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Relix Magazine
-Jeremy Goodwin
Relix Magazine
6/01/02
Creekside Jamboree (Forksville, PA)
A little after two AM—over two hours after main stage headliner Lake Trout called it a night-Club D’Elf began methodically shredding the late night tent at the Creekside Jamboree into tiny pieces.
This Boston ensemble features a handful of core members, augmented by an extensive roster of rotating guests. The edition that bandleader Mike Rivard assembled for this gig included Mister Rourke, fresh from a stint as Soulive’s touring turntablist, and Miracle Orchestra guitarist Geoff Scott. The quintet was rounded out by the brilliant Alain Mallet on keyboards-recently back in the States after some European gigs with Paul Simon---and drummer Eric Kerr, who works his small kit with an unassuming intensity.
Rivard’s mantra-like themes on electric and acoustic basses form the clear foundation of the D’Elf sound, but an egalitarian interplay was exhibited between each musician, as one voice would occasionally bubble to the top briefly before yielding to another.
The show roared open with signature tune, “Left Hand of Clyde”, featuring a procession of funky themes and furious scratching by Rourke. Material like “Jungle Adagio” later in the set offered a darker stew of drum and bass beats, spiced with Scott’s passionate outbursts. When this song dropped into the Moroccan-flavored “Mogador”, the crowd tasted another key element in the fusion of genres and cultures at the heart of the Club D’Elf project.
The band finally quit at 5:40am, leaving the still-juiced festivarians in attendance to stumble out happily into the ethereal dawn light, as fog drifted down from the nearby mountain tops and the soft swish of a nearby creek provide ambient accompaniment.
A jamboree indeed. – Jeremy D. Goodwin
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Jambands.com
-David Weston (from the Urban Spacemen)
If you are ever in Boston, go to the Lizard Lounge, Thursday nights, Club D'elf, not so much of a band but fluid experimentation, its the brain child of the bass player and along with the regular drummer and percussionist they lay down some amazing grooves that guest soloists add to. You never know what you are going to get but I have never been disappointed. Every time I make it over to MA I try and catch them. Lizard Lounge itself is also exactly the type of venue I would like to see in the UK, funky little dive with some great beer (Anchor Steam!) and an open policy to the entertainment on offer.
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MyRootDown.com
-Shawn Dos Santos
MyRootDown.com
2002-2003
An Interview with Mike Rivard
Pt 1 (see original text here):
MIKE RIVARD
PART 1 OF 3
Mike Rivard is the driving force behind some of the best music that you may have never heard of. He assembled his group Club d'Elf as a forum for live dub-trance-groove excursions, incorporating electronica, hip hop, funk, and free jazz as well as Moroccan and West African trance traditions.
If that description sounds tough to categorize, well maybe that's because it is. But who needs boundaries anyways. Mike Rivard is carving out his own voice, something daring and innovative but warm enough to seem vaguely familiar.
I got a chance to sit down and have a couple slices of pizza with Mike at Crazy Dough's on Boylston. We talked about his time in Boston, musical influences and old friends.
Hello Mike, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to share some pizza and to answer a few questions.
Sure, my pleasure. Mike Rivard at your service.
Q: Mike, could you please tell us a little about your history as a musician.
A: I first started playing guitar when I was about eleven or so. I found myself in a typical situation where you join a band and there are three guitar players and a drummer... no bass player. The school I was going to had an old Gibson SG bass and a Kustom amp, one of those roll top models. So I would take that home on the weekends and practice and started playing in stage band. And when ever there would be a concert band piece that would have electric bass, like a Christmas type thing or a Pink Panther medley, I'd get it out for that. I just started to play the bass more and the guitar less. I started focusing on that instrument more in the music that I was listening to and noticed that it was the bass that really kind of directed things. It was really the focus. It's not always necessarily the most flashy thing but it really guides the music harmonically and rhythmically. I was attracted to players that were kind of adventurous on the instrument like, at that time I was listening to the Grateful Dead with Phil Lesh and Jack Cassady with Jefferson Airplane. So the bass seemed like a good instrument. I think that over all if you want to get gigs, it's a better instrument to play then the guitar. I was playing the saxophone at that time too, but that kind of fell by the way side.
Then when I came out to Berklee, after a couple years here I started to play the double bass. Since then I have just continued playing both double bass and electric bass. I recently started playing the sintir, a Moroccan lute used in Gnawa music.
When I came out to Berklee I got involved in playing with Russ Gershon, the leader of the Either/Orchestra, he was in a class of mine. A survey of Mingus class, like the different periods of Mingus' music. For my final project I transcribed some Mingus solos and brought my bass into class and played them. Russ had just started this band, they had done a gig or two but their bassist had just left town so he asked me to play with them. That is how I got started playing in the local scene, with Either/Orchestra. Mark Sandman, Russ Gershon and Tom Halter were also playing in a group called the Hypnosonics, which I later became a member of. John Medeski was in the Either/Orchestra at that time and a lot of other great musicians came through the band too. So that is really how I became involved in the local scene.
One of the other bands that I played with early on that kind of led to a lot of other situations was The Story. It was a folk duo with Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball. I was part of the backing band that they put together. They would normally tour as a duo, but we would play with them on record and do the occasional gig as well as the occasional tour with them. Through that band I met a bunch of people like Duke Levine and Alain Mallet, who was producing the records at that time. That band led to a lot of work in that scene, so I've done a lot of playing in the folk and folk-rock world. I think The Story was a really popular group for a lot of musicians. People are always talking about "Angel In The House" and different Story albums that they really like. I started getting calls to play with people like Patti Larkin, Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin and different folk. At the same time I was also playing with a group called Natraj that I am still a member of. Natraj does a lot of North Indian classical and West African music as well as jazz. And then the Hypnosonics, the group with Mark, I joined that band around '87 or '88 and played with them up until the time of his death. And I also played with Mighty Sam McClain's group in the early '90s. I was really fortunate to play in a lot of different situations. I didn't pigeon hole myself. Although people in those scenes might only know me as the folk rock player or the Indian jazz bass player, the dub bass player or whatever. Playing the bass has afforded me the opportunity to check out many different types of music.
People are always looking for bass players. Even if you don't know a particular style that well, you can still sometimes get the gig and get exposed to a different kind of music. So, on any given night I would be playing with a singer/song writer or doing something extremely avant garde... like I was in a band back around that time that Mat Maneri led called House of Brown. He was also playing in Natraj. House of Brown was really ahead of it's time. He was working with a lot of samples and micro-tonal music, just a really dark ambient, kind of funk music.
Q: Around what time was that?
A: It was in the early 90's, around '92. Yeah, around there. That band was only around for a couple of years. We only did a few gigs. We rehearsed a lot, but we didn't really play out a lot. It was kind of a secret band, just like the Hypnosonics. Mark would often joke when we would play that nobody should ever say that they saw us because he wanted to keep it a secret band. A few of the songs predated Morphine but it was always the unrecorded group. He would often try out material that would later be recorded with Morphine. We played at the Knitting Factory once around 1997. That is how I met Dave Tronzo, who has recently started playing with Club d'Elf. He played for a group called Spanish Fly [a defunct trio which included Steven Bernstein and Marcus Rojas] that was playing the same bill. But other then that gig in New York the Hypnosonics were just a local phenomenon. We would do gigs here whenever everyone was around. It was entirely just a bunch of friends playing. That is how I got to know Mark.
Q: How do you think these experiences have influenced you as a musician and as a performer?
A: Playing with all those different bands gave me a really valuable experience in playing different styles of music and not limiting myself. I can do an R&B cover, I can do a rock thing, I can play in a funk band. I understand the musical tenants of those styles and can operate within those areas. I think it is really important as a musician to be broadly grounded like that. To have that kind of experience, especially when you play with a master musician; someone like Mighty Sam [McClain] - people who are at the top of their game. I paid close attention to what they were doing. Mark [Sandman] was a big influence on me. I would have to say that he is one of the 3 main influences on my playing. He was always giving me shit about filling too much or playing too busy. He was very into
minimalism. I mean obviously, he took the strings off of his bass. The guy played a two string bass. And I would kind of wrestle with that. "Well, Bootsy [Collins] did this and that." And he was like, "No just play less, don't fill". I think that is the kind of wisdom that comes as you get older. When you are younger you have more to prove and you tend to play more. As the years have gone by I have realized the sageness of his advice. Rather then filling, when the music gets to a certain point where the tendency is to play more and fill, if everybody is doing that it gets very thick and cloudy and the groove suffers. If rather then filling, you remain silent you create a hole for another instrument. That's a hipper route to take, or at least that's what I'm attracted to. So, playing with Mark and the Hypnosonics was really good for me, as well as getting to work with Morphine in the studio playing double bass on some of their recordings.
Also, I learned a lot from Russ [Gershon] about leading a band and taking them on the road and working with the musicians and rehearsing. I think Russ was kind of a mentor to all of us back then. I respect him a lot.
Q: It seems like you received more practical experience from the road rather then from music school. Would that be a correct statement?
A: Yeah, well I think that is generally what happens. You learn a certain aspect of music in school but that is not the whole story. Certainly not the whole picture. You learn pretty quickly that there is much more to it. A lot of it is just about life and how you take the language you learn and how you develop stories and meaningful statements out of it. There is far more then running through scales or playing your favorite licks as fast as you can. There is nothing more pathetic then somebody who comes right out of school and is just running all over the instrument and not listening.
As far as school is concerned you've got to go through a picking and choosing period where you decide, "this is going to work for this type of situation, this is not going to work". And just because there is a thought in your head or an idea, that doesn't mean that it has to come out. The greatest musicians are so amazing because of the spaces that they leave. If you listen to Miles, he lets bars go by without even playing a note. Or guys like Wayne Shorter. That's so important. It is a whole other color... that space you allow the other instruments. That rich sound palette that is going on behind your instrument. And learning to listen, because that is the other thing that touring and playing out teaches you. It's you not focusing on your own instrument so much. When you are in school it is all about being in the woodshed and playing through all the material
for your instrument. But you don't want to focus on all that, when you are playing in a band. You want to focus on the instruments around you.
Especially as a bass player, the traditional roll for that is support. It's fundamental. That is one of the great things that playing with all of these people taught me, how to support a singer or how to support another instrument rather then being the focal point.
Pt 2 (see original text here):
Q: You are an experimental bassist, using alligator clips and different techniques when you play. Could you elaborate on these techniques and maybe point out their origins.
A: Well, I'm not the first person to do that kind of stuff. John Cage is probably the originator of what they call preparing an instrument. In the forties he wrote a series of pieces for prepared piano.
Q: It was coins wasn't it?
A: Coins and pieces of metal and different objects. He was very specific in the materials that he used and where to put them. It turned the instrument into a completely different sounding beast. It was more along the lines of a percussion orchestra, or a gamelan orchestra. I remember listening to his records and thinking to myself that this is the coolest thing. There is a British free-jazz guitar player named Derek Bailey who was doing a lot of things like preparing the guitar using old strings and stuff. There is also a British bass player named Barry Guy, an upright player, who I saw play, and he was doing a lot of things with mallets and such. To me it just seemed like a natural thing. Here you have an instrument that has unlimited tonal capabilities. Why not use what ever is available to get new sounds out of it!
Then I heard Bill Laswell playing with alligator clips on his strings. You know, I just think that it is part of the vocabulary by now. And it's cheap! It's cheaper then buying an effects pedal. You can just go to Radio Shack and spend a couple bucks and buy a bag of alligator clips… and it's like a ring modulator. It changes the whole pitch relationship of the strings. You get different resulting pitches based on where you put your finger. Where you put your fingers on the finger board is not necessarily the pitch that you are going to get.
I really love that chaos factor. I've done it long enough that I have a certain idea of what it is going to sound like, where I put it. But there is still a lot of spontaneity involved. I am just very attracted to that chaos. Sometimes the music needs to go in another area and putting the clips on can be a catalyst. I like to take it to a realm where it is not so key-center-oriented. Sometimes my bass lines can become very repetitive in a key center, but it is not necessarily where I want everyone else to go. I like the harmonic aspect but sometimes if everyone is crowded around the same key center putting the alligator clips is a good way to scatter that. So that is where that came from.
There is a song that we play called “Bass BeatBox” that started from putting a stick in the strings of the acoustic bass in such a way that I could get this E major 7 chord. And then I slap the bass at the same time. Sometimes the effect suggests a musical phrase or a song or something. I try to incorporate this into my loop style of bass playing. I want to be able to use it in a rhythmic moving fashion rather then having it as a sound effect. I incorporate it into my playing as if I were using a pick or whatever. It is just another technique that is available.
Q: Well I have noticed that your ability to introduce these ideas not only causes your bandmates to have to refocus and pay closer attention. It would seem that your audience would have to do the same.
A: Right. Just playing the double bass in a situation like that requires people to keep it to a certain level in order to hear the instrument. It is hard to amplify the instrument to a degree that it cuts through everything else. Especially if you are using extended techniques with the strings and doing things like slapping the bass.
Yeah, that is not the focal point for why I do it, to get everyone to focus on the instrument. It is really just a texture. It's a sound that is in the instrument. And whatever it takes to get it out, whether it is putting an electric drill on it or whatever, I'm willing to do it. I just think that at this point in music everything is game. Everything is permitted. Why not use whatever is available?
Q: As a progressive musician, I'm sure that you are aware that many of the voices of the future are steeped in the past. What are some of your biggest influences?
A: Well, when I first started playing I was a total white-trash rock kid living in Minnesota. You know, Led Zeppelin was pretty much it for me. Foghat, Black Sabbath, Grand Funk… stuff like that. But I was always attracted to musicians who it seemed were just going for it. They were just balls-to-the-wall NYAAARRRGGGHH! Just going for it.
I grew up in a small town where there was not a lot of progressive music exposure but I had an art teacher who turned me onto Miles [Davis] “Bitches Brew”. And through him I started checking out more artists of the day. There was a college radio station that came out of Northfield, Minnesota where I first heard [John] Coltrane, Fela [Kuti], Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell.
From this, I started to realize that there is other stuff out there. It was not easy to find, but it was out there. At the time the internet didn't exist and it was all about mail ordered record catalogues. There was a place called Wayside Music in Maryland that specialized in improvised and avante garde music and I started ordering a bunch of different stuff from them. From there, I just started digging in, getting into bands like The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra, Capt. Beefheart & His Magic Band, Steve Reich & King Crimson. And I was also able to see some of these bands when they came through Minnesota. I saw Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble… and it was extremely influential on me to see this kind of music. I just tried to be a sponge and absorb it, not really thinking about excluding different styles. I think some times people get into a rut where they only listen to one style of music. And I guess I never really saw any contradictions in listening to Frank Zappa one minute, Pink Floyd the next and then Art Ensemble another day… and even Grand Funk. It's all music.
As far as that having influenced me as a bass player, and having absorbed all this different music… it's like speaking different languages. It's like speaking French one minute then Spanish then English. I can play a [Black] Sabbath tune and then go into whatever. It is just part of the music.
Over the years the bands and musicians that have stayed with me have been people like Miles [Davis], [Frank] Zappa, [John] Coltrane. As far as bass players, Dave Holland has been a big influence on me and Bootsy [Collins], you can't get any funkier then his stuff with James Brown. I listen to a lot of pop music like XTC, Colin Moulding, the bass player in that band is just phenomenal and has been a big influence on my melodic playing.
I have been fortunate to play with some of my influences, like John [Medeski]. I think MMW is a great band. Lately, I have really gotten into Moroccan music. That is predominantly what I listen to. Brahim [Fribgane], who has played with us over the last few years, has been another great influence on me. I have always been interested in North African music. Mark Sandman turned me onto a record called “Gift of the Ganawa” by Hassan Hakmoun. I was really attracted to that music, but I really didn't understand it. Through meeting and playing with Brahim, who is a great teacher and has enormous patience, that really opened up my eyes and my ears in more ways then I have ever dreamed of. Since then I have been sincerely trying to focus on different Gnawan musicians and Berber music from Morocco. That is really my latest passion. I also really enjoy people like Squarepusher- Tom Jenkinson is just brilliant, Amon Tobin, Wagonchrist, Plug, Mouse On Mars, Sum & Liminal & We- all the stuff Danny Blume does. A lot of so called electronica music.
Q: Well, I think that the broad range of your influences are truly reflected within your music. It is interesting as an audience member to hear these new ideas develop. You stand up there and orchestrate an ensemble with very minimal guidance. In a very similar way to Miles [Davis]. I believe there is something to be said for that.
A: Well, thank you. I wouldn't really compare myself to Miles, but I think that all the experiences that I've had with bands and focusing on the bass' role in different music has made me really aware of grounding and support. Creating a bed for other instruments and other musicians to play over.
In Club d'Elf, I consider myself more of a tour guide or a conductor. "Here we are in this area…" we'll explore this place for a while and when it seems like we've gotten what we can out of that… I'll point out another sign on the highway and say "why don't we check this out". I keep my ears open and listen to the other musicians. And if something they are playing suggests an interesting detour then we will take it. We'll get out of the bus and walk around a little bit. Kick some dirt and then we'll get back in the bus and drive a little ways. It's really just touring through different musical terrains. I really don't feel like I have an objective of my own. I don't want the band to be a vehicle for my soloing. I don't really solo that much with the band. I prefer to lead things along and let the musicians explore the grooves and feel free to express any ideas or to tell any stories that they have. The whole idea of playing is communicating through an instrument and hopefully they feel free enough to communicate as much as they can. It's really an ongoing conversation among people who dig each other.
Since the music that we play is very influenced by DJ culture, having the bass drop out is not unheard of. And I really enjoy doing that, finding spaces where I can just drop out and stop playing. Which allows different instruments to come forward. It also allows me the opportunity to direct things and make small gestures and cues.
Q: What are some of the modern artists that you enjoy. In terms of your approach to music, what modern artist do you think you most closely resemble or relate to?
A: Well, as far a what I am listening to know, I am listening to people like Squarepusher, whom I mentioned and different DJs like DJ Shadow, DJ Spooky, DJ Olive, DJ Logic and Mr. Rourke and all the guys who play with us. Who I resemble… I don't know. I guess, someone like Bill Laswell who is a bass player and producer. He has a lot of interest in North African music and works with different ethnic musicians. I don't think I play like him, but musically and aesthetically we are not that far apart.
I think the model for Club d'Elf comes not from the musical world, but more so from comedy, especially Mr. Show. I'm really attracted to that sort of thing. It is all about leading one's perception or expectations down a certain path and then twisting them. Coming from left field and taking a surprise turn. What we do in Club d'Elf is we travel spaces where things like Gnawa, trance, jazz, drum and bass and hip hop overlap. Rythmically you can put all these things together. So we can be traveling down one category or style and then switch. Almost like a punch line, we leave you saying 'What?'. It's a great joke. Musically, that is what really influences me. I grew up with Monty Python and the Firesign Theater. Mr. Show is really the closest thing that we emulate as a band. Obviously it is not a musical idea, they do it on a different playing field but it is the same idea. Taking a preconscieved notion and turning it on it's head, but not in such a way that is unpleasant. It is for that moment… that "a ha" moment. We don't have any interest in pissing people off. It is quite the opposite. We try to bring a positive experience through music. Although the music we play can tend to be on the dark side, I would like to believe that there is a certain optimism to it. A certain beauty or hope.
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Stuff@Nite
21 Best Things To Do In Boston After Midnight
-Scott Kathan
The second set of Club d'Elf at the Lizard Lounge: Club d'Elf are a rotating collective of some of the best and most innovative musicians in town, fronted by smooth-cat bassist Mike Rivard, a/k/a Micro Vard. They usually play every alternate Thursday, and their second set, which generally starts at midnight, has become known as one of the most smolderingly inventive musical experiences in the city. Check it out.
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AllAboutJazz.com
6/01/02
Club d’Elf: As Above: Live at the Lizard Lounge (Grapeshot / LiveArchive)
-Chris M. Slawecki
Club d’Elf is currently in the midst of a Pennsylvania / New York club tour in support of As Above, live documentation of their rather incredible sound on two CDs.
Club d ’Elf began in 1998 when the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge (MA) offered to Mike Rivard, a veteran bassist who’s worked with the Story, Shane Colvin, Paula Cole, and the Either/Orchestra, the opportunity to host a floating, freewheeling biweekly “open” night. These nebulous, experimental ensembles grew to include such musicians as guitarist Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine, David Bowie) and drummers Kenwood Dennard (Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino, Brand X) and Bob Moses (Pat Metheny, Dave Liebman, Emily Remler) with Rivard serving as composer, bassist, conductor -- and ultimately as the de facto leader of a tripped-out and free-form funky Lizard Lounge houseband that he dubbed Club d’Elf.
The twenty songs and two- and one-half hours of sound and vision on As Above are drawn from six such shows at the Lizard, its shifting personnel including Gabrels and Dennard, Alain Mallet (Paquito D’Rivera, Paul Simon) on keyboards, guitarists Duke Levine and Ian Kennedy, Brahim Fribgane on oud, saxophonists Joe Maneri, Eric Hipp, and Tom Hall, DJ Logic on turntables, and Mat Maneri on violin.
Rivard and company consistently stretch out in rock solid grooves, and then really begin the fun. Toying with their sounds like they were balloons, they constantly poke holes in rhythms and themes, or squeeze the air out of them, and dexterously twist whatever they had been working on into other shapes. Jungle, free jazz, trance, smooth jazz, dub, acid jazz, jazz-rock, trip-hop, ambient, hip-hop…it’s all swirling around in here, often with a Middle Eastern twist. The DJ-heavy songs sort of sound like Medeski Martin & Wood; the guitar heavy songs sort of like King Crimson; the songs with saxophone charts sort of sound like Groove Collective; and almost every song rocks on a fat backbeat. “Club d’Elf pretty directly reflects my stylistic interests,” Rivard allows. “I listen primarily these days to a lot of Moroccan music and free jazz and electronic music.”
Rivard roars like an absolute funk monster in the “left hand of clyde (parts 1, 2 & 3)” suite. The group stalks and then attacks “meet the monster tonight” as snorting, thundering electronic rhinos armed with hard rock guitars; in a similar vein, the bass/guitar unison statements in “get a little turning” crackle with the sharp blue tang of James Ulmer. Yet Rivard’s supple and melodic turns in the island meditation “actual smiles” and in the jungle (complete with chattering monkey sounds) of “intro / bass beatbox” sound more traditional, albeit in exotic and unconventional settings.
It’s good that Rivard documented Club d’Elf on tape, because you’ve almost got to hear As Above to believe it. It sounds like almost nothing except for perhaps Miles’ 1970s free-funk experiments. (No band or song introductions are spoken on As Above, either, which furthers the comparison: Not only can’t you tell what’s going on, you can’t even tell who’s doing the what.) You can easily listen to it that way, by imagining the oud as Wayne Shorter’s soprano saxophone and the turntables and loops as the rhythm guitar. After all, a flat-out murderous funk drumbeat is still a flat-out murderous funk drumbeat, and a bad-ass bass player is still…well, you know.
Club d’Elf will continue their bi-weekly gigs at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge on Thursday June 6 and June 20, with drummer Erik Kerr, guitarist Geoff Scott (Miracle Orchestra), and Mister Rourke (Soulive) on turntables joining Mallet, Rivard, and others. The band is also assembling their next studio album, currently planned to include John Medeski, DJ Logic, and the late Mark Sandman of Morphine.
-Chris M. Slawecki
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Jambands.com
4/03/2002
Club d'Elf, Mercury Lounge, NYC- 3/31/02
NYC ROLL-TOP: The Red Herring
The old dude was clearly out of his gourd. But he was also a red herring. I stood there watching him for a whole set of music by Club d'Elf thinking that he was the bandleader. After all, he was obviously older than everybody else on the platform, and he sat - looking dignified - at center stage with his saxophone and clarinet. The short, squat man was dressed in nice black pants and shirt connected by suspenders with a pocket-watch chain emerging from one of his pockets. He was bald, and a white, bushy beard - no mustache - positively sprouted from the bottom half of his face.
He played the part, too. He sat for the whole show. When the music grew, he waved his arms wildly and closed his eyes tightly. Occasionally, he would bend over and scream-sing a streamed mix of baby-babble gobbledygook and harshly melodic scatting into the sax mic. I watched him. So did the musicians on stage, which included John Medeski on a whole buncha keyboards, Eric Kalb from Deep Banana Blackout on drums, and others. I thought he was some crazy avant-free-jazz conductor. Near the end of the first set, when bassist Mike Rivard introduced the band, I realized that the reedman - Joe Maneri - was merely a special guest and that it was actually the mostly unassuming Rivard who led the ensemble.
Club d'Elf is his bag and it always has been. I knew that the group was more a collective than a band, with only one (or a few) steady members. I was just unsure which ones they were. It began as a regular gig at the Lizard Lounge in the green pastures of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A few regulars came and went, and a double-album was issued by Grapeshot/Live Archive highlighting some of the collaborations. The Club, as it were, doesn't really seem to have a standard repertoire (though there were some charts littered about the stage), though they certainly have a common approach and sound.
There were eight musicians onstage for most of the set: Rivard, Medeski, Kalb, Joe Maneri (the old dude) on reeds, Mat Maneri (his son) on electric viola (or was it violin?), Mr. Rourke on turntables, a random extra percussionist, and - the key to the band - Brahim Fribgane. It is Fribgane that seemingly transforms the unit from an all-star cast into a rolling textural revue. It was his percussion - and, later, his oud (a weird lookin' Middle Eastern lute-like situation) - that the band centered around. There was melody, for sure, but it was secondary. This was okay. Mat Maneri played some interesting stuff, but my brain tends to automatically file any electric violin as utterly distasteful. The younger Maneri contributed more effectively by playing wah-muted rhythms.
There was rhythm, too, but I wouldn't call Club d'Elf a groove outfit. Surely, they did groove, but it wasn't so directed that it was a single-minded funk. It was too thick and polyrhythmic for that. At one point during the set, the music broke down to a duet between Fribgane and Mr. Rourke. Three of the musicians onstage - Medeski, Kalb, and Rivard - clapped along. Each clapped different rhythms, and each was exactly right. The polyrhythms actually allowed the music to live in a space somewhere between free jazz and groove music: tight enough to stay focused, but big enough for myriad unexpected pleasures.
The accidental transposition of Joe Maneri as bandleader was interesting to me, because it gave me a center to the music. His actions became the focus, and what I metaphorically interpreted all the other music around. It made for a nice and interesting puzzle. When I realized my mistake, the sound of the whole ensemble shifted with my ear. The music made a little more sense, though it wasn't as nicely mysterious. Even with the correct alignment, though, the band made a vast and rich sound that, while certainly cluttered, was never tired sounding. There was plenty of constantly shifting room for the ear to explore, for both the listeners and the musicians.
-Jesse Jarnow
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DailyLocal.com
March 30, 2002
"A bit of everything at the TLA tonight"
For several years, the musical aggregate known as Club d'Elf has been building a fan base in the Boston area. The band brings its improvisational mix of styles to Philadelphia on Saturday night.
They'll perform one show at the Theater of Living Arts, with Calvin Weston's Big Tree as the opening act.
The touring incarnation of Club d'Elf features founder/bandleader Mike Rivard on bass, Brahim Fribgane on oud and percussion, John Medeski on keyboards, Mister Rourke on turntables, Erik Kalb on drums and Mat Maneri on violin.
"We started Sunday night in Falls Church (Va.) and we'll be doing eight shows in eight days," Rivard said during a phone interview Tuesday from a tour stop in Asheville, N.C. "It's not like we have a new record to promote -- just the live record ("As Above" on Grapeshot/LiveArchive) from last year. John Medeski had eight days free and it was just taking advantage of that."
Club d'Elf's music transcends a variety of genres -- jazz, space rock, Moroccan Berber music, experimental, trip-hop, funk, avant-garde, rock, fusion, dub and electronica.
"We started four years ago in Cambridge," Rivard said. "It's pretty much ongoing -- just not as visible at times. When we're back in Boston, we play pretty regularly. I'd like to keep the band on the road more. But it's hard to describe the music, so that makes it difficult to promote.
"In Boston, our audiences include hippies, ravers, jazz cats and Moroccans. I'm really hoping to take the band to Morocco sometime soon.
"Most of our compositions are like a ride at an amusement park. There's lots of improv, but not much jamming. It starts with drum and bass and then the other musicians remix on top of it. The structure changes from night to night.
"I try to steer more toward group improv. In addition to playing bass, I do a lot of onstage conducting. I've developed my own arcane system."
What: Club d'Elf
When: March 30, 10 p.m.
Where: Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St., Philadelphia
Tickets: $15
Information: 215-922-1011
-Denny Dyroff
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RedandBlack.com
3/28/2002
Walking a Thin Line Between Order and Chaos
Club d'Elf puts musical risks and unpredictability aside to give listeners a wild ride. In 1970, Miles Davis' album Live Evil took experimental music to new heights.
Today, in the same vein, Club d'Elf embarks on sonic explorations by spontaneously playing material without formally rehearsing it.
Club d'Elf began in 1998 in Cambridge, Mass., at the cozy Lizard Lounge. At the small club, bassist Mike Rivard, who has recorded with Paula Cole and Morphine, established a musical meeting place for live experimentation.
"I wanted something that was loose enough to accommodate people and have it be different every time," Rivard said. "It's not total jams. We do have songs. But the idea is to play them differently every night. It's kind of like a dub remix perspective on it."
For more than four years, a changing lineup of musicians met at the club for jamming sessions. Notable guests who've played with Club d'Elf include DJ Logic, Mark Sandman, Bob Moses and Kenwood Dennard.
"For the Boston shows, there tends to be more of a core group, but every show at the Lizard is a different lineup beyond the core," Rivard said. "I'm part of a really large musical community in Boston that I can draw."
Though it started small, the project soon attracted increasingly large audiences who crammed into the venue to listen to the groove-heavy mix of drum 'n' bass, trance, electronica, hip-hop, funk and free jazz, as well as traditional Moroccan Berber and Gnawa music and other West African flavors, Rivard said.
After he writes the backbone of the songs, Rivard said, he works out the different rhythm concepts with a drummer. Then, at the shows the other musicians apply their different contributions on top.
"I write charts out," he said. "Or I send them tapes or CDs, but some come in without ever hearing the music and they just play. The idea is to remix it, so I'm not concerned if a certain section happens live."
As Club d'Elf embarks on its second domestic tour, an eight-show stint, the group will feature Rivard, John Medeski on keyboards, Brahim Fribgane on "oud" and various Moroccan percussions and vocals, Mat Maneri on electric violin and viola, Mister Rourke on turntables and Eric Kalb on drums. Special guest guitarist Reeves Gabrels will also join the club for the Athens and Atlanta performances.
"We try to walk the tight rope every night, between order and chaos," Rivard said.
Rivard said his role as musical director allows the members of Club d'ELF to take greater risks because they always have someone who knows where the tune will go next.
"Someone needs to lead and say this is where we are," he said. "We're a little more aggressive than [most jam-bands]."
-David Kross
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Fairfield County Weekly
3/28/2002
Past Future: Club d'Elf plays god with musical styles old and new.
The next time someone says, "There's no good music today," I'm handing him a copy of As Above: Live at the Lizard Lounge. Surely the most engaging CD to cross my desk this year, it is a winding dreamscape of an album with intense moments of percussion and bass, Moroccan mysticism and trance-inducing DJ undertones. A fluid group with revolving members that draws from some of today's most musically advanced performers, Club D'Elf combines talents like DJ Logic (Medeski, Martin & Wood, Project Logic), futuristic drummer Kenwood Dennard (Miles Davis, Sting, Jaco Pastorius) and master oud player Brahim Frigbane (Peter Gabriel, Morphine). This live recording is reminiscent of a Miles Davis fusion experiment or a John McLaughlin Mahavishnu ensemble for the New Millennium. Every style from North African to funk to trip-hop has been explored, picked apart, stretched, squashed and molded into something new.
To get at the heart of Club d'Elf, you have to listen to the bassist, Mike Rivard. He not only mans the bass throttle, decelerating to a deep steady creep and accelerating to free-association slaps, he's the group's conceiver and conductor. Four years ago, Rivard started the project at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, Mass., and the resulting free-jazz experiments soon took ownership of the club's Thursday nights. The just-released debut CD, As Above, represents some of the choicest live cuts from those weekly gigs. Thank God/Jaweh/Allah they were recording.
At the Lizard Lounge, Club d'Elf played on a central carpet surrounded by the audience, lending an intimacy and conversational playing style to the shows rare to Western music. The group still regularly performs at the club, where Rivard says, "There's not so much separation between audience and musician. The power structure amongst the musicians is very fluid. A traditional stage setup where you're just facing out doesn't work as well with the kind of stuff we do."
Now that the group has taken to touring, their challenge is to recreate that sense of open dialogue on traditional stages.
"We like challenges," says Rivard, "and hopefully we can draw the audience into the language that we're speaking. And by the end of the night, everybody's on the same page."
As languages go, Club d'Elf has developed its own, framed around world-influenced and contemporary sounds, traditional instruments and modern electronics based on the individual proficiencies of the performers. The latest touring group matches Rivard with John Medeski of Medeski, Martin & Wood on keyboards, Brahim Frigbane on the oud (a Middle eastern lute), Mat Maneri on electric violin, Mister Rourke on turntables and newcomer Eric Kalb from Deep Banana Blackout on drums. To keep the sound evolving and unpredictable, Rivard doesn't practice with the members as a whole. He sends them each charts and CDs, but lets each night pave its own way musically.
"I look at it like a director putting together a movie," says the bassist. "There might be some special effects, so the actors are doing their lines against a blue screen and they don't really know what's going to be behind them. I get together with the individual musicians and go over different concepts and different lines with the idea that they're not hearing everybody else that's going to be playing on the song. When the performance actually takes place, it's a surprise for everybody."
Perhaps the only constant in the mesh of interwoven sounds is the percussive Moroccan flair based on Rivard's study and Frigbane's native musical tongue. The Gnawa style the group employs comes from music brought by West African slaves to Morocco, music used to induce trance and support healing ceremonies. Mid-set, Rivard will pick up the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute with a 500-year-old history, whose hollowed wooden body acts as drum and bass combined. He and Frigbane, a Moroccan native, invoke ancient Arabic sounds through an inter-changing line-up of percussion instruments, including the bendir frame drum, lined with snare strings and the goblet-shaped doumbek, with its deep low and crystal high extremes. But nothing is static or unrefined. As Rivard says, "It's not like one of those lame world things where you draw upon a culture by using the sound of it. The Arabic and North African stuff is grounded in a pretty deep understanding, but it also becomes another language." Every traditional sound is infused with the new. Every unstructured song is a loosely arranged flight that follows the musicians' nightly whims.
For the performers, Club d'Elf is a place to engage their experimental fantasies outside of their traditional projects. While Medeski surely gets some leeway for free-jam in MMW, in Club d'Elf he can experiment in and out of styles without restraint. Among his arsenal of keyboard instruments, Medeski uses the Mellotron, an original sampling keyboard with real taped sounds of violins and flutes.
"He's developed this really individual style with it," says Rivard, "where he can bend notes and play micro-tones in-between notes." In other words, all that's hidden between the black and white keys on a piano. "The indigenous music we draw upon is all based on micro-tones like bending a note to other notes," says Rivard. "He's able to do that on that keyboard, and gives it an entirely different sound. It's a Mellotron and it has a history of use...but the sounds he gives it when he plays a Berber song or a Gwana song, it transcends the instrument and becomes something else, a voice. These are influences that just come up within the music. They may happen in the strangest of places where you have a Squarepusher-type drum-and-bass groove or a funk thing and suddenly it morphs into a Berber song. For us, it's all part of the same thing. We're not really thinking of it in terms of categories, it's just developing a language."
While the music Club d'Elf produces is wildly transient, the intuitive relationship among the performers allows them to change directions at the same time. For specific movements, Rivard acts as conductor. During a song, he might point to Kalb and Maneri, count down, and then the other musicians will drop out.
"It's like a DJ at a mixing console bringing up different faders," says the bassist. "It's a way to give the music a different texture and let it breathe a little bit before everybody else comes back in howling."
Well-placed spacing is crucial for the success of these jams, otherwise the audience would hear only thickly layered mud, the intricacies indistinguishable. Even DJ Mister Rourke will not scratch and mix throughout the entire performance, but on occasion will let the groove lapse into a suspension of trance and beats. Everything Club d'Elf produces is grounded in rhythm. The performers bring sounds together in the tradition of an African circle: centered, multi-layered, completely separate and completely united simultaneously.
"What I really try to go for is more of a group conversation," says Rivard, "where everybody's soloing and nobody's soloing. Just a back and forth commentary. The traditional roles get subverted and reversed."
It's like a time-travel machine equipped with a sweet set of speakers, jumping between periods and places as you lean back, close your eyes and let your ears enjoy the ride.
-Brita Brundage
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Online Athens
3/27/2002
Entranced by d'Elf: Club d'Elf takes listeners on the jazz-trance experience
Long before music became a business venture, the African rhythms now associated with reggae, funk, jazz, hip-hop, rock and almost everything else popular in American music were part of an essential cultural spiritual celebration and release.
These ''grooves'' provided a common foundation upon which an entire community could interact and partake in one grand conversation through music, song and dance -- each adding his or her own improvised part to the living composition. The height of this experience is the trance, a state of complete spiritual channeling -- an idea that is catching on more and more in American music today, whether through ''jam bands,'' drum and bass, electronica or club music.
Tonight, Club d'Elf brings an all-star cast of musicians from around the world to the Georgia Theatre for just this kind of conversation.
Assembled by bassist Mike Rivard, Club d'Elf features John Medeski (Medeski, Martin and Wood) on keyboard; Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie's guitarist for 15 years) on electric guitar; Brahim Fribgane (Peter Gabriel, Morphine, Hassan Hakmoun) on oud (a Middle Eastern lute) and various Moroccan percussion; Mat Maneri (Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Cecil Taylor) on electric violin; Mister Rourke (Soulive, Billy Martin of MMW, Miracle Orchestra) on turntables; and Eric Kalb (Deep Banana Blackout, John Scofield) on drums to heighten and intensify the unit's traveling jazz-trance experience.
The music is inspired by Rivard's study of Moroccan music, particularly the original trance music of the Gnawa. The essence of Gnawa music is the bass groove of the guimbri or scintir (a two- or three-stringed bass instrument thought to be one of the earliest ancestors of the guitar) coupled with the rhythms of the kirkaba (a set of hand cymbals). Instead of beginning with a melody or harmonic structure, as in most Western music, the Gnawa start with a rhythm and all else is layered on top. Using a repetitive rhythm as a foundation makes the music very accessible for participation, as it is easy to catch on and almost any melody can fit over top.
Playing this way is one thing when the group of musicians is sitting in a room for 14 hours and time is irrelevant. Putting something like this together on stage is quite another.
To manage this, Rivard takes a cue from Miles Davis' approach on projects like On the Corner. Davis had a stage full of musicians, and he served as a sort of mixer. Each instrument a fader on a soundboard, Davis would bring in and out certain textures and combinations ''composing'' on the spot.
''Sometimes the musicians haven't played together before,'' explains Rivard of the diverse, rotating line-up, ''but as long as it's together from the rhythm perspective, everyone else can catch on. The musicians that I'm using are just phenomenal improvisers and they have incredible ears, so it doesn't matter if they've heard something before. Once they hear it, it's spontaneous composition. We use the song structure like Miles did in the '70s. Themes come up, but the idea is to develop a group voice and go into group improvisation. Every night we play music that has never been played before.''
Rivard hopes that not only the musicians will be a part of the dialogue, but the audience as well.
''The response has been great because we're all having a great time. It's so obvious that we're doing it because we love the music and we love playing with each other. I think people really pick up on that.''
Club d'Elf played recently in Boston with a Senegalese drummer. ''The opportunity to put the Senegalese thing together with the Moroccan thing was so cool. Everybody was feeling it that night. It's an incredible feeling when the musicians and the audience are communicating on that level and egos are checked. It's a very special feeling.''
-Julie Powell
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Flagpole
3/27/2002
Mike Rivard Explains d'Elf's Deep Rooted Grooves
In creating an ultra-modern hybrid of dub trance, Moroccan Berber music electronica, jazz, and trip-hop, Boston-based improvisational ensemble Club d'Elf ventures way out beyond the borders of electric jazz and funk into a groove all its own. Led by bassist and casual conductor Mike "Micro Vard" Rivard (Orchestra Morphine, Either/Orchestra, The Story), the ever-evolving group got its start several years back doing loose, open, "trance jam" jams at clubs in Boston. The collaborations gradually evolved into a serious venture and twice-monthly "workshops" at The Lizard Lounge in Cambridge.
The band tours through the South for the first time this month armed with a slew of ambitious music ideas and a mighty roster of players - most notably perhaps, keyboardist John Medeski of Medeski, Martin & Wood.
"I think there's something in this group's music that musicians find really attractive," says Rivard, 39. "There's a lot of freedom, so everybody's free to go out as far as they can possibly go, knowing that there's someone there keeping the home fires burning. Everybody doesn't have to keep their heads buried in a chart."
Mike Rivard, a graduate of the Berklee School of Music, grew up the son of a military family in Minnesota. He started out playing guitar and saxophone as a young kid and ended up on electric bass in the middle school concert band.
"It was the same old story: you got a band with a drummer and three guitar players, so somebody's gotta play bass," he remembers. "I really started getting into the bass and the guitar started coming out less. As all bassists know, it is the best instrument! It's not a particularly glamorous instrument, but when it's not there, people notice when it's not there. When you get into the bass, you realize how important it is: it's part of the rhythm section, and it's part of the harmonic and melodic structure."
As a teen, he really dug deep into the rock and roll bass work of Cream's Jack Bruce, Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and Jefferson Airplane's Jack Cassidy. He later expanded to funk and outer-edge bassists Bootsy Collins, Michael Henderson and Tony Levin. As a student at Berklee, he dove into the jazz work of such double bass players as Dave Holland, Charlie Haden and Charles Mingus.
John Medeski of '90s funk-fusion phenomenon Medeski, Martin & Wood and many other collaborations joins Club D'Elf on this tour and will play his usual array of keyboards: organ, mellotron, Wurlitzer, clavinet. New York scenester Mat Maneri (son of clarinetist Joe Maneri) is known for his recent work with Matthew Shipp, Cecil Taylor and William Parker and regularly plays electric violin and viola in Club d'Elf.
Boston-based DJ Mister Rourke - a collaborator with Soulive, Miracle Orchestra and drummer Billy Martin of MM&W - spins and mixes drumbeats and sounds on turntables.
"We've been really fortunate to work with some very musical DJs like DJ Logic and Mister Rourke," says Rivard. "It's really like having another instrument in the band... it's not really like musicians and a DJ. It's like having another guitarist or keyboardist. The whole band is influenced by DJ culture. I use a sampler on-stage, and the way I approach to playing the bass has been influenced by DJ culture: the remixing and applying a 'dub' aesthetic."
Drummer Eric Kalb - the "new guy" in the group - is best known for his work with Deep Banana Blackout, John Scofield and John Medeski. "Eric is kind of the wild card," Rivard laughs. "He hasn't played with the band before this tour. Medeski has worked with him before. We're all certainly looking forward to it." For the Atlanta show at the Echo Lounge (Wednesday, March 27) and the Athens show at the Georgia Theatre, hot-shot L.A. guitarist Reeves Gabrels will be joining Club d'Elf on-stage as well.
Known best for his long-running work with David Bowie, Gabrels was one of many guests out of the jazz/improv and rock world who showed up on Club d'Elf's new live album, As Above: Live At The Lizard Lounge (Grapeshot). Bob Moses, Kenwood Dennard, Alain Mallet, Duke Levine and others contributed as well.
"I think the buzz about it is starting to rise. Until now, we've pretty much just been located in the Boston area. We had a residency at a club called the Lizard Lounge - the live album was culled from six shows there. It's very gratifying to me that someone like Reeves is willing to fly out for a couple of shows. It's certainly not about the money and getting rich, you know?"
On this tour, the stylistically diverse, current lineup of Club d'Elf will venture out on some seriously-bass-driven grooves and jams, but will also perform some scrupulously composed Middle Eastern-tinged exploratory pieces. Throughout the set, periods of trance-like quietude can suddenly overturn at a moment's notice and give rise to edgy funk jams. Beware.
"The bass lines in the music are pretty much the melodies, and I feel like those anchor things," says Rivard. "We do some pretty complex stuff, but I work out the rhythmic concepts from the ground floor with the drummer and everybody else is free to float their stuff on top of it. The way that I view the band is sort of like a DJ or remix producer, looking at a console and each instrument being a different fader on it. If the music has been kind of one texture for a while and needs to change, I have some conducting maneuvers I'll do on-stage, so that creates a breakdown. It's all very influenced by the electronic music that's been coming out for the last 10 years."
-Ballard Lesemann
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Jambands.com
January 30, 2002
JOIN THE CLUB D'ELF THIS WEEKEND IN PENNA
"Club d'Elf, the interchanging exploratory avant-garde ensemble from Boston, is invading Pennsylvania for four shows this weekend, on tour with Elf collaborator Dr. Didg. Leader/bassist/Lt. Elf Mike Rivard recently spoke to me about the various ideas and directions that he is taking Club' d'Elf, and I must say, the future is blindingly bright for this Berkelee bass maestro.
Recently the d'Elf displayed its varying new directions at a showcase at the Knitting Factory in New York. The seamless transitions from dub to drum 'n' bass, dissonant free jazz and progressive live house made for a delightful concoction. Unfortunately, the crowd was thin and the gig not properly promoted so only a select few of us got to witness the sickness. The NYC gig showcased the talents of drummer extraordinaire Adam Deitch, viola tweeker Mat Manari, guitarist Danny Broome, DJ Mister Roarke, and a host of other resident Elf soldiers.
Whether its DJ Logic, John Medeski, Billy Martin, Mat Manari or his legendary father Joe, Mister Rourke, or Kenwood Dennard, the swirling and ever evolving musical cult that is Club d'Elf is a well kept secret that is just dying to be let out. I am trying to do my part.
Check out their wide ranging album As Above, recorded over a long period of time during their Cambridge, Mass. Lizard Lounge residency. Tracks of the same name take wild new identities depending on the Elves contributing that particular night. That is the world of Club d'Elf, sounds from above, within and knowing no boundaries.
However, this weekend, this d'Elf incarnation is a new one, and certainly one to travel new landscapes of sound and energy that are yet to be realized by this particular d/Elf team. I am sure they have been reverberating in Rivard's head for quite some time. If you are a fan of '68-'73 Miles Davis, Fat Mama, Morphine, The Roots or Charles Mingus, there is room for you at Club d'Elf. Definitely worth some attention and positive vibes, lend your ears and spirits to Rivard and co. this weekend if you live in the great state of Pennsylvania.
Thursday, January 31, 2002
Philadephia, PA
North Star
215 684 0808
10:00-11:00 pm
** with Dr. Didg
Friday, February 1, 2002
State College, PA
The Brewery
814 237 2892
10:00-11:00pm
$8 advance/$10 day-of-show
** with Dr. Didg
Saturday, February 2, 2002
Plains, PA
Grico's River Street Jazz Cafe
570 822 2992
10:00-11:00pm, $10
** with Dr. Didg
-Brian Lee Feld Getz
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The Boston Metro
1/24/02
Club d’Elf: A Musical Meeting of Spirits
Hey There
Name: Mike Rivard (aka Microvard)
Age: 39
Gig: Bassist/Ringmaster of Club d'Elf
Favorite all-star summit CD: Gift of the Gnawa, with Hassan Hakmoun and Don Cherry
A first-call session bassist who has worked with the Story and Shawn Colvin as well as Natraj and Either/Orchestra, Mike Rivard is the guiding force behind Club d'Elf, a dub-jazz-trance-groove collective that is growing from its semi-weekly Thursday residency at the Lizard Lounge to shows around the Northeast and even Japan. Begun in 1998, d'Elf augments a revolving core of musicians who improvise off composed grooves with guests including John Medeski, Mat Maneri and Reeves Gabrels. The Minnesota-bred, Berklee-schooled Rivard grew up on everything from Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead to Miles Davis, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Fela Kuti. In addition to developing touring opportunities for d'Elf, Rivard is working on a studio followup to the group's expansive, live double-CD "As Above".
How was the name Club d'Elf inspired by author Terrance McKenna?
He did a lot of explorations in the Amazon with the people there, studied with the shamans, and did a lot of work with Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew used by the shamans that's a mixture of a couple of different plants. And amid his experiences, he would describe these contacts with self-transforming elves and hyper-spatial entities and it appealed to my science-fiction mind... I like the macabre element, that [the name] sounds like clubbed elf.
How are other shows different, pro or con, from your setup at the Lizard Lounge?
It's always good to blow minds. At the Lizard, oftentimes it's like preaching to the converted, or screeching to the perverted. It's our home. It's where we feel comfortable. It's great to play in the semicircle, and playing in more traditional clubs and rock venues, it's a little more difficult to do that. But it's great when you're playing for new audiences, like you have to win these people over. A lot of them have no idea of what we're doing, and it's a challenge. I'd like to keep the Lizard as long as we can, but it's also nice to think about playing some larger rooms.
You've played with Moroccan musicians and people with samplers, turntables, tabla and oud as well as conventional rock and jazz instruments. How do your stylistic interests fuel what Club d'Elf is, and vice versa?
Club d'Elf pretty directly reflects my stylistic interests. I listen primarily these days to a lot of Moroccan music and free jazz and electronic music. As far as how Club d'Elf influences what I do, I'm influenced by the musicians. It's one thing to listen to a record like John Coltrane or Miles, but I didn't know those people. The music is incredibly inspirational to me, but nothing really replaces the direct human contact of playing with somebody.
It seems your confidence has expanded as both a leader and a bass player.
If I'm going to stand in front of people like Medeski and [Moroccan player] Brahim [Fribgane] and conduct them and tell them what to do, cue them when to stop and start, I have to be incredibly confident... It has required a lot of discipline and effort on my part, in that a lot of what I do is very repetitive and mantra-like... It requires a lot of stamina, especially on the double bass. To be able to play at the level I want, it's made me alter many aspects of my life. I do yoga and Pilates and body work to keep my body in such a state that it doesn't kill me.
What led you to alter your strings with alligator clips and drumsticks in addition to using effects pedals?
I just think of them as colors, different ways of altering the sound. I've been listening to a lot of electronic music, and electronica has really influenced me in ways of hearing the instrument anew, and not just electronically altering it... But what I try to do is incorporate that into a groove or riffs rather than just making them sound effects. An effects sound or putting the clips in a certain way will inspire a compositional device or a different rhythmic thing.
For a guy who's usually so stoic onstage, you're also influenced by comedy?
I'm laughing in the music. I may look stoic, but the music is the joke. It seems so crazy to have some of these elements existing together, like a Berber song with a DJ scratching along. Or some Squarepusher thing happening with a tabla bowl. And it's just these strange juxtapositions which are the sort of things I find in "Mr. Show" and "The Simpson," just those things that suddenly twist your heads 180 degrees around and just thrust you into a new way of thinking.
-Paul Robicheau
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Ashville Citizen-Times
3/21/2002
Jazz-jammers Club d'Elf get the beat going at Asheville Music Zone
Listening to writer/bassist Mike Rivard describe the concept of his band Club d'Elf sounds like a painter detailing the image he brushes onto a canvas. Although his medium is electronic jazz-trance music rather than oils, Rivard is more conductor than member of this Boston born group that he calls "space age Dixieland."
"I feel like each player is a fader on a console," said Rivard. "During the show, I'm pushing them up and down for more solo from one instrument or another."
With an ensemble that includes John Medeski of ultra-hip jazz trio Medeski, Martin, & Wood and Brahim Fribgane who's worked with Peter Gabriel and Morphine, sextet Club d'Elf play two sets at the Asheville Music Zone Tuesday night.
"There's a lot of freedom in this music but is definitely a discipline involved," said Rivard. "The music should only be the stop and starts for the improvisational compositions of each player. It's the place where we ground ourself."
If comparisons to other experimental jazz jammers have shadowed the band's uniqueness, Rivard casually clarifies Club's role. "We're in that gray area in between. We're much more influenced by indigenous sounds from around the world - Moroccan, North African, and Arabic cultures."
Native instruments like the santir have enhanced the band's world music sound but as Rivard points out, the very modern addition of the DJ brings a distinctly roots feel. "He thinks like a musician. His turn-tables are just another instrument."
In this group, DJ Mister Rourke spins a mixture of everything from dub drum & bass vocal samples with a particular lean towards hip-hop.
"We're trying to communicate with each other in a language that is as open as possible," Rivard said. "It's like a bunch of people having a conversation in different languages where everyone is fluent on each. It's the content that is important and the group dynamics within the dialogue." Club compositions are primarily instrumental although Fribgane does lend vocals to a few tracks. Like the electronic world that partly inspires them, Club is a fluid show with no breaks between songs per set. "Everybody is soloing and yet nobody is soloing at the same time. We just let the music emerge and go on with it."
-Amy Jones
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