2008 Reviews
Listen to Sean Noonan on Outsight Radio Hours
"On 17 August, 2008, Outsight met Sean Noonan. This New York jazz musician is blending an exciting Afro-Celtic blend in Brewed by Noon. Listen in and hear the recipe."
THE RHYTHMS OF SEAN NOONAN MAKE YOU LONG FOR MORE
de Volkskrant (NL)
October 3 2008
Bruises, a torn eyebrow and blood dripping from your nose: that? what you are left with once drummer Sean Noonan is finished with you.
It feels wonderful. The New Yorker, posing in a ring with robe and gloves on his new cd Boxing Dreams, is a charming exciting type.
Like a cross between stand up comedian Jochem Myer and an angry rat from a cartoon, he relentlessly knocked out both the audience and his bandmembers last Wednesday in Paradox, Tilburg.
Bare feet and in boxershorts.
It went on and on and on, presenting a unique and utterly focused musical brew of (among others) African rhythms, urgent improvisations and a fair doses of Jimi Hendrix rock.
Polyrhythm and irregular grooves are popular among improvising ensembles these days, but rarely it sounds so un-academic as it does with Noonan.
It? because of his natural/self-evident playing techniques, filled with subtle accents but easy to follow.
On top of that, Brewed By Noon is a carefully selected group of musicians, just as unconventional as they are appealing.
The imperturbable basslines of Jamaaladeen Tacuma are like a warm wall to lean against, guitarist Aram Bajakian defines the mood in a virtuosic way.
But the ultimate stimulate comes from Malian percussionist and vocalist Abdoulaye Diabate.
His lines move between those of the dominating western harmonies, they are powerful and unshakeable. It made you long for more.
And the frighteningly genius noise guitarist Marc Ribot wasn? even there. He will join the band for the concerts in Utrecht and Amsterdam.
4 stars out of 5.
KOEN SCHOUTEN
MUSIC REVIEW: SEAN NOONAN BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
Written by Mark Saleski
Published October 21, 2008
A few years ago, I started writing down short descriptions of the bits of my dreams that managed to survive the evening.
The moods ranged from pretty darned funny (Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia playing basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers) to somber in the extreme (two scuba divers having an underwater conversation about a third, who was a about to drown).
After getting several of these down on paper, it occurred to me that the short vignettes had a lot in common with how I experience lyrics in popular music. That is: I hear them only in fragments.
Now, you might think that this ruins the artist's intent, that my model of perception would cause me to miss the point of a song.
You might have me there but, in my defense, I do seem to 'get' most songs... over time and by a sort of musical osmosis.
Drummer/composer Sean Noonan put together Boxing Dreams as a series of musical dreamscapes, with each tune to be considered its own story.
Despite the fact that these tales are delivered via Ireland, Senegal, Mali, and America (with languages Gaelic, Wolof, Bambara, and English),
the music helps bring the stories to life they make sense, even when the language does not. Very much like a dream.
With an incredible cast of players that includes Marc Ribot (guitar), Amram Bajakian (guitar, Max MSP), the great Jamaaladeen Tecuma on bass, and leader Noonan on drums,
it's safe to say that you've never heard music like this before. The key players here are vocalists Susan McKeown and Abdoulaye Diabate, and Mat Maneri on viola.
The vocals curl their way around each other, Maneri's viola acting like an extra voice.
Musical dreamscapes? Yes, beginning with the opening title track. Elongated guitar, viola, and bass lines swirl around creating a kind of ambient fog.
Things slowly move toward the ominous as the guitar swells, finally erupting into a few huge power chords with even more powerful vocals from Abdoulaye Diabate.
That exhilarating climax gives way to the transition into "Courage," where the story is told via Maneri's viola, intertwined with both Diabate's and McKeown's vocals.
The searching nature of the tune doesn't prepare the listener for the song's jarring, almost punkish midsection.
The surprising new direction really does represent Boxing Dreams in microcosm.
I won't come up with complete list of highlights here, as it will force another 1500 words on you when, honestly, you should be listening.
It's safe to say that tracks like "The Return Of The Peanut Butter Queen" (jazz through a Captain Beefheart filter), "Over-n-Out" (full-on freakout),
"Story of Jones" (country, devolving into skronk), "Big Mouth" (funk-a-licious) will have you wondering why Sean Noonan isn't a household name.
That is, if you're not afraid to dream a little.
SEAN NOONAN BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
Written by John Berkowitz
Published November 8, 2008
Sean Noonan Brewed by Noon creates mind bending music that is visceral as it manifests itself into an organism and walks on its own.
The music rides in the vessel of a horse and it? the spurs from the rider that send an alarming jolt to make the intensity soar and music run rampant.
This album, Boxing Dreams, is an expedition as it is gritty and fascinating with its clunk and clatter of sounds.
The cluster of sound mixing is gut checking and an arousal of shock as we travel through a wormhole to another dimension.
Boxing Dreams takes us many places from somewhere dreamy and enchanting to the outskirts of dark and shadowy badlands.
I don? want to classify this as a state altering trip, but it? certainly imaginative and takes us over the horizon.
The music is just so interesting and a wondrous place setting, even though it turns on a dime from scraping and battering to psychedelic imagery that comes to life.
Brewed by Noon has a mystical aura about it that seems to conjure a pictograph of shutter flashing images.
Sometimes it? haunting and chilling, that just makes you feel it in your bones.
The course of each song seems to follow an interesting formula of a sound build up and capping off the end with culturally hindered vocals that seem to be the voice of a spirit.
The cap off seems to be very celebratory, acting as the reward at the end of the convoluted maze each track wheels you down.
It? very ghost-like and this blended pot of musical styles is highly intellectual and thought provoking.
Boxing Dreams?/i> cleverness and tunefully high energy investment floors you.
Sean Noonan Brewed by Noon is an escapism vehicle that hoists you up and takes you away.
GATHERING DREAMS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD
by Door Frank van Herk
published in de Volkskrant on
30 October 2008
In 2003, he almost lost his life in a car accident and maybe its because of that, the Irish American drummer seems to be in a hurry because on his new Brewed by noon album there is enough material to cover two or three albums.
The concept of the group is special, a sometimes clashing and tense combination of jazz, hard rock, Celtic and west African music. Gathering musical element from all over the world we hear this often but seldom as good as in this project.
The aggressive punk jazz guitar of Marc Ribot transcends the flames of sound produced by his colleague Aram Bajakian, the micro-tonal singing of Mat Maneri? viola, ecstatic griot vocals of Abdoulaye Diabat and the more darker folk vocals in Gaelic of Susan McKeown, and the funky bass playing of Jamaaladeen Tacuma: it hits you all together like a wave, in wide screen.
Its not exactly relaxing but extraordinary captivating, intense, and indeed also dreamy.
editors rating ***** out of *****
visitors rating ***** out of *****
translated from Dutch by Erna Franssens
BEING BREWED BY NOON
Sean Noonan | Innova Recordings
By Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Published: December 05, 2008
Few musicians since Miles Davis have had such a penchant for boxing as drummer Sean Noonan--the CD photos for Being Brewed by Noon show him bedecked in all the trappings of the sport, and he boxes with a pumpkin-headed monster in the video version of ?umpkinhead Part 2 in the accompanying DVD.
This new record is not so much the boxer's follow-up to the fine Stories to Tell (Songlines, 2006) as it is a second kick at the same can. Six of the twelve numbers on this package were also featured on the earlier effort, and more generally, the musical project is the same: a simmering brew (indeed) of West African guitar and rhythm with Celtic elements, graced by the participation of at least two leading lights of the New York scene--the swooping, borderline free-viola of Mat Maneri and the humid, heavy-metal guitar of Marc Ribot.
And it's a project worth checking out, though not every record library would need to include both Stories to Tell and Being Brewed by Noon. Both have points in their favor: the more recent release benefits from a DVD with a long and somewhat sloppy documentary by Tom Asma.
This effort has a loose, live feel, and if the former record sounded like a collective with shifting personnel, this one sounds like a real band. That impression is fostered by generous footage of the band performing on the documentary DVD. The record shares that loose feel with the underrated Live at the Caravan of Dreams by drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson with Twins Seven Seven (Caravan of Dreams, 1986), and likewise echoes its fusion of chiming, relentlessly positive jazz with West African musical building blocks. (Maneri's viola stands in here for Akbar Ali's violin on the Jackson record.)
Noonan takes the notion of Afro-Celtic fusion quite seriously, with Susan McKeown singing in Gaelic and Abdoulaye Diabat and Thierno Camara in (I think) Wolof and Bambara. The substrate upon which this fusion occurs is a layer of earnest, ponderous 70s-FM rock and roll. The 70s connection is especially apparent in the marvelous ?o Strings Attached.?br>
?at the Cat, meanwhile, is the best of the new numbers, if only half brewed--a punky, rock segment, followed by several minutes of dreamy, brooding Gaelic verse, punctuated by Ribot's riotous guitar.
This music has a certain drunken grandiosity--and amiability. It sounds spontaneous, but cannot help but let you glimpse the considerable musical intelligence that holds it together. Letting Noonan talk about his musical philosophy on the DVD--and providing visual evidence of his kinetic drumming style (in the agitated lineage of Jack DeJohnette, adds to the experience.
Style: Beyond Jazz
SEAN NOONAN'S BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
published in Flie?text
Dec. 08, Vol. 01
Ein wirkliches musikalisches Abenteuer in Weltklasse-Besetzung:
J.Tacuma (Ornette Coleman u.a.), Geigenikone Mat Maneri, 2 Gitarren (u.a. Marc Ribot), diverse Percussion, Gesang von A.Diabate (expressiv, z.T. einfach bet?end, oft afrikanisch, sogar mal arabisch gepr?t)
und der gro?artigen Edel-Folkerin Susan McKeown (ungebunden, von Kunstgesang bis folkig).
Mitrei?end abziehender zugleich intelligenter Rock, federnd-komplexer jazziger Rock/rockiger Jazz, Avantgarde, Afrika, Future Jazz, alt-irische Lyrik (nicht Musik!),
eine herrliche rootsig-folkige Ballade. Ankl?ge an z.B. Mahavishnu O., Ornette, Lounge Lizards, James Blood Ulmer, Bill Laswell. Gitarren wie Geige rauh, wild, ekstatisch, noisig, einf?lsam, malend, gestreichelt, melodisch forschend.
Alles von hoch-intensiv brennend-schmerzhaft, atmosph?isch, dr?end, bis leise-diffizil/kammermusikalisch. Mehrfach auch ganz harmonische wundersch?e Melodien.
Ein lustvolles virtuoses Ausreizen. Tip! (dvd)
A real musical adventure with world class musicians: J.Tacuma (Ornette Coleman and others), violin icon Mat Maneri, 2 guitars (e.g. Marc Ribot), diverse percussions, vocals by A.Diabate (expressive, sometimes simply enchanting, often African, sometimes even of Arabic influence) and the great, noble folk singer Susan McKeown (independent, ranging between artistic and folksy).
Rousing but also intelligent rock, bouncing complex jazzy rock/rock jazz, avant garde, Africa, future jazz, ancient Irish lyric poetry (not music!), a blissful rootsy-folky ballad. Reminding of e.g. Mahavishnu O., Ornette, Lounge Lizards, James Blood Ulmer, Bill Laswell. Guitars as well as viola raw, wild, ecstatic, noisy, sensible, picturesce, caressing, melodicly questing.
Including everything from highly intensive, burningly sore, atmospherical, threatening, to gently difficile/camber music. Over and over filled with very harmonicly beautiful melodies. Exciting and virtuoso to the end. Tip!
translated from German by Leandra White
MUSIC REVIEW: SEAN NOONAN BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
Written by Big Geez
Published November 13, 2008
Boxing Dreams, a new release on the Songlines label from Sean Noonan and his Brewed By Noon group, adds a few more tales to last year's Stories To Tell, which introduced his vision of "wandering folk music" to many new fans.
Once again the unique drummer/composer is providing listeners a chance to experience a fascinating fusion of influences, music that combines everything from jazz and rock to international folk music.
The group is fairly sizable, consisting of Noonan and eight other performers, including guitarist Aram Bajakian, Irish vocalist Susan McKeown, and West African percussionist Abdoulaye Diabat? who also performs some vocals.
Although title of the album (and the picture of Noonan) would seem to point to a pugilistic theme, that is not boxnecessarily the case.
As he says, "The main effect I wanted in Boxing Dreams was to give the impression that the entire album is a single boxed dream, where each song captures a different dreamed or imagined story."
But that being said, it's also a tribute to his home town, Brockton, Massachusetts, which was also the home town of legendary boxer Rocky Marciano.
But let's talk about the music, which is - after all - why we're here.
It's difficult to describe, but there's little doubt that it is a wild ride through a constantly shifting musical landscape.
The result is sometimes impressive and other times baffling, but it's never boring.
A good example is a piece named for the god of dreams, "Morpheus," which encompasses fiery guitar, addictive percussion, and McKeown's lilting voice singing lines from an Irish Gaelic dream poem.
A startling, but strangely intoxicating combination.
I was also intrigued by her vocal on "Look," which was again based on historical lyrics, but ancient Gaelic isn't the only language heard here.
Given the international makeup of the group, it's not surprising that several different languages show up from time to time, with the Mali-born Diabat?s vocals on "Big Mouth," especially of note.
My favorite here was probably "Story of Jones," which is intended as an instrumental narrative of the story of legendary (and tragic) trainman Casey Jones.
Quite a leap for an song without lyrics, but it does feature some Impressive guitar work.
Boxing Dreams is something very different.
Wildly original, it's not for everyone (and truth be told, I'm sitting the fence) but it is worth a listen, and might be just the thing for many who are looking for something new and genre-bending.
(Sound clips available at Allmusic.)
SEAN NOONAN'S BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
By Robert Kaye
Published October 16, 2008
In today's music industry, overt commercialism and pop paparazzism often run rampant.
The world music genre, unfortunately, has also been adversely affected by such P.R. ploys and sonic shenanigans.
This is not the case on Sean Noonan's Boxing Dreams.
The album reflects the drummer/percussionist/composer's fervent eclectic interests.
Noonan and his mates incorporate elements of heavy rock, West African griot, Celtic melodies, avant-garde, punk, funk and other edgy influences.
Prearranged cacophony is often the backbone of many songs, thundered by Noonan? able drumming and from Aram Bajakian's and Marc Ribot's roaring electric guitars.
The title track, "Boxing Dreams," is reminiscent of some of the emboldened, pensive improvisations by the '72-'75 King Crimson line-up, although Noonan's tune features African chants.
This segues into "Courage," a still brooding, yet more upbeat number with Gaelic and African chanting.
This is an ambitious project: It may be too "out there" for a few listeners, whereas others will delight in Noonan's sinewy songwriting.
SEAN NOONAN'S BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
Published in Sch?e T?e Jazz
October 2008
?magine Prime Time joined by Fela Kuti and Bill Frisell,
then remixed by Bill Laswell,
and you?l start to get a hint of just what an intoxicatingly soulful blast this is.?br>
-Jazz Review.
Sean Noonan ist der Anarchist des Jazz er h?t sich an keine Regeln,
bedient sich hier und klaut dort, und erschafft sich ein eigenes musikalisches
Universum. Seine erlesene Band setzt Noonans Idee von der Integration aller
m?lichen musikalischen Wurzeln in die improvisierte Musik perfekt um.
Afrikanisches ?torytelling in Wort und Percussion, irische Bardensongs
nichts ist vor ?rewed By Noon sicher.
BREWED BY NOON: BOXING DREAMS
Door Frans van Leeuwen
30 september 2008
nrc next (NL)
?fro-celtic jazz indierock noemt leider/drummer Sean Noonan de muziek op deze plaat, waarop meer gezongen wordt dan op Stories to Tell van vorig jaar. Abdoulaye Diabate laat zich horen in het Bambara, Thierno Camara in het Wolof en Susan McKeown in het Gaelic.
Geen talen die we hier allemaal verstaan, maar dat geeft niks. De zangpartijen zitten ingebed in een sterk instrumentaal kader met viool (Mike Maneri), elektrische gitaren (Aram Bajakian en Marc Ribot) en basgitaar (Jamaladeen Tacuma). Vanaf de langzaam aanzwellende titelsong aan het begin tot het ruige eind is Boxing Dreams een plaat die boeit en verbaast. En, fel swingend of dromerig, meevoert naar plaatsen waar je nooit dacht te komen.
Dit alles vooral dankzij Noonan zelf die puntige stukken schrijft, spannend weet te arrangeren en ook als drummer heel alert voor de dag komt. Wie in zijn compositieproced? soms Carla Bley of een vleugje Frank Zappa meent te horen, hoeft niet terug naar de muziekschool.
SEAN NOONAN'S BREWED BY NOON - BOXING DREAMS
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - Justin Cober-Lake - Cave 17
The first time I finished listening to Boxing Dreams, I immediately emailed Zeth and said I wasn? sure if this disc was the album of the year or just a complete mess.
I?e been listening to it regularly this fall, and I? convinced it? closer to the former, but with some of the latter thrown in.
Of course, what makes the album great is exactly what makes it problematic. Noon and his band are all over the place, mixing elements of jazz, rock, and world music
(yes, I know I? using the term in the vaguest sense, but I? not sure I can pin down either the African rhythms and vocals or the Gaelic folk singing), sometimes merging all the styles into a single cut.
The wild blending makes for a fascinating listen.
At times, it? a bit too disjointed; there? a bit of ?et? stop and see what happens if Susan McKeown sings a slow melody right now that hinders the album.
Even so, the transitions, flows, and juxtapositions keep the record interesting, as something unexpected might be about to happen.
Of course, simple mishmash doesn? make a great album.
If the artists involved here couldn? play, all the hybridity in the world wouldn? make this worth listening.
Fortunately, the group can really get down.
Marc Ribot (who must be my artist of the year given his appearance on two of my favorite albums this year) caught my attention first, with his typically challenging approach to the guitar,
but Aram Bajakian (also doing the Max MSP, which you might associate more with someone like Christian Fennesz) holds his own on the instrument as well.
They?e mixed in separate channels; sometimes you can tell them apart otherwise, but it? an integrated band.
Jamaaladeen Tacuma plays a strong bass throughout the album, with special room to shine on ?ook, a track with thousand-year-old Irish-Gaelic poetry for lyrics.
Abdoulaye Diabate? bound to get some attention (on a relative scale) on the disc, providing vocals as well as conga playing.
But of course, all these musicians and singers are kind of secondary to Noonan? compositional skills (he? a drummer, but he doesn? seem to emphasize that point in the music).
So what you end up with is this really intense, fascinating melange of global music, run through with an avant-garde stick.
And it works. It? not perfect, but even the shortcomings are worth paying attention to, resulting in the type of album that remains a challenge for repeated listens without sacrificing the pleasure of hearing it.
Blow Up Review, Dec 2008 |
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