nyctaper Recordings

concert discussion and free flac downloads

Gretchen Lohse: February 26, 2014 Trans Pecos – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

May 14, 2014
By

IMG_6703
[photo by acidjack]

The first time I heard Gretchen Lohse‘s music I was literally left breathless. Her new album Primal Rumble is a minimalist folk record that highlights her beautiful voice and honest lyrics with no pretense or affectation. We invited Gretchen to perform at Trans Pecos based solely on hearing the record — its that good. And to our delight, she accepted and rounded out a terrific bill of powerful female performers. As expected, Gretchen’s set was short on any kind of bells and whistles and long on talent and emotion. We expect that she will reach wider audiences in the not too distant future, but for her first ever solo show in NYC, we can say we were there back then.

acidjack recorded this set in the same manner as the Larkin Grimm recording, with Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones in the ORTF wide-angle configuration at the stage lip, and a soundboard feed. Other than some volume adjustments that are evident during “Twisted Apples”, the sound quality is  outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “All Around the River”

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Gretchen Lohse
2014-02-26
Trans Pecos
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK5 (stage lip, ORTF)>KC5>PFA + Soundboard>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Twisted Apples
03 All Around the River
04 Ornament
05 Axes and Arrows
06 Two Travelers
07 Spider at the Gate
08 Role of Rabbits
09 Primal Rumble

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Gretchen Lohse, like her on Facebook, and buy her records on her bandcamp page.

Megafaun: May 2, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

May 13, 2014
By

megafaun-17
[photos by Amanda Hatfield]

This was one of those nights. Megafaun aren’t exactly breaking up, but because each member of the trio has an abundant amount of other projects pulling them in all directions, this show at Baby’s All Right had the feeling that it might be the band’s last in NYC, if not forever then for a very long time. The local musical who’s-who seemed to sense the historic nature of the occasion — either that or Megafaun has a lot of important friends. In the crowd was the author Jesse Jarnow, the writer Richard Gehr, Northern Spy Records founder Adam Downey, Sharon Van Etten and every member of her band. But the most notable celeb in attendance was on stage — former bandmate and recent Grammy winner Justin Vernon joined Megafaun for this seemingly final mini-tour. The band’s set was a bit ragged-but-right, as generally speaking most Megafaun sets we’ve seen have been. This is a band known almost as much for its pure spirit as its songwriting and performing. The setlist included pretty much all of the old favorites you’d want to hear, and one excellent cover that we’re streaming below. There will be plenty of opportunities to see the individual members of Megafaun with their various projects — Brad Cook is in Sharon’s current touring band — but this might have been the last proper Megafaun show. As as a send-off, though, it was a pretty sweet show.

This set was recorded by Baby’s FOH Devin Foley with the venue’s installed multitrack system. All I did was mix it down. There was one wrinkle though, as the encore song was played off mic in the middle of the floor. For that song, I only used the two mounted room mics. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Boomer’s Story” (Ry Cooder cover):

This Recording is now Available to Download in FLAC and MP3 and to Stream the Entire Show at Archive.org [HERE].

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Megafaun
2014-05-02
Babys All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Soundboard Multitrack Recording

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Devin Foley) > 19 individual 24bit 48kHz wav files > Sonar LE (mixdown) > Soundforge (level adjustments, setfades, patch encore) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:01:40]
01 Resurrection
02 Volunteers
03 The Fade
04 [Vern intro]
05 Second Friend
06 You Are The Light
07 Boomers Story [Ry Cooder]
08 [banter – vintage gear]
09 Carolina Days
10 The Robe
11 [banter – friends]
12 Real Slow
13 [banter – Grandma Sparrow]
14 Kaufman’s Ballad
15 [encore break]
16 Worried Man

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Megafaun, visit their website, and purchase their official releases including their latest album Megafaun from Hometapes Records [HERE].

Mogwai: May 9, 2014 Terminal 5 – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Full Set

May 12, 2014
By


mogwai-9
[Photos by P Squared Photography]

Some bands seem born for big stages, fueled by theatrics and spectacle. I first saw Glasgow’s Mogwai opening for Pavement in 1997. Back then, drunks in the audience made stupid jokes about kilts and wondered aloud why their songs didn’t have any words. Their music had grand sweep — that much was obvious — but their style was still something foreign, hard to imagine outstretching those humble confines, no matter how good it was. Today, this music has become the stuff of soundtracks, more familiar. The difference in Mogwai and many acts that followed is that they not only helped start the trend, but their output defined it. Mogwai have never been simple shillers of the soft-loud dynamic, not even since their early work on Young Team. The band on stage on this night, playing material from their latest release Rave Tapes, has grown in the 14 years since that first show I saw. First through remix albums, and later in their main body of work, the band kept with the times, incorporating a greater degree of electronica and kraut rock into their repertoire. Rave Tapes is the furthest they have taken that aesthetic, with an exclamation point put on that choice by their choice of opening act, the Pittsburgh-based electronic composer Majeure. What hasn’t changed since the beginning is the band’s kindness to their fans, and the quality and depth of their work. Mogwai, like the sci-fi creature for which they’re named, are an ever-evolving, fearsome beast.

As with some of the West Coast and European shows we’ve seen popping up on the Internet, this set surveyed the band’s entire career right from the get-go, from the one-two punch of the Rave Tapes song “Heard About You Last Night” followed by “Friend of the Night” from Mr. Beast and Rock Action‘s “Friend of the Night”, then all the way back to the Ten Rapid days for tour favorite “Ithica 27/9”. New York has always held a special place in the band’s collective heart, with the band’s three-night stand at the intimate Music Hall of Williamsburg having served as the site for the band’s live album, Special Moves (two of which shows we recorded). Despite the big light show and the distance between us, this still felt like one of those intimate nights in the many smaller venues they’ve played on the way here. Their beautiful noise closed the distance.

Together with hi and lo and Johnny Fried Chicken Boy, I recorded this set from our usual spot in the venue, with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones pointed at the stacks, placed on an extension pole almost directly over Mogwai’s engineer’s head. What you’re hearing on this recording is almost exactly what he heard. Enjoy!

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive.  You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the entire show:

mogwai-25

Mogwai
2014-05-09
Terminal 5
New York, NY USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com and archive.org
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41 (At SBD, DFC, PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2>Sony PCM-D50>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (fades, light compression), Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:29:24]
01 Heard About You Last Night
02 Friend of the Night
03 Take Me Somewhere Nice [w/ Luke Sutherland]
04 Ithica 27/9
05 Mastercard
06 Ex-Cowboy
07 Rano Pano
08 Auto Rock
09 How to Be a Werewolf
10 Deesh
11 Re Murdered
12 We’re No Here
13 [encore break]
14 Hunted by a Freak
15 Mogwai Fear Satan
16 Batcat

If you enjoyed this recording, please support Mogwai, visit their website, and buy Rave Tapes directly from Sub Pop.

mogwai-3

NYMPH: March 14, 2014 Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing SXSW Showcase, Palm Door (Austin, TX) – FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming

May 8, 2014
By

IMG_6909
[Photo by acidjack]

Brooklyn’s NYMPH took things to another level of the eclectic at the standout Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing SXSW Showcase this past March. Like many of the other acts on this night’s bill, the seven-piece is exuberantly unconventional, drawing inspiration from psychedelic rock, free jazz, kraut, and damaged blues. This three-song, thirty-two minute set included the title track from the band’s first Northern Spy release, New Millennium Prayer, which should be on any fan of experimental/out music’s list of 2014 releases to own. With each composition stretching past the seven-minute mark, every song became a chance for the band to explore, and those of us in the audience to rage on the floor in return. As the band’s Facebook page promises, “Witnessing NYMPH at peak power is akin to witnessing ritual.” Having seen what I saw this night, I’d say I agree.

I recorded this set in the same manner as my other recordings this night, with Schoeps MK4V microphones in the optimum position hanging over the crowd and a soundboard feed. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream the full set and download individual tracks

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct download links or the files on other sites without our permission. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud link. Please respect our request.

NYMPH
2014-03-14
Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing SXSW Showcase
Palm Door
Austin, TX USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard + Schoeps MK4V (FOB/DFC)>KC5>PFA>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (adjust image, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Nuclear Allah (Atomic God, Particle Fusion Buddha)
02 Thiyo
03 New Millennium Prayer

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT NYMPH, like them on Facebook, and buy New Millennium Prayer from Northern Spy.

Whiskey Bitches: April 8, 2014 Death By Audio – Flac/MP3/Streaming

May 3, 2014
By

WB DBA Krenmayer
[photo by Nick Krenmayer]

Whiskey Bitches are a band with a ton of potential who get better every time I see them. At Death By Audio last month the band’s energy and enthusiasm were as strong as ever, but it was the integration of new-ish drummer Eli Lopez into the mix that really shined on this night. His aggressive sense of rhythm fits well with the Bitches musical style and he locked in the beat propelling forward a strong set. The band is currently mixing down an EP for near-future release and the setlist saw those tracks, the two songs from their debut EP, and two news ones in a half-hour set that ended far too quickly. Whiskey Bitches play again on Tuesday at Cameo Gallery in a show presented by NYCTaper.

Acidjack and I recorded this set in the same manner as the Crazy Pills set from this show and the sound quality is equally excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Cookies”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Whiskey Bitches
2014-04-08
Death By Audio
Brooklyn NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Upfront Audience

Soundboard + Naiant Omnis > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 31:32]
01 Bedpost
02 Always
03 Disaster
04 Island
05 White Knight
06 [banter]
07 Blackout
08 Cookies
09 Love Lived Here
10 Funemployed
11 Money Gone Drinking

If you download this recording from NYCTaper we expect that you’ll please support Whiskey Bitches, like them on Facebook  and purchase their EP from their Bandcamp page [HERE].

Acid Mothers Temple: April 23, 2014 Mercury Lounge – FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming

May 2, 2014
By

IMG_7231
[photos by acidjack]

Acid Mothers Temple have achieved the cult status they have for good reason — their shows are always deliciously familiar, yet never the same twice. You always know you’ll hear some version of “Pink Lady Lemonade”, however it may be broken up into parts. That familiar riff always feels like an anchor in the midst of a set that’s usually a deep, spiritual, psychedelic dive, where you’re never sure the band is entirely aware of where they’re going to take you before they do. The Acid Mothers kicked off their latest U.S. tour at Mercury Lounge, a familiar haunt packed to the gills with everyone from longtime devotees tripping balls to dumbstruck yuppies wondering what they had wandered into. Their latest record, In Search of Lost Divine Ark, adds another notch of sonic triumph to their belt, and the title track from the record closed out this set in exactly the way you’d hope.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed provided by longtime Mercury engineer Kevin Mazzarelli, together with Schoeps MK41 microphones. The recording emphasizes the board feed to cut out the chatter of the annoying couple chatting under my mics, who are pretty much invisible in the recording. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

If you can assist with the two missing song titles, please let us know. Acid Mothers Temple will be back in NYC on May 28 at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. Get tickets here.

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive.  You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full set:

IMG_7217

Acid Mothers Temple
2014-04-23
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA

“Astrorgasm From the Inner Temple Tour”

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Kevin Mazzarelli)+Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (adjust levels, align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (light EQ and effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:24:41]
01 Kawabata’s Last Nocturne
02 [unknown1]
03 Jam>Pink Lady Lemonade>
04 [unknown2]
05 Pink Lady Lemonade
06 Cometary Orbital Drive
07 [encore break]
08 In Search of Lost Divine Ark

If you enjoyed this recording, please support Acid Mothers Temple, visit their website, and buy their records, including In Search of Lost Divine Ark from there or at your favorite retailer.

IMG_7226

 

New Bums: March 23, 2014 Baby’s All Right – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

April 29, 2014
By


large_newbums
[Promotional photo from Drag City website]

New Bums represents a new singer-songwriter oriented project from Ben “Six Organs of Admittance” Chasny and Donovan Quinn of Skygreen Leopards. The duo, touring their Drag City release Voices In A Rented Room, shared songs from that intimate, Americana-tinged song cycle with us at Baby’s All Right a few weeks ago to a fervent crowd of admirers. Anyone familiar with these players knows to expect nothing less than excellence, and that’s very much what they delivered. These low-key compositions don’t aspire to the same kind of nirvana as Chasny and Quinn’s more experimental main projects, but they’re nonetheless satisfying, especially as the pair’s voices and playing styles complement each other. The Baby’s space — intimate but not shabby — proved the perfect place to hear these songs live. Now head back to your bedroom or another quiet place and put on the headphones. You’ll see what I mean.

This set was recorded by Devin Foley 0n the house digital multitrack recorder, which I mixed down and edited. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Welcome To the Navy”

Download the complete show: [MP3]  | [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

New Bums
2014-03-23
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Digital multitrack 24bit/48kHz WAV files (engineer: Devin Foley)>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, adjustments, fades, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 The Killers and Me (fades in)
02 Pigeon Town
03 Welcome to the Navy
04 Sometimes You Crash
05 It’s the Way
06 Town on the Water
07 Your Bullshit
08 Shadow on the Stone [Donovan Quinn]
09 Cool Daughter
10 Words for Two
11 Burned

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT New Bums, visit their website, and purchase Voices In A Rented Room from Drag City.

Jon Langford: April 4, 2014 Bell House – Flac/MP3/Streaming

April 28, 2014
By

Langford

neild reports:

Jon Langford is a man of many bands. In addition to his long tenure as a founding member of the Mekons, the Three Johns, and the Waco Brothers, he’s had a busy solo career since his first album under his own name, 1998’s Skull Orchard, which was recorded with the aid of fellow Wacos Steve Goulding, Alan Doughty, and Mark Durante. He’s since performed regularly with his New York-based band the Ship & Pilot, consisting of Goulding, Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone, and violinist Jean Cook.

This show was part of a mini-tour in support of Langford’s new album Here Be Monsters, recorded as Jon Langford and the Skull Orchard, this time consisting of Cook, Doughty, vocalist Tawny Newsome, Zincs guitarist Jim Elkington, and part-time Wacos drummer Joe Caramillo. (For good measure, the album also includes reproductions of paintings that Langford did for each song; his day job is as a fine artist, painting mostly music-related works, prints of many of which are for sale at the merch table at his shows.) The band that showed up at Bell House, though, was yet another iteration: Langford, Cook (filling in more than capably on Newsome’s backing vocals), Camarillo, Meat Purveyors guitarist Bill Anderson, and occasional Langford touring bassist Ryan Hembrey.

Any Jon Langford show, regardless, is first and foremost a Jon Langford show: hard-rocking, political, as likely to drop a reference to Joe Strummer’s time spent as a grave digger in Wales as to take time out for a terrible joke. (This is a man who once worked the line “Zen buddhist hot dog man/Make me one with everything” into a Mekons song.) The hour-and-a-half set included a mix of songs from Here Be Monsters (including the standout “Drone Operator,” featured in a haunting new video with Moroccan filmmaker Hassan Amejal), his previous solo release Old Devils, Skull Orchard, and a handful of other tracks, culminating in the Mekons anthem “Memphis, Egypt,” for which Goulding emerged from the audience to play drums and Camarillo strapped on a guitar, which he later described as “the most fun I’ve ever had standing up.”

This was recorded with a mix of the Bell House soundboard feed and Church Audio CA-14 cardioid mics mounted on the wall behind the board. Enjoy!

Stream the Complete Show:

This Recording is Available to Download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE]

Jon Langford
2014-04-04
Bell House
Brooklyn, NY

Source: SBD > iRiver H320 + AUD > CA-14 cardioids > MM-EBM-1 battery box (bass rolloff off) > iRiver H320
Transfer: iRiver H320 > WAV > SoundStudio > FLAC
Recorded by neil d

01. intro
02. Summerstars
03. Drone Operator
04. Mars
05. 1234ever
06. Haunted
07. Tubby Brothers
08. Pill Sailor
09. Sugar On Your Tongue
10. Little Ray of Light
11. What Did You Do In The War?
12. Streets of Your Town (Go-Betweens)
13. I Am The Law
14. Are You An Entertainer?
15. X-Ray Style (Joe Strummer)
16. Deep Sea Diver
17. Sentimental Marching Song
18. Homburg
19. Luxury
20. Getting Used to Uselessness
21. Memphis, Egypt

If you download this recording, please support Jon Langford. You can buy Here Be Monsters at jonlangford.de, and the rest of his many, many albums scattered across the Internet, though Bloodshot Records’ Langford page isn’t a bad place to start.

The Coathangers: April 17, 2014 Baby’s All Right – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Full Set

April 24, 2014
By

IMG_7185
[photos by acidjack. they’re not very good, but the recording is]

The Atlanta all-female punk threesome The Coathangers go for the jugular, but they go for it with a smile. Since their last record, 2011’s Larceny and Old Lace, they no longer have a keyboard player (Candice Jones aka Bebe Coathanger), but stripping down has served them well. The raw ferocity of the remaining members — Minnie Coathanger (Meredith Franco), Crook Kid Coathanger (Julia Kugel) and Rusty Coathanger (Julia Luke) — is more than enough to fill a stage and dominate a forty-five minute set.

This show at Baby’s All Right gave us a look at the material from their 2014 release, Suck My Shirt, and if these songs are any indication, they’re more than fine without the keyboards. The ladies in this band share vocal duties producing an enticing mix of babydoll sweetness and punk snarl. The band’s other most notable component is their shared sense of humor, which can run to dark places, starting with the band name (a reference to the bad old days of abortion).

Throughout the set, the band offered ample doses of self-effacing humor to go with their reckless, infectious songs. When we last saw them, Larceny and Old Lace had just hit the shelves, and they gave new life to several of those now-keyboardless songs like the burner of a set opener, “Johnny” and melodic, somewhat slower-paced “Trailer Park Boneyard”, which was one of my favorites. The new Suck My Shirt material really shone, from the blistering “Adderall” and “Springfield Cannonball” to the rough and raucous “Smother”. The night’s closer, “Don’t Touch My Shit”, was perhaps the perfect example of how punk can grow up without getting lame. The band brought the eight-year old daughter of a friend of the band a young girl who is (one of the band members’ relatives/daughter? If you know… feel free to let me know in the comments) in on guest vocals. We were warned that she’d be saying some bad words, and she did. Best to get them started off early if you want ’em to turn out right!

This recording is a digital multitrack recording and the sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream the entire set and download individual tracks (full set downloads below):

Download the complete show: [MP3]  | [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

IMG_7212

The Coathangers
2014-04-17
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Devin Foley and acidjack
Produced by acidjack

Multichannel digital multitrack 24bit/48kHz files>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (compression, alignment, mixdown, fades)>Izotope Ozone 5.5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 44:14]
01 [intro]
02 Johnny
03 Smother
04 Follow Me
05 Trailer Park Boneyard
06 Sicker
07 Springfield Cannonball
08 Call To Nothing
09 Arthritis Sux
10 Adderall
11 Hurricane
12 Derek’s Song
13 Sex Beat [The Gun Club]
14 Shut Up
15 Cheap
16 [banter]
17 Don’t Touch My Shit

If you enjoyed this recording, please support The Coathangers, visit their website and buy their records from Suicide Squeeze Records.

Ryan Sawyer and Darius Jones: April 16, 2014 Union Pool – FLAC/MP3/Streaming Full Set

April 24, 2014
By

IMG_7153
[photo by acidjack]

We are very honored and excited to present our second experimental jazz recording for the site, the duo of Ryan Sawyer and Darius Jones opening for William Tyler at Union Pool. To quote my friend John Cook, a man much better educated on the scene than me, “both [Jones and Sawyer] are relentlessly experimental and quite diverse, leaving almost no stylistic or contextual stone unturned.” Indeed, these two have a recorded output and music history as diverse as the very bill they found themselves on this night.

Sawyer has played drums and otherwise collaborated across a range of genres, for artists as diverse as Boredoms, TV On the Radio, Rhys Chatham, Kid Millions, Gang Gang Dance, and Mekons, with current projects including Lonewolf & Cub and Oso Blanco, where he’s joined by local experimentalists C. Spencer Yeh, Colin Stetson and Nate Wooley).

Alto saxophonist Jones is an accomplished improviser who has joined projects ranging from the traditional to the wildly experimental. He participates in Gerald Cleaver’s Black Host, which released a record on Northern Spy in 2013, and found Jones veering ever-so-slightly toward a rock vibe. He has also released a series of three albums on the Aum Fidelity label that explore many sides of the jazz spectrum. As a player of the alto sax, Jones is able to wreak an almost unparalleled intensity from the instrument, as was in evidence at this short-but-powerful all-improvisational performance. 

Jones and Sawyer collaborate periodically in addition to their other projects, making this set a welcome surprise. Clearly more than a few fans were in the know, as the club filled up the second the doors opened for this performance. What you will hear on this recording are three separate untitled improvisations that provide a good introduction to both players’ style. Though the pieces are abstract, Jones and Sawyer manage to establish a natural sense of flow and drive to them, suggesting that this is a pairing worth further repetition. We hope to continue featuring more performances of this kind in the future.

This set was recorded with an excellent stereo soundboard feed by Robert, the Union Pool engineer, together with Schoeps MK41 microphones. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream the full show and download individual tracks:

Download the complete show: [MP3]  | [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Ryan Sawyer and Darius Jones
2014-04-16
Union Pool
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Robert)+Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA>>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (compression, noise reduction, align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [all songs are untitled]
01
02
03

Please support the work of Ryan Sawyer and Darius Jones — visit them on the web (Ryan is here, Darius is here), buy their music (Darius’ albums can be bought here; Ryan’s solo effort One Day Your Heart Will Be Your Skin, is coming soon), and watch for their upcoming shows.

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nyctaper.com is a live music blog that offers a new paradigm of music distribution on the web. The recordings are offered for free on this site as are the music posts, reviews and links to artist sites. All recordings are posted with artist permission or artists with an existing pro-taping policy.

All recordings and original content posted on this site are @nyctaper.com as live recordings pursuant to 17 U.S.C. Section 106, et. seq. Redistribution of nyctaper recordings without consent of nyctaper.com is strictly prohibited.

nyctaper.com hereby waives all copyright claims to any and all recordings posted on this site to THE PERFORMERS ONLY. If any artist posted on this site requests that recordings be removed, those recordings will be removed forthwith.