Billy Rogan is a well-versed guitarist known mostly for his instrumental acoustic work whose influences include the styles and techniques of similar prominent guitarists such as Michael Hedges, Leo Kottke, Keller Williams and Kaki King. His shifting rhythms and melodies reflect a soulful and fiery connection conjured out through his battle hardened guitar in an all encompassing execution of dramatic finger style tap guitar and other aggressive hand techniques described by Grammy nominated Americana forefather and Fender Telecaster, guitar god, Bill Kirchen as “Fearsome.”
It’s a weathered, twangy upright piano straining the old barn floorboards beneath it, stoic and waiting for the next soulful awakening. It’s the steel rails that restrain the power of an electrifying guitar like a freight train cutting across the vast and varied countryside. It is an homage to old America: sophisticated, meticulously crafted, and tough as shit. It’s an energetic fever pitch, channeled into the razor-sharp focus and discerning taste of a connoisseur.
J.K. Vanderbilt is a true son of the Hudson Valley with his feet firmly planted on both sides of the tracks. You may find him professionally preparing drinks or lovingly making food as Josh Rosenmeier. Share a meal with him and be prepared to feast into the early morning. A wild spirit of electricity splitting at the seams, unharnessed yet still refined, he doesn’t write songs because he wants to. He does it because he has to.
For more than a decade pianist Marco Benevento has been amassing an extensive body of work. His studio albums and live performances set forth a vision that connects the dots in the vast space between LCD Soundsystem and Leon Russell, pulsating with dance rock energy, but with smart, earthy songwriting to match. It has led to numerous high profile appearances, ranging from Carnegie Hall to Pickathon, Mountain Jam to Treefort Festival, while headlining shows coast to coast.
Marco Benevento’s latest studio LP, ‘The Story of Fred Short,’ and its companion live release, ‘The Woodstock Sessions,’ is some of his finest and most adventurous work to date—a maestro making “bold indie rock” says Brooklyn Vegan, while the LA Times raves, “Benevento continues to straighten his twisted sound into the guise of an indie-rock singer-songwriter, harnessing his inventive sonic palette into rewardingly bite-size pop songs that touch on disco and soul.” Honing his psych rock and late night dance party sensibilities, the recordings find the pianist citing everything from Harry Nilsson, Manu Chau and Gorillaz as inspiration.
As anybody who’s seen Marco Benevento perform can attest, with eyes closed, smile wide across his face and fingers free-flowing across the keys, he’s a satellite to the muse. With a devout and growing fan-base, Benevento is an artist whose story is only beginning to unfold.
Brooklyn-based electronic indie band Balún self-identify as transnational. The quartet that broke out of the San Juan indie scene a decade ago has since undergone a formational odyssey through the industry, academia, and the stateside Puerto Rican experience. Balún’s long awaited sophomore album Prisma Tropical focuses an incredibly wide field of genres and influences into a revelatory sound that evokes both of the band’s homes and the distance between them. Heavy doses of tiple, bomba barrel drum, and dembow work alongside loops and layers of shimmering synths to accomplish something explicitly of the island, yet fluent in the language of global pop. Tied together around the magical realism of singer Angélica Negrón’s lyrics, Balún’s deep understanding of reggaeton’s Jamaican dancehall roots has transformed their shoegaze pop into “dreambow.” Balún’s new single El Espanto premiered on NPR’s Songs We Love and is the latest preview of Prisma Tropical, which is one of Noisey’s Most Anticipated Hispano-American Albums of 2018. La Nueva Ciudad, their previous single and one of Remezcla’s 10 Best Songs of 2016, was Spotify Latino’s Song of the Day and broke into the Viral Charts globally and in 8 countries including Spain, Mexico, Chile, & Argentina.
Kulton The Maker is a Singer Songwriter, Filmmaker, Audio engineer and a Brooklyn Native. The Maker is the founder of 518Films #Five18Films and has created videos for artists Such as “Young Paris” “Lady Moon & the Eclipse” and Mounanou Badila. Kulton is an Artist who has performed in Some of New Yorks most exclusive venues, and has been recently featured on @EpmMedia. Kulton’s music is sure to continue to inspire, Empower, and Entertain listeners for decades to Come.
Driftwood Soldier plays gutter-folk music, a proprietary blend of bitter ballads, fallen gospel, and thumping blue rants on mandolin, bass guitar, and assorted junk foot-percussion.
It was 2013 when bassist Bobby Szafranski first lent his velvet touch to the back-handed poetry and full-throated ruckus of mandolin-wrestler Owen Lyman-Schmidt’s solo work. Since then the duo has been leapfrogging their way up and down the East coast bringing their unlikely sound to bars, living rooms, roof tops, and back alleys.
Scavenger’s Joy, Driftwood Soldier’s 2015 debut, established that musical range for audiences everywhere, with two thirds of the songs receiving radio play on dozens of radio stations around the country including WFUV, WNCW, and WXPN, where Bruce Warren called the duo “a bluesy version of Nick Cave with a nod to Tom Waits.”
In early 2017, they followed the breadth of Scavenger’s Joy with the focused intensity of Blessings & Blasphemy, a concept EP exploring the tension between spirituality and dogma by reinterpreting gospel traditionals alongside anti-religious originals.
This fall, Driftwood Soldier is bringing both records and their liver-shaking live show to some of their favorite spots up and down the East coast. Don’t miss the chance to hear this new beast howl!
MORRICONE YOUTH was formed in NYC in 1999 with a mission statement to compose, re-interpret, perform and record “music written for the moving image.” The band has released eight LPs/EPs, toured the U.S. and had residencies at NY’s Knitting Factory, CBGB, Tonic and Nitehawk Cinema in addition to composing original re-scores to Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” performed on Halloween 2013 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a multi-media piece for Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 2012 Marcel Duchamp exhibit involving chess masters, chance music, French soundtracks and live improvised video projections. MassMoCA invited the band to perform its score to Mad Max at their annual outdoor live score event in 2017. The Sydney Festival chose the band to headline two nights at Carriageworks live scoring “Night of the Living” and “Mad Max” (with 1979 cast members in attendance on Australia Day 2018). The band was supported Italian soundtrack/prog legends Goblin’s 2017 North American tour performing highlights from the ongoing live re-score vinyl series (distributed by Light in the Attic Records) of the anticipated 15 live re-scores performed in recent years. The first four (“NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD,” “THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED,” “MAD MAX” and Murnau’s “SUNRISE”) were released within the past two years with the fifth for “DANGER: DIABOLIK” due September 2018 and the sixth for “THE LODGER” in October 2018.
Founder Devon E. Levins also hosts weekly “film soundtrack” radio show MORRICONE ISLAND on WFMU 91.1 FM, started in 2007 at East Village Radio as MORRICONE YOUTH.
It’s not always easy being a chameleon. But it certainly makes for an interesting life. And, in the case of Mark Marshall, interesting music as well. Mark writes, sings, plays guitar, keys, bass, drums, and is also a web and print media designer/producer – and voiceover artist.
And like the other areas of Mark’s life, the music he makes is chameleon-like: wildly diverse, meticulously crafted songs that range from radio-ready pop to hard rock, piano-driven ballads to soundtrack-ish instrumentals, futuristic funk-jazz to clubby techno dance.
The Bottoms Up Dixieland Jazz Band made their ad hoc debut with a Fat Tuesday celebration in Carmel, NY. The band was a hit! The six former classmates hit it off like old times, and decided they had better keep a good thing going. Since that day, Bottoms Up has been bringing to life the energetic romps of 1920s New Orleans, á la Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory.
Featuring some fun modern twists and the occasional special guest, the band is happy to keep people singing, clapping, and dancing as long as they’re able
Willy Mason has been chasing his songs around the world since 2004, when a song he recorded at a friends house in high school was picked up and played regularly on Radio One in the UK while he was still burning discs at home in the US. Since then he has played stadiums and backyards around the world with all manner of accompaniments and collaborations, including a 300 piece choir, saw and trumpet, MIDI powered robot percussionist, swarmatron, and with a wide range of popular and working bands. All this touring as well as his work teaching and playing in the lively dance band bar scene at home has honed him into as much of a musician and singer as a songwriter, his first recognized talent. He is currently at work on a 4th album which is likely to exhibit a range of influences not yet captured on his earlier recordings; including the Mills Brothers, Steve Reich, and Snooks Eaglin.
The Pandemorium is a loose collection of collaborators in the arts and sciences creating environments of collective joy and illumination.
