For the past four years, a quartet of New York musicians has been entertaining live audiences with a unique fusion of Jamaican dub, Indian raga, psychedelia, Krautrock, and modal jazz under the banner of Spaghetti Eastern Electro Dub. Today, they are releasing “Live at Green Kill Session,” a six-track album recorded at a performance at the Green Kill art gallery in Kingston, N.Y.
Spaghetti Eastern Electro Dub is a project initiated by guitarist/keyboardist Sal Cataldi, an offshoot of his long-running solo venture, Spaghetti Eastern Music. Cataldi’s partners are bassist Tom “Spontaneous” Semioli, drummer Dirk Drazen, and Dawoud “The Renegade Sufi” Kringle. The latter adds an Eastern flavor to the proceedings with a hybrid instrument of his design, a fusion of sitar, cello, and guitar, the Dautar.
The tracks are anchored by bassist Semioli’s rock-solid dub-styled thematic riffs, Cataldi’s spacey looping textures, and Drazen’s rock-steady drumming. As they progress, subtle evolutions in tempo and tone center develop as Cataldi and Kringle take turns adding melodic themes and solos. Kringle’s unique instrument is sometimes bowed, plucked, or strummed – creating sounds ranging from Middle Eastern raga to vintage ‘70s Krautrock. Kringle and Cataldi manipulate their instruments with loopers, fuzz tones, ring modulators, harmonizers, Ebow, and more.
“Kilimangaro,” the album opener, is a 12-minute plus journey introduced with Semioli’s rock-steady riffing and a backdrop of Cataldi’s backward loops. Kringle introduces the main theme with long minimalist drones, leading to Cataldi’s serpentine soloing. Afterward comes “Annapurna,” “Lhotse,” “Love Mountain Love,” “Blue Mountain Peak,” and “Kilimangaro (Radio Edit).”
This album will have you completely entranced as the instruments weave together to guide you into hypnosis. All instrumentalists work off each other’s sounds and harmonize to make melodic, groovy, and passionate experimental tunes.
The quartet’s sound has been compared to Miles Davis’s early 70s electric period, Bill Laswell’s dub explorations, Norwegian/ECM records guitarist Terje Rypdal’s post-jazz atmospherics, Brian Eno and David Byrne’s world music collaborations, and even Khruangbin’s calming psychedelic Eastern modal music.
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