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| rinsethealgorithm Locutions CD release party |
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| November 2, 2008 • Lula Lounge • Toronto |
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| Report by Zoë Guigueno with photos by Roger Humbert |
| If you go see rinsethealgorithm, be forewarned:
1) You will not be able to sit still. Or, you will sit up really straight.
2) You may feel like an inner organ is about to explode.
3) You will experience tremendous joy.
It's Rich Brown's band, and he has some of the feistiest jazz musicians around playing in it. Take Larnell Lewis — if I could only describe his drumming in words! He kills me! Lewis is a very frightening drummer. He blew out of Humber College a few years ago, leaving his teachers in the dust. He plays like he invented the drums. He plays like he is possessed by some supernatural force.
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| Rich Brown: here is a man that came onstage wearing a suit jacket, jeans and bright white shoes. Expressing over and over how pleased he was to see such a good turnout. And everyone at their tables, happy because they are about to see this great band, and drinking and eating. And Brown always with a smile on his face, and a song he wrote for his mother, and songs dedicated to friends, and his wife Yvette Tollar singing on a couple tunes, and the love coming out of this man can be sensed even if you don't know him and if you're sitting, say, in a lesson with him he instantly makes you feel happy and relaxed. And in his playing, he is agile and graceful and bluesy and lovely and mean! Dropping those low notes on unexpected beats with Lewis laying into the crash cymbal exactly at the same time and everyone in the band laughing because Robi Botos is destroying the Steinway Grand that was rented just for this night.
And the music sometimes goes wandering away from rehearsed lines and chords, out into the mind of pianist David Virelles, who graduated with Lewis. He is playing a synth that sits on top of the grand, and a laptop beside the synth, providing samples to loop and another laptop sits further down on the piano, near the keytar.
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Rich Brown |
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Robi Botos & Luis Deniz |
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| The solos shred and meander and command. Luiz Deniz with his alto sax holds his ground while Robi Botos plays with him in unison on a melodica. The crowd is guzzling wine and laughing and dancing in their seats, and can't wait until the end of a tune to vocalize their astonishment.
The party was held in honour of rinsethealgorithm's long awaited album, Locutions. While the playing on the record is fantastic, there's something cheesy about it. It may be the sound of an alto sax, or the shiny production. The synth, the vocals. The super tight arrangements. These aspects of the band were all present at the Lula Lounge show, but they were excused by the excitement and possibilities of a live performance.
And I have to mention that the service at Lula Lounge is top notch — and the mushroom bisque was extraordinary.
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The musicians
Rich Brown – electric bass
Robi Botos – piano, keys, keytar, melodica
Larnell Lewis – drums
David Virelles – piano, keys, samples
Luiz Deniz – alto saxophone
Yvette Tollar – vocals
profile.myspace.com/rinsethealgorithm
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