd.
Eyedrum’s new home sits adjacent to Parts Authority, an automobile parts and supplies facility.
Deisha Oliver, a member of Eyedrum’s board of directors, says the gallery and performance venue is renting “a 3,000 square foot portion of 515. The building owner has been so kind as to do the needed build out of our portion of that space.”
To keep Eyedrum’s endeavors moving forward, an effort to raise funds is underway, with plans to facilitate virtual programming, and to support the staff and curatorial budget for the next five years. A new website is planned for launch soon, which will offer membership options.
At the core of both releases stands the duo of cello player and Past Now Tomorrow label owner Ben Shirley and mandolin player Majid Araim. Together, they’ve fleshed out a singular musical voice while employing an arsenal of instruments—cello, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, recorder, piano, reed organ, Korg MS-20, percussion, walkie talkies, tapes, and radio—to explore a haunted and wildly shifting terrain of musical timbres and colors.
“We did a crazy experiment with a process of overdubbing,” Shirley says of the Whispers Of Night release. “We improvised the initial pieces, then we started overdubbing. But only one of us wore headphones: One of us was listening to and playing along with what was already in the can. The other was responding to what was happening in the room. We traded back and forth, and a submerged musical composition rose up out of the ether as we went along,” he adds.
They recorded the sessions for The Dead Blessing using both a 4-Track and a computer. When finished, they spent weeks mixing it all together before Ben Price at Studilaroche put the final mastering touches on the five cavernous pieces presented here.
For voice resolve [sic.], Araim and Shirley teamed up with Philadelphia-based percussionist Leo Suarez to record a stripped-down early morning improv session—Shirley stuck with his cello, and Majid with a mandolin, violin, and his voice. Press play on the opening number, “Morning Of A Georgia Faun,” and the session sputters to life. The opening number’s title alone calls to mind Shirley’s former band—Faun And A Pan Flute—and Georgia native and saxophonist Marion Brown’s pastoral 1970 album Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun (ECM). Both provide heady context, and the song serves as an excellent entrypoint for the album’s lush and quietly calamitous survey of Georgia’s avant-garde landscape. The music is beautiful, abstract, and reflexive as songs such as “Let The Fish Gossip,” and “Grass So Soft” draw out tension in a subtle cacophony of sounds summoned from the depths of the subconscious minds of three players who all have their antennae dialed into the same frequencies.
GEORGIA MORNING: Leo Suarez (left) and Majid Araim. Photo by Ben Shirley.
Prior to this session, Suarez, Araim, and Shirley had jammed together sporadically while Whispers Of Night was on the road playing shows around the country. In June of 2019, after Suarez played a show at the Magic Lantern, the three reconvened at 8 a.m. to roll tape. Ofir Klemperer recorded the session as they all locked in with their instruments. Aside from one small, imperceptible cut, the session went down as is.
“We consciously chose to make the trio not Leo + Whispers, as we conceived of it as each individual bringing their own independent voice to the group, rather than any sort of specific sound,” Shirley says.
Both the Whispers Of Night and Suarez + Araim + Shirley releases live on Past Now Tomorrow’s Bandcamp page. A limited edition of 50 copies of The Dead Blessing and voice resolve on CD can be found on the Bandcamp page as well—not for long, though. The sturdy, cardboard sleeves and hand-assembled cover art brings a tactile element to music that often eludes conventional terms. “I wanted to have a unifying aesthetic for this set of releases,” Shirley says. “I’m trying to still produce physical things, even though not many people buy them. This way I can make them at a low cost and keep the charge down. I use the least amount of plastic possible, and still have sturdy packaging with a spine on the side—working at WREK, I know that your CD is way more likely to get pulled off the shelf if it has a spine that looks interesting. That’s at least part of the idea.”
DUET FOR THEREMIN AND LAP STEEL: Frank Schultz (left) and Scott Burland. Photo courtesy Terry Kearns.
In the visually stunning BBC One documentary series Planet Earth, Sir David Attenborough describes a mesmerizing scene in which underwater caverns play tricks on the eye. “What seems like air … isn’t. It’s just another kind of water,” Attenborough says as he describes a phenomenon called halocline, a point at which freshwater and saltwater clash, like oil and water, maintaining separate densities. It is rich fodder for the imagination, and the title of Duet For Theremin and Lap Steel’s latest album. Theremin player Scott Burland and Lap Steel player Frank Schultz are back with an eight-song masterpiece of haunting, luminous atmosphere.
In the Fall of 2019, a chance meeting—sharing the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Kaiju—with vocalist Dane Waters gave rise to a collaboration in which she weaves her voice into songs with titles such as “Maelstrom,” “Swell,” and “Fata Morgana.” The result draws out an unforeseen abstract aquatic theme pulled from the depths of the subconscious, manifesting itself in fluid musical movements.
On the heels of the album’s May 16 release, Burland and Schultz took a few minutes to talk about working with Dane Waters, what the music means to them, and letting the music drive the concept.
Halocline describes what happens when two bodies of water are separated because of different salinities. How does this apply to the record?
Frank Schultz: The music drove the concept, not the concept driving the music. I had been watching a lot of Blue Planet and Planet Earth in the evenings during the time I was starting to put the album together, and the music seemed a perfect fit to the many faces of water. Water is one of those weird things that you can’t live without, sometimes it’s hard to live with, and sometimes it’s a killer. The illusion of a halocline is beautiful, but can be very distracting and deadly.
Scott Burland: Naming albums and song titles has been a challenging—though fun—process for us over the years, and this time the whole concept fell into place once Frank mentioned halocline to me. The music on this album varies from murky to clear, sometimes even in the same song. To me, some of this music sounds like it was recorded underwater. Or lends itself to imagining oneself moving around surrounded by, or completely underwater.
How does this expand upon your body of work and everything that you’ve accomplished with your previous recordings?
FS: I think it is our best body of work so far. It has connections to previous work, but goes in several different directions.
Filmmaker Robbie Land’s video for the title track from DfTaLS’ latest album, Halocline.
What are these different directions in which you see the music going?
FS: As far as a long term direction, who knows. We play, the music comes out, we record it and put some of it out. There is no preconceived notion of a path or direction.
SB: I think it fits nicely into our larger body of work. When 10 came out, I remember feeling like there was a certain maturity in the music. That’s definitely true of Halocline. There are no gimmicks per sé, it’s just the instruments, filtered through our approaches, and voice. It stands on its own and it seems a logical extension to our arc. I’d add that the majority of the album is sonically abstract, though there are moments of familiarity and traditional structure, or at least our version of that.
FS: There are several moments in the album when everything falls into place and still gives me goosebumps. Favorite songs change over time, at least for me. Current faves are “Maelstrom” and “Dissolver,” but I have a crush on all of them.
SB: I’m a big fan of the title track. When I hear it, I think wow, we did that? I don’t have a clear memory of recording it, it was just some random Wednesday, early in 2019. I appreciate that I’m working with someone who I can collaborate on a piece such as this, with no road map, no clear beginning or end and listen back and agree, hey that’s not half bad. “Brinicle” is another favorite, it’s both still and in motion and I have at least a vague memory of recording that one!
What did performing with Dane Waters bring out of DfTaLS?
FS: We met Dane in Louisville when we shared the stage with her in 2019. We were both floored by her performance. Floored enough that the two of us agreed, without any hesitation, that we should meet with her the next day and ask her to be on the album. She said yes! We fleshed out around 18 songs, got them down to nine songs we agreed on, and sent her three of them to record vocals. We ended up using all the songs for which she contributed vocals. Of course, once I received her recordings, it affected how the songs were treated and mixed.
SB: After that Louisville gig, Frank and I were asking ourselves why we didn’t invite her to join us for our set. Second best was asking her to contribute to the record. I think she adds a human quality to the album which isn’t exactly lacking in our previous efforts, but it’s just more in the forefront here. She slipped right into the spirit of the thing, I liked the way her voice reacted harmonically to the theremin and I appreciate the thought that she put into it. We look forward to sharing a stage with her at some unknown point in the future.
DUET FOR THEREMIN AND LAP STEEL: Halocline
Collaborations can often underscore one artist’s vision, or open up to the whole group making room for happy accidents, so to speak. Be it Jeff Crompton’s contributions to “Absinthium” on 10, filmmaker Robbie Land’s visuals, or working with Bill Brovold, the Shaking Ray Levis, and more on your 2011 album, Collaborations. What are the benefits of bringing outside influences into the realm you’ve created with DfTaLS?
FS: Kind of two camps here: Crompton and Dane recorded their pieces after the fact, so not really anything that influenced our playing. Robbie—we never see his films while we are playing, so not much influence, although we love when it happens, we just feel better knowing it is there, as does the audience. The Collaborations album was the one where we did live recordings with all the folks. So we were all influencing each other. In general, we enjoy collaborating with folks because it tends to bear lovely fruit and furthers our musical relationship and connection with those folks. Improvising with new folks is a chance to open your ears and learn something.
SB: This is the first time we’ve collaborated with someone without being in the same room, so the rules were different. On paper, there’s an immediacy that’s missing but in this case I think Dane nailed it with the vocals, almost as if we had recorded it together. Frank and I know the limitations of DfTaLS and an advantage of bringing someone else in is that the other people don’t necessarily know or even want to know those limits. It offers a fresh perspective, which gives us “permission” to stray from our comfort zone. To say it breaks up the monotony seems a little harsh, but surprise is good and we’ve been doing this long enough that introducing something new and/or unexpected keeps the fire going.
FS: Collaborating is part of our nature.
SB: It seems that we are able to fit into a variety of sonic scenarios, so I would say that collaborations allow us to expand on what DfTaLS is, and a glimpse into what it might become, or could be. Having time these last couple of months to contemplate even my own relationship to music has been eye-opening. Trying to strip everything away and then slowly reintroduce things to see what resonates. It’s a process. It’s hard to imagine my life without DfTaLS, so I am trying to figure out what it really means to me, what it means to Atlanta, to the region, and beyond. So it’s difficult for me to articulate the true nature of DfTaLS. Still working on that.
W8ing4UFOs are still playing their scheduled shows at the Pilot Light. Stay tuned for more information.
As Knoxville, Tennessee prepares for the Big Ears Festival‘s annual pilgrimage of deep listeners descending upon the Marble City’s music venues March 26-29, more pieces are falling into place every day. Festivities for the 2020 gathering include an ever-growing film series and panel discussions, in addition to a lineup of bold musical innovators celebrating their singularly nuanced sounds. A rich lineup of heavy-hitters is on the calendar for this year, including German free jazz luminary, saxophone and clarinet player Peter Brötzmann, Tortoise guitar player Jeff Parkerand the New Breed, rock ‘n’ roll poet Patti Smith, Tuareg psych rocker Mdou Moctar, drone music architect Phil Niblock, British free jazz and Afrofuturist provocateur Shabaka Hutchings & the Ancestors, and more.
Amid the flurry of artists and activities on this year’s schedule, Atlanta boasts a particularly strong showing:
Mute Sphere, a group featuring former Faun and A Pan Flute guitarist David Gray, cello and fiddle player Ben Shirley, drummer John Gregg, and percussionist and synth player Chris Childs team up with vocalist Monique Osorio, crafting a blend of composed and improvised rock and modern classical sounds. Mute Sphere takes the Pilot Light stage on Thursday, March 26. 8 p.m. It’s free to anyone who can fit through the door, even if you don’t have a Big Ears pass.
The Rev. Fred Lane is currently setting the South ablaze with the arrival of Icepick To the Moon, his first album over 30 years. The album finds the Auburn, Alabama auteur backed by a group known as the Disheveled Monkey Biters, aka the Edgewood Saxophone Trio (Jeff Crompton, Ben Davis, and Bill Nittler). Rev. Fred Lane and the Disheveled Monkey Biters play The Standard on Friday, March 27. 9 p.m.
W8ing4UFOs photo by Karen Haim.
Coded deeply within W8ing4UFOs’ DNA is a dense and secret history of Atlanta music. Singer and guitarist Bill Taft, cellist Brian Halloran, and percussionist Will Fratesi’s time together reaches all the back to Cabbagetown in the early ‘90s, sharing stages with Southern firebrand Benjamin in the band Smoke. Producer, songwriter, and keyboard player Billy Fields is like the angel Virgil of Atlanta music, leading the way out of darkness into the light. His resume boasts a lifetime spent playing music with a variety of acts such as Follow For Now, Seek, Upstream, Lust, Arrested Development, Dionne Farris, and H.R. of Bad Brains’ Human Rights outfit. Alongside guitar player Sean Dunn of Athens’ indie rock outfit Five-Eight and viola player and Radon Recordings co-owner Katie Butler, the group creates a mighty sound steeped in the kind of steel-stringed anti-gospel defiance that can only be forged in the forgotten underbelly of the Southern Piedmont. W8ing4UFOs plays two shows at The Pilot Light — Friday, March 27 at 9 p.m., and Saturday, March 28 at 3 p.m.
Dust-To-Digital co-owner Lance Ledbetter joins Nathan Salsburg, curator of the Alan Lomax Archive, for a listening session and discussion of selected artists, repertoires, and site-specific musical communities, including archival recordings from Ledbetter’s nonprofit organization Music Memory. At Boyd’s Jig & Reel. Sunday, March 29. 2-3 p.m.
Rad/ATL 