Avant-pop/jazz.

10 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Weird Jazz, POP: Quirky



Details:
I Fly is the debut EP of Brooklyn's avant-pop quintet Birdbrain. I Fly features the catchy compositions and inspired tunes of Yvette Perez. Doe-eyed chanteuse Yvette warbles infectious melodies backed by minimalist brass and reed arrangements. Birdbrainâs songs include strange tales of plants, factories and freeways (âHeat,â âConfection of Soundâ), accounts of sea life (âSea Cowâ) and an ode to an Iranian living in the Paris airport (âMehranâ). Yvette also performs solo, playing keyboards and singing about housework and nature. In Birdbrain, she enlists the finest horn players in New York City. Trombonist Peter Zummo has played with everyone from dance music innovator Arthur Russell to Teo Macero and composer âBlueâ Gene Tyranny, while sax men Tim Noe and Don Trubey have played with reeds great Daniel Carter in the North Brooklyn Sound Collective and are former members of the Bloomington, Indianaâs legendary Dancing Cigarettes. Inspired by The Incredible String Band, car horns, Yoko Ono and birdsong, Birdbrain resonates and dissonates an ecstatic racket. Birdbrain resides between pop and jazz and someplace not yet mappedâ¦

âAvant-lovelyâ â A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia City Paper

..itâs never dull, a perfect blend of the avant-garde and the accessible.â
â Marc Medwin, Dusted Magazine

âSqueaky and gratifyingly miniscule â song-lengthed micro-prog quartet Birdbrain feature Dagmar Krause-type banter warbled atop two saxists from the Brooklyn Sound Collective and a trombonist who used to help out Arthur Russell.â
â Chuck Eddy, Village Voice


Excerpt from CD review in January 2005 issue of The Wire magazine â by Dave Mandl

âEverybody likes a bit of tension now and then, and âI Fly,â the debut release from New York quartet Birdbrain, provides plenty. Consisting of just two saxophones, trombone and vocals, the groupâs music features spirited horn battles and a singer who treats the notes of the standard diatonic scale as if they were merely rough guides to be tweaked as needed.
Obvious reference points for âI Flyâ are The World Saxophone Quartet or Rova Saxophone Quartet, though Birdbrain are less selfconsciously avant garde â more poppy, in fact.The ten songs here are short and savoury rather than sweet. Theyâre epigrammatic mini-stories, like the haiku-ish âSea Cowâ: âSea Cow/Swims in our tow/Sea cow/kinda like you now/ Oh, manatee in tow/Ahoy ahoy/ Sea cow.â Perezâs breathless punk jazz vocalising, half spoken/half sung, owes much to No Waveâ¦.
With no rhythm section as such, Birdbrainâs three horn players (Don Trubey on alto, Tim Noe on tenor and downtown avant garde music legend Peter Zummo on trombone) fill multiple roles. Most tracks feature pulsing pedal bass figures on alto sax, laying a foundation for rhythmically complex call and response duels between tenor and tromboneâ¦In itâs less restrained moments, the horn section almost evokes the crazed French jazz rock outfit Etron Fou Leloublan. At its punkiest, it comes close to the naïve, atonal wailing of Lora Logic.â