Club d’Elf intends to move your booty and excite your intellect with
their Moroccan-dosed psychedelic dub jazz. DOORS AT 8PM | SHOW AT 9PM
| 21+
ABOUT CLUB D'ELF
To the naked eye, Club d’Elf looks exactly like a world-class
instrumental band: five or six fierce players laying down heavy
grooves and exploratory solos on distinctive original material, as
audience members dance or listen in rapt attention. To its fans,
however, and its large and colorful cast of musicians, D’Elf is all
that and much, much more.
The paradox and the power of the unusually named Club d’Elf become
increasingly clear through repeated encounters. Unlike almost any
other band, D’Elf’s personnel changes radically from show to show.
Fans have their favorite configurations and players, but unlike groups
where musicians’ tenures are finite, D’Elf-ians revolve in and
out, reappearing in endless combinations. Beyond the cavalcade of
characters, the music itself is in constant flux. Individual songs can
vary dramatically from performance to performance as new alignments of
players make every moment fresh. No two sets are alike. Yet the
feeling and philosophy that animate D’Elf remain consistent, the
product of the vision and dedication of leader Mike Rivard (aka Micro
Vard) and the ongoing contributions of his talented collaborators.
Devoted fans have been setting their clocks by the group’s bimonthly
appearances at their home base, the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, for twenty years now, and the message has traveled
around the world.
Club d’Elf began in 1998 at the Lizard as a kind of controlled jam
session, featuring Rivard’s friends and associates from various
bands. Mark Sandman, the leader of Morphine, was an important
catalyst, suggesting that it was time for Rivard to form his own band.
An in-demand sideman, the bassist had earned notice with Jonatha
Brooke, the Walkers, the Either/Orchestra and a Sandman side project,
Hypnosonics. He envisioned a band that wasn’t built around the
specificity and spotlight that frontmen usually demand, but one that
would follow spontaneous cinematic soundscapes created by each member
of the collective. Out of the original D’Elf jam pool emerged a core
group, usually augmented by one or two other players from a rotating
cast. The core was eventually honed to its essentials: Rivard and
drummer Erik Kerr, followed eight years later by drummer Dean
Johnston.
“I didn’t want to feed the musicians with too many ideas of what
the music SHOULD be,” says Rivard, “because what keeps it fresh
and alive for me is me being astounded by what other people come up
with. The thing that really excites me is somebody coming in and
taking over, taking us down avenues we haven’t traveled before.”
After establishing a devoted local audience, D’Elf’s reputation
began to spread via a series of CD releases, widely circulated
“bootleg” recordings, and shows on the road. The first out of town
forays began with NYC’s fabled Knitting Factory in 2000 and van
tours around the Northeast. Japan has welcomed the band for five
tours, including a memorable performance at Mt. Fuji. D’Elf has also
gone north to the Festival du Monde Arabe in Montreal, and south to
Ecuador Jazz. Over the years, critics have knocked themselves out
looking for superlatives in reviewing D’Elf’s live performances
and recordings.
A ring of startlingly diverse players surround Rivard and Johnston,
musicians who have toured with the biggest names in the business (from
David Bowie to Mary Chapin Carpenter to John Zorn to Paul Simon, for
starters), or led their own successful bands. Regular collaborators
include John Medeski, Duke Levine, Alain Mallet, Paul Schultheis,
David Tronzo and Mat Maneri. For all contributors, D’Elf is a
special place, where they are invited to transcend ordinary
constraints. Beneath its luxe surface lies a multifaceted reality,
anchored in the band’s unique organizational dynamic and
unconventional mission. Non-musical influences such as sci-fi writer
Philip K. Dick’s themes of parallel dimensions and alternate
universes come into play through the medium of DJ Mister Rourke. He
serves multiples roles, as jester; disrupter; house surrealist,
bringing a psychedelic and Dadaist perspective with his ability to
drop the perfect sample into the mix.
The D’Elf environment is fertile in many ways. At the bottom IS the
bottom. On electric and acoustic basses and Moroccan three-string
sintir, Rivard, a Minnesota native, lays down a rock solid foundation
no matter how syncopated and complex the music becomes. His
compositions are written from below and create spaces where the superb
guitar, keyboard, percussion, string, turntable, and horn players feel
empowered to carve their own paths. Ever-changing combinations of
bandmates inspire these fiery and intuitive players to fearlessly
explore new approaches.
Within deceptively simple structures, the rhythm duo creates a
seamless flow from meter to meter, groove to groove, in a rhythmic
sleight of hand that can leave the listener wondering, “How did we
get from point A to point B?” At other moments, telepathically or
through sound and sight cues, the ensemble magically changes
directions with such precision that it sounds pre-planned. “Rather
than for the music to be jarring,” explains Rivard, “it should be
like a sand painting that’s continually transforming from one scene
to another, disparate but connected.”
A surprising and profound aspect of the D’Elf experience emanates
from Rivard’s passion for trance music. In many cultures – even
Western cultures, on occasion – music and dance are recognized as
paths to transcendence. “Trance music in all its aspects has always
been the underlying aesthetic of the band, that sense of losing
time.” As a player with wide-ranging tastes and abilities, and a
thinker with interests ranging across the arts and ideas, Rivard
understands both the power of the active mind and the challenge of
releasing oneself from thought. At the very core of D’Elf’s
mission is its leader’s desire to allow himself, his musicians and
his audience, to enter a place where there is no time and space, no
ego, no limits. “In these troubled times, the ability to enter into
that timeless realm is about healing,” Rivard notes.
Trance elements manifest themselves most clearly in D’Elf’s
incorporation of Moroccan music, in particular, the music of the
Gnawa, a pre-Arabic culture in North Africa, which stands among the
world’s great trance musics. Early in the history of D’Elf, the
rotating cast began featuring Moroccan players, including
percussion/oud player Brahim Fribgane and later, sintir master Hassan
Hakmoun. Over time, the Moroccan elements have been woven deeply into
the fabric of D’Elf, reinforced by key performances before Moroccan
audiences, whose knowing reactions cemented this direction. The
trance-inducing properties of D’Elf’s Moroccan music have even
unleashed startling responses in non-Moroccans, accessing some hidden
universal part of their psyches. On another continent, Rivard’s
travels in the Amazon jungle in Peru have added further insights into
the links between music and trance.
No less important are the influences of more familiar touchstones of
musical transcendence, including James Brown, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, John
Coltrane, the Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, and Remain in Light period
Talking Heads, all of whom conjure the power to transcend time and
space. Rivard the bassist is a particular fan of the nexus between the
physical and the emotional found in the butt-shaking grooves of James
Jamerson, Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham.
“The music that I first was inspired by as a teenager was the
Grateful Dead, and that was when I originally became aware of music as
a means toward heightened consciousness. I felt how the audience and
the band formed a symbiotic relationship with the energy flowing back
and forth, and that was a powerful revelation. From there I got into
Miles and Coltrane and then groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago
and Sun Ra where the performance is a ritual, not just entertainment.
My intention is to affect people on a deeper level. I want it to be
entertaining, but also for people to look back on it say – yeah,
that was heavy.”
Club d’Elf’s desire to move beyond the world of appearances and
venture into the realm of the eternal is at the center their music.
This metaphysical quest is embodied – much to listeners’ benefit
– within one of the best bands you will ever hear – and one that
rewards repeated listening.
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24/08/2019 Last update