Thursday, May 20, 2010
Music / Free Shit / Post No Bills / Swag Extreme Vocalist David Moss Makes a Rare Chicago Appearance
Posted by Peter Margasak on 05.20.10 at 07:41 PM
- David Moss
None of this prepared me for Chunk (Mosz), a new release by a trio called Denseland. Moss is joined by two Berlin musicians—bassist Hannes Strobl and drummer Hanno Leichtman—who also play in the live techno project Paloma. The two Germans sample and manipulate each other's live output, and Moss doesn't so much sing as mumble and mutter at a subconversational level. Strobl's elastic lines pair beautifully with Leichtman's loose grooves, creating a twitchy, peripatetic backdrop that Moss can have his way with. He's imaginative enough to make his furtive utterances here as musical and intriguing as the full-throated, occasionally obnoxious bellowing he often uses in other contexts. His work as a percussionist has always taken a back seat to his singing, but he's pretty great at that too. He's credited with percussion on Chunk, but all I can say for sure is that he's not playing a kit—he’s always preferred unconventional setups he designs himself.
The Denseland record is enough to get excited about, but Moss is also giving an extremely rare Chicago performance on Saturday, presented by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago's Bond Chapel. He'll debut a new solo piece called Hyperglyphyx, which uses manipulated texts from Italo Calvino, Herman Melville, and Franz Kafka as jumping-off points and focuses on "a rhythm that drives the human genetic package." The concert is free.
Below is a brief, lo-fi excerpt from a solo performance in New York last year:
Today's playlist:
Buraka Som Sistema, Black Diamond (Fabric/Enchufada)
Orrin Evans, Faith in Action (Posi-Tone)
Various artists, Tumbélé!: Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds From the French Caribbean, 1963-74 (Soundway)
Daniele Cavallanti & Tiziano Tononi, Rings of Fire (Long Song)
Mohammed “Jimmy” Mohammed, Hulgizey (Terp)
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