SilverProjects - Sara Silver, London UK

For more information please contact Sara Silver
sara@thirtytigers.com +44 (0)20 8265 0772
http://www.silverprojects.com/news/

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Silverprojects
86 Swinburne Road
SW15 5EH London

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Singer-songwriter Matisyahu has been on a journey inward for more than a decade. The journey has been private and public. The journey has at times been explicitly external, even while being driven by internal change. Now, nearly thirteen years after the release of his first studio record, Matisyahu and his band have done something unmatched in his past repertoire; they have crafted that journey into a musically thematic eight-song-movement.

The band features longtime guitarist Aaron Dugan, Dub Trio’s bassist and drummer Stu Brooks and Joe Tomino, and keyboard virtuoso BigYuki — and the journey starts with them. The band improvised for hours in the studio with Matisyahu watching on as an admirer without singing a single lyric. Out of the improvisations grew melodic themes, rhythmic peaks and valleys, blissful and proto-song guitar passages, deep dub meditations and ultimately an inspired instrumental record unto itself. Only once the band had crafted this musical narrative, did Matisyahu begin to work on a lyrical narrative of his own — a lyrical narrative that is simultaneously informed and integrated with the music yet driven by Matisyahu’s own personal journey. The result is Undercurrent, Matisyahu’s sixth studio album.

The record is musically Matisyahu’s most courageous release to date and lyrically his most vulnerable.

The courage in the music comes from trust. Trust in the band. And only in the band. There are no post-production bells and whistles, excessive overdub distractions, or litany of special guests on Undercurrent. On the opening track, “Step Out into the Light” the band lays out a repetitive minimalist verse section that anchors the listener in a near meditative loop only to open up into a gorgeous set of chord changes that makes the chorus feel revelatory, as if the listener has earned this release, and can achieve the song-title’s call to action.

By the record’s third track, “Coming Up Empty” the band has established melodic themes that will be called upon or re-harmonized later in the record, and just two songs in, it is clear that these musicians are road-tested, brave- song-crafters, with tens-of-thousands of hours playing together embedded in their muscles and fortified in their bones.

The vulnerability in the lyrics comes from acceptance. Acceptance in uncertainty. Acceptance in the actions of one’s younger self and acceptance that while the future may be uncertain, having the courage to trust gives us all the best chance at meaningful relationships. It’s a lyrical reframing of the Jewish philosophical differences between emunah (faith) and bitachon (trust). Faith, the constant, and trust the immediate. Matisyahu sets the stage for this conceptually on the record’s opening track, but he digs in internally on the authoritative plea in the chorus of “Back to the Old”, [I’m giving up, I’m giving in / All I got is what’s right in front of me / Is the people that I see…]. He projects it outwardly through questioning in “Forest of Faith”, [What’s a man got to do, Oh! / To get through to you?] And finally works towards acceptance on the guitar-driven gem “Headright”, [And I know feelings come and go / How should hold on, should I let go].

These forces direct the journey of Undercurrent, and as the record progresses the music begins to open up into full band improvisations like a relationship becoming more trusting, willing to take chances, knowing there’s acceptance in the process. A stunning example of this is on the record’s fifth track “Tell Me”. If you stop the song at the three-and-a-half-minute mark, you have a great reggae-tinged pop tune that promises to make a hit radio single. The track however continues for another six-and-half-minutes, beginning with a beautifully re-harmonized keyboard reference to the song’s opening wordless vocal melody. From there the entire band begins to improvise. Each player speaking briefly but with purpose, adding slowly and deliberately to the conversation. Drums and bass falling in and out. Guitar and keyboards calling back and forth to each other. The listener can almost intuit the personalities of each musician. The musical conversation continues to build, each band member adding to the

improvisation without playing on top of one another. Trust and respect. This is truly Matisyahu the band. Matisyahu the singer is patiently waiting for the band to direct the journey, and he joins back in with a near whisper as the rhythm section finds that incomparable dub groove Brooks and Tomino are famous for.

The level of interplay between Matisyahu and his bandmates on Undercurrent is unquestionable and requires multiple listens. Each repetition of a song reveals a guitar line from Dugan that elevates a vocal melody that only 15 years of experience together can achieve. Keyboard patterns from Yuki unrealized in a previous listen connect one song to another and the full band improvisations that climax with an impressive exploratory section on the record’s final track “Driftin’” achieve the rare feat of capturing a band’s live potential on a studio album.

Ultimately, Undercurrent, is a fully realized concept album crafted by a band-of- brothers who have learned to hold a conversation that is both comforting and challenging at the same time. It plays like a revelatory session with a great psychotherapist.

Like someone watching an ocean wave move chaotically towards the shore unaware of the undercurrent pulling mightily back in the opposite direction, Matisyahu and his band have achieved a musical retelling of the Matisyahu story that explores the forces within that inspire us all, challenge us all, break us down, lift us up, and yet are rarely obvious to the outside observer.

— Adam Weinberg

For more information about the Thirty Tigers including Matisyahu roster please contact Sara Silver
sara@thirtytigers.com +44 (0)20 8265 0772
http://www.silverprojects.com/news/

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As a pastor, theologian, author, filmmaker, and community organizer, Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou has dedicated his life’s work to social justice. He’s given lectures and speeches around the world and trained thousands of people in the tactics of nonviolent protest. Now, he’s lending his passion for activism to a popular form of protest: music. His forthcoming record, In Times Like These, on Thirty Tigers, features brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars. The fact that the Dickinson brothers’ moniker is a nod to the music of their home state makes their pairing with Sekou all the more fitting. Sekou was born in St. Louis but raised in Arkansas, where he was immersed in the South’s deep blues and gospel tradition. In Times Like These pays as much homage to place as it does to time.

“I recorded the album, in part, to keep track of the best of the blues tradition,” Sekou says. “It’s what I was raised on. It is the nature of the musical tradition that produced me, and so I’m just trying to honor the ways in which that music comes to speak to the best of ourselves.”

By working through a deep-rooted musical heritage, Sekou uses the language of the past to inform the present, serving up a direct response to the current political climate. “We recorded this album a few weeks after the election and so, given the spirit of the moment, the sense of depression, almost desperation that many people were feeling, I wanted to keep track of that music and that musical tradition that has preserved the people,” Sekou explains.

The album is a life raft of sorts, keeping everyone afloat who is all too familiar with that sinking feeling. “[The album seeks] to acknowledge the blues but not let the blues have the last word,” he says.

Sekou has been communicating with the blues his whole life.

“My biological grandfather played with B.B. King, Albert King, and Louis Jordan,” he recalls. “In the South, they would sweep the yard and put a piano on the porch and [my grandfather] would play and they’d sing and dance and drink all night.” Sekou never met his grandfather, who died in 1955, long before he was born, but he remembers hearing the blues in the gambling house where he worked for his uncle, counting money. While recording In Times Like These, Sekou took a break from the Dickinsons’ Zebra Ranch Studio in Coldwater, Mississippi, and made a trek home to Zent, Arkansas.

“I got a chance to go home and stand at my grandmother’s grave, the place that made me, and talk to my 93-year-old aunt and see my cousins and to be in the space and with the people who built out the capacity of who I am by tearing off the best pieces of themselves and sewing it into a quilt that still covers and warms me to this day,” he says.

Sekou channeled that energy back at the studio on the song “Old Time Religion.” “It was midnight, and we had been going for about 16 hours, and I had been to my grandmother’s grave and my grandfather’s grave and, in our tradition, we have this thing called devotional service, which is distinct from praise and worship,” he explains. “It’s what old country folks would do. And so I just did old-time religion music, which is essentially what I heard growing up in terms of a devotional service on Sunday morning.”

In order to achieve this sound, Sekou was working with a slew of musicians who had their own strong musical ties. Luther and Cody Dickinson’s father, the late Jim Dickinson, recorded with the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Dylan. For the sessions, they recruited pedal and slide steel guitarist AJ Ghent, Rev. Charles Hodges on the Hammond B3, who is most recognized for his collaborations with Al Green, and others.

“In addition to trying to respond to the contemporary political moment, there’s something else at stake: Everybody was at least one or two generations — if not three generations — deep in the music so there are literally four generations of musicians on this album,” Sekou explains. “And so it was amazing, you know, in that they have the music in their bones, which I think comes through on the record.”

The album’s first single, “Resist,” is a tribute to Standing Rock and revolves around a mantra: “We want freedom and we want it now.” Elsewhere on the record, a cover of Bob Marley’s “Burnin’ and Lootin’” stems from Sekou’s time in Ferguson, Missouri, protesting the shooting of Michael Brown.

“I’ve helped train about 5,000 people around the country in civil disobedience, non-violence, and we trained well over a thousand in Ferguson. And we kept telling them to trust the process, trust the system, it’s gonna work out,” he recalls. “There were military forces occupying Ferguson and they were tear gassing us night after night and it was essentially a war zone. And on the night of the non-indictment, as soon as they said they weren’t going to indict the officer, all hell broke loose, and I was trying to get to a studio that had been set up and I had my staff with me and they wouldn’t let my staff in. And, at this point, there’s gun shots, buildings are burning, there’s tear gas everywhere, and they were saying, ‘We’ll let you in, but we can’t let your staff in for security reasons.’ And so I refused to do the interview and I was just in the middle of the riots. I refused to go into the compound. And so it’s me kind of capturing what I’m seeing with the tear gas and the buildings on fire and feeling as though I have failed and I had lied to the young folks by telling them that the system would work on their behalf.”

In the wake of these experiences, Sekou, who went to college on a vocal performance scholarship, looked toward the music for release. “At the existential level, I am my freest,” Sekou says. “And so, hopefully, that freedom I feel is communicated through the music.”

European Tour Dates (with North Mississippi Allstars)

JUNE
22 – Bellinzona Blues Sessions – Bellinzona, SWI
25 – Oran Mor – Glasgow, UK
27 – Komedia – Brighton, UK
28 – Dingwalls – London, UK
29 – The Ruby Lounge – Manchester, UK

JULY
01 Lakeside Blues Festival – Järvenpää, FIN
02 – Solhällan – Österland, SWE
04 – Hwitan – Falkenberg, SWE

05 – Pustervik – Göteborg, SWE
06 John Dee – Oslo, NOR
07 – Kagelbanan – Stockholm, SWE
08 – Katalin – Uppsala, SWE

2017 RELEASES

We provide a home for independent artist’s distribution in Europe Via Essential

MAY
30 – Latest Music Bar – Brighton, UK
31 – Bush Hall – London, UK

JUNE
02 – Brudenell Games Room – Leeds, UK
03 – King Tut’s – Glasgow, UK
04 – Mash House – Edinburgh, IRL
05 – Voodoo – Belfast, IRL
06 – Workmans Club – Dublin, IRL
08 – Soup Kitchen – Manchester, UK
09 – The Portland Arms – Cambridge, UK
10 – SUPERSONIC – Paris, FRA
12 – Red Room – Nottingham, UK
13 – Fibbers – York, UK
15 – The Horn – St Albans, UK

Who Will be next? –  Joe Purdy’s latest record is an album for the current status quo in the world with very poignant compositions – which plant their feet deep in the tradition of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and others, in line with him as a self-described ‘hillbilly’ and with a different role from the songwriter who’s songs appear in many films and TV shows.