Club d’Elf
Thursday, September 28th @ 8pm (doors at 7pm)
GA Seated: $30 Advance | $40 Door
Vinegar Hill presents Club d’Elf for a night of Moroccan-dosed psychedelic dub jazz!
Club d’Elf has been helping audiences lose track of time for almosttwenty five years with its mesmerizing synthesis of Moroccantraditional music and electronic, dubbed-out funk. Circling aboutbassist/composer Mike Rivard and drummer Dean Johnston, each Clubd’Elf performance features a different line-up, drawn from aconstellation of some of the most creative improvisers from the jazz,DJ, rock & world music scenes of Boston, NYC and beyond. The band’smusic draws from a startlingly wide spectrum of styles, includingjazz, hip hop, electronica, avant garde, prog-rock and dub. Under thetutelage of member Brahim Fribgane (who hails from Casablanca) theband has absorbed Moroccan trance music, which is now an essentialpart of the mix. Diverse audiences are drawn to Fribgane’s mesmerizingoud stylings, and Rivard’s commanding playing of the Moroccan sintir.Trance forms the central core of the Club d’Elf aesthetic, weavingtogether the band’s various influences.In April 2022 the band released its latest album, ‘You Never Know’,which rose to #2 on the Relix chart. The record unfurls uponkaleidoscopic clouds of spiced smoke, shifting from chopped dub-jazzthrough trance epics that reimagine Boston as a city of bazaars. Clubd’Elf pay tribute to the music and musicians who have been primaryinfluences, with half the album being covers of gnawa, Miles Davis,Joe Zawinul, Moroccan band Nass el-Ghiwane, and Frank Zappa. The otherhalf consists of original music inspired by Rivard’s personal journeyinto darkness following a near death experience in the remote jungleof the Peruvian Amazon.“You Never Know is a wide ranging romp, full of serenity, chaos,longing, improvisation and peerless musicianship inspired by musicfrom India and Morocco as well as the maverick jazz of Miles Davis andFrank Zappa.” – Banning Eyre, Afropop Worldwide“Crushed between the borders of Morocco, jam band land and the kingdomof avant-garde jazz lies Club d’Elf…James Brown-meets-Sun-Ra.” – JedGottlieb, Boston Herald“Sounds like the lovechild of Pink Floyd and George Clinton, droppedin Marrakesh…some deeply psychedelic music.” – Marlon Bishop, WNYC