Balance Point Acoustics : Damon Smith

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Featured CD:

Firestorm is an intense and musically assaultive release of killer, balls-out free jazz that will appeal to those who long for the most bombasic works of Broetzmann, Ayler, Takayanagi and Cecil Taylor! This release reveals many shades of intensity and mood while remaining frenzied and inventive at all times. Featuring Taylor alumni Marco Eneidi (alto), Marc Edwards (drums), Lisle Ellis (bass), Elliott Levin (tenor), Sun Ra Arkestra legend Marshall Allen (alto), bassist Damon Smith and manic Austrian reedist Mario Rechtern, Firestorm is a delerious concoction of new energy music that pushes beyond the stratosphere of sound!

You can send a paypal for $15 pp to damon@balancepointacoustics.com If you would like one. Buy This CD

A few copies of "Healing Force" are available You can send a paypal for $15 pp to damon@balancepointacoustics.com If you would like one.

Vinny Golia-reeds
Aurora Josephson-voice
Henry Kaiser-guitar
Mike Keneally-piano, guitar and voice
Joe Morris-guitar and double bass
Damon Smith-double bass
Weasel Walter-drums

Seven major figures from the art-punk, free-jazz, brutal prog, improvisational and modern jazz world come together for a ROCKING tribute to the unfairly ignored, misunderstood and vilified late period works of Albert Ayler. These late period songs have always seemed to me like they may have been some of the most personally spritually resonant for Ayler, but the musicians and the culture of the late 1960s were possibly not able to successfully translate and perform his concept of spirituality, free jazz, boogaloo, nursery rhythms, marching bands, blues and r'n'b, and certainly the free-jazz following public was not ready to accept it. Now, 40 years and many stylistic mash-ups later, perhaps these works can be better enjoyed.

“Albert Ayler's later works (Love Cry, New Grass and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe) seem to be generally reviled. Through meditations, dreams, and visions, the players on this project were given the message to once again attempt to send the people of earth a message of love, peace, and spiritual understanding. We selected a representative set of tunes for this material and essentially let it play itself through us. We hope you will be as surprised as we still are by the results of this invocational experiment. We hope you will like this record.”
- Henry Kaiser, producer and guitarist Buy This CD

Limited copies of the "Noisy People" dvd are available here. It is a Film by Tim Perkis featuing Damon Smith and other Bay Area Musicians. Includes footage of Gratkowski/Bryerton/Smith and Wolfgang Fuchs' Six Fuchs Project. Buy This CD

Improvised music form Oakland and Tel Aviv from the Jerusalem based Kadima Label.
Aurora Josephson - voice
Ariel Shibolet - soprano saxophone
Jen Baker - trombone
Scott R. Looney - piano
Damon Smith - double bass Buy This CD

"Ghetto Caylpso" Peter Kowald/Marco Eneidi/Damon Smith/Spirit out now on NOTTWO records. Buy This CD

New from Nuscope Records: Biggi Vinkeloe, alto saxophone, flute; Damon Smith, double-bass; Kjell Nordeson, drums, vibraphone Buy This CD

Forthcoming CD's

BPA 013 "Pepper Spray" Ariel Shibolet/Jen Baker/Damon Smith/Jerome Bryerton

Bertram Turetzky/Damon Smith ThoughtBeetle

"Sperrgut + Cruxes"
Players: Birgit Ulher/Damon Smith/Martin Blume + Aurora Josephson / Joelle Leandre / Damon Smith / Martin Blume
Reviewed by: Richard Moule, Signal To Noise
Two examples of the restless, small gesture free improv U.K. style from Bay-area bassist Smith’s Balance Point Acoustics label. Smith and German drummer Blume are the constants here on this pair of discs which differ only slightly in sound, and are remarkably similar in approach, featuring sonic modulations, timbral explorations, spatial dynamics and jump cut exchanges.

It’s all for one and one for all on Sperrgut, but ultimately it is German trumpeter Ulher who stands out on this 2004 session of spirited cross hatches and pretzel-like lattices. Like her fellow European exponents of minimal brass and breath resonations, Axel Dorner and Franz Hautzinger, Ulher’s Bill Dixon-like morse code extended techniques of sputters, chortles, chirps, spurts, bleats and air generations dart and hover like a hummingbird pecking at a flower. Smith and Blume bob and weave, cutting and thrusting when there is an opening. Like Ulher, they aren’t interested in adhering to any conventions as they roam, rattle and stroke their instruments in focused bursts, never lingering too long in one place. Ulher has long been interested in painting, particularly abstract expressionism, and accordingly she gives the tracks canvas-like specifications, ie 6.30 X 1.60 X 3.25 m.

Jackson Pollock’s feverish slash and drip painting strategies would easily fit in just as easily here as they would on Cruxes, compiled of tracks from a studio session and live performance from 2004. Smith and Blume employ the same kind of rhythmic vocabulary as on Sperrgut, but the presence of blood curdling vocalist Josephson and French contrabassist Leandre beef up the improvisations and fill in the spaces laid bare on Sperrgut. The two women also bring an austere acidity to these knotted and tangled interactions. Leandre is known for her muscular astringency and she brings this power to these exciting dialogues, especially when she locks horns with Smith (who shows why he was more than capable of keeping up with the late Peter Kowald on their duet disc Mirrors—Broken But No Dust). On the closing 19-minute “Hodie Mihl, Cras Tibi!”, Leandre, Blume and Smith not only ebb and flow between meditative drones and pugilistic sparring, they also leave plenty of room for Josephson to showcase her demonic Diamonda Galas vocalese. Screw Norah Jones, Diana Krall and all the other retro divas. In a perfect world, Josephson would be the standard for female jazz vocalists. Then again her possessed moans and upper register, tonsil-stretching cries might scare off the chain store latte drinkers. Too bad. They could use a jolt and not just of caffeine.

Richard Moule, Signal to Noise