WEDNESDAY JUN 21, 2017
Visitors
Visitors is collaborative musical hive mind born out of the Broad Street Visitors Center recording studio run by Dan Bailey and Jared Pepper. Dan and Jared began construction on the space back in the Fall of 2014. Two years later, from the guts of an abandoned liquor store, Dan and Jared had built not only a fully functioning studio but a beautiful creative space. Along with the Mammal Gallery, they were part of the first wave of artists to begin the transformation of south Downtown Atlanta. Now they were poised to form a unique musical dialect.
Inviting the best and brightest of the local jazz and experimental music scenes, Visitors was born. Weekly improv sessions would set the groundwork for what would become expansive compositions in the Visitors repertoire. Even though their albums feature dozens of players from the local music community. The performing lineup had been distilled to include the key players in Visitors heightened lexicon. Dan Bailey plays his signature fretless electric bass. Jared Pepper on drums and Kenneth Kenito Murray on percussion make up a formidable rhythm section. Gage Gilmore on keyboards with electronic wizard Jeremi Johnson on synthesizer command the "space station". While flutist Rasheeda Ali brings a deft melodic tone to the ensemble.
You can expect to hear a lot from Visitors in 2018. They are currently shopping for label support of the studio albums and future touring ventures.
Visitors is collaborative musical hive mind born out of the Broad Street Visitors Center recording studio run by Dan Bailey and Jared Pepper. Dan and Jared began construction on the space back in the Fall of 2014. Two years later, from the guts of an abandoned liquor store, Dan and Jared had built not only a fully functioning studio but a beautiful creative space. Along with the Mammal Gallery, they were part of the first wave of artists to begin the transformation of south Downtown Atlanta. Now they were poised to form a unique musical dialect.
Inviting the best and brightest of the local jazz and experimental music scenes, Visitors was born. Weekly improv sessions would set the groundwork for what would become expansive compositions in the Visitors repertoire. Even though their albums feature dozens of players from the local music community. The performing lineup had been distilled to include the key players in Visitors heightened lexicon. Dan Bailey plays his signature fretless electric bass. Jared Pepper on drums and Kenneth Kenito Murray on percussion make up a formidable rhythm section. Gage Gilmore on keyboards with electronic wizard Jeremi Johnson on synthesizer command the "space station". While flutist Rasheeda Ali brings a deft melodic tone to the ensemble.
You can expect to hear a lot from Visitors in 2018. They are currently shopping for label support of the studio albums and future touring ventures.
Sister Sai
"There’s an amorphous spiritual quality driving Sister Sai’s latest offering, Extempore. From song titles such as “Devotional” and “Glossolalia” to “Wanderer” and “Incarnate,” the album taps into a deeply mystical musical trajectory that reveals itself through the sounds she makes, and the seamless motion of each song drifting into the next. The album is comprised mostly of a one-take, largely unedited session of mind-melting cello loops that, with each listen, reveals layers of depth at work within cellist Saira Raza’s natural musical instincts. Embracing her unorthodox sense of repetition is key to zeroing in on the zoned-out head space that each of these songs occupy. “Glossolalia” is the first immediately arresting number here. Sounds bend and swoop as though they’re being pulled down a drain, moving deeper into her unseen, subconscious mind. The album requires a heady, meditative concentration, as Extempore is more an exercise in automatic writing than it is a collection of composed works. Musically, this is Raza’s equivalent of speaking in tongues. The results are a somewhat convoluted journey into minimalism. Song structures change with each passing listen as the recording moves forever forward, drifting at a dreamlike pace. This is a much different approach from the style on display throughout previous works such as 2016’s Inertia, and 2014’s First Flight EP. This is the unrestrained and unrefined product of what happens when her mind is left to wander — left with nothing more than her musical devices. As such, it’s an experimental album. It’s not the easiest point of entry into Raza’s work, but it’s certainly the most revealing of her musical reflexes, her instincts, and the insights she has to offer." -Creative Loafing Atlanta
"There’s an amorphous spiritual quality driving Sister Sai’s latest offering, Extempore. From song titles such as “Devotional” and “Glossolalia” to “Wanderer” and “Incarnate,” the album taps into a deeply mystical musical trajectory that reveals itself through the sounds she makes, and the seamless motion of each song drifting into the next. The album is comprised mostly of a one-take, largely unedited session of mind-melting cello loops that, with each listen, reveals layers of depth at work within cellist Saira Raza’s natural musical instincts. Embracing her unorthodox sense of repetition is key to zeroing in on the zoned-out head space that each of these songs occupy. “Glossolalia” is the first immediately arresting number here. Sounds bend and swoop as though they’re being pulled down a drain, moving deeper into her unseen, subconscious mind. The album requires a heady, meditative concentration, as Extempore is more an exercise in automatic writing than it is a collection of composed works. Musically, this is Raza’s equivalent of speaking in tongues. The results are a somewhat convoluted journey into minimalism. Song structures change with each passing listen as the recording moves forever forward, drifting at a dreamlike pace. This is a much different approach from the style on display throughout previous works such as 2016’s Inertia, and 2014’s First Flight EP. This is the unrestrained and unrefined product of what happens when her mind is left to wander — left with nothing more than her musical devices. As such, it’s an experimental album. It’s not the easiest point of entry into Raza’s work, but it’s certainly the most revealing of her musical reflexes, her instincts, and the insights she has to offer." -Creative Loafing Atlanta