Genre-leaping Improvisational Acumen From Club d’Elf

Listen to this article

Boston-based, Moroccan-dosed dub-jazz collective Club d’Elf celebrates the release of Live At Club Helsinki, an epic double album that showcases the band’s genre-leaping improvisational acumen, performing at one of its favorite venues for an ecstatic crowd.

Featuring keyboard wizard John Medeski (employing an arsenal of analog instruments including a vintage Mellotron) the music visits touchstones as disparate as Studio One, John Cage, Gnawa and drum’n’bass. The band’s association with Club Helsinki dates back to 2001, and a combination of superb sound, intimate environment and an audience tuned into the band’s every nuance helped create one of those magical nights. Live At Club Helsinki captures the excitement of two complete continuous sets of no-holds-barred improvisations and classic D’Elf tunes.

Informed as much by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s ideas of shifting reality and parallel universes as by Miles Davis & Fela Kuti, the band draws inspiration from many sources, including the avant comedy of Firesign Theater and Mr. Show. Guitars, turntables, Fender Rhodes, laptops, horns, tablas and all manner of exotic instruments flow in and out of the mix, along with guests including Marco Benevento, Billy Martin, Ryan Montbleau, DJ Logic, Mark Sandman (Morphine), Hassan Hakmoun, Marc Ribot and Skerik. The band is equally at home playing late-night festival sets for the rave/Burning Man crowd as it is for a predominately Arabic audience in traditional garb as boundaries melt away and all are drawn into the intoxicating power of the D’Elf groove.

The group’s bi-weekly residency at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA is the stuff of legend and provided a laboratory for its improvisational style to emerge and develop. Its latest studio CD, Electric Moroccoland/So Below, drew glowing reviews from PRI’s The World, Voice Of America, and Afropop Worldwide for its bold synthesis of Moroccan traditional music and electronic, dubbed-out funk, rising to #1 on the Relix chart. The band made its debut in South America this year, performing at Ecuador Jazz 2016.

Club d’Elf new CD, Live At Club Helsinki, will be released January 10, 2017 on Face Pelt Records. Catch them live at their bi-weekly residency at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge.