NOMO : GHOST ROCK (CD x LP)
ALSO BY NOMO:
 
PRAISE FOR GHOST ROCK:
      
      
      
      
      
      
 
NOMO on NPR's Weekend Edition - July 27, 2008
"The band has a tiny name, but it makes a big impression when it drives into town. NOMO is eight musicians from Ann Arbor, Mich., with dozens of instruments and just one van.
'It is quite amazing to see us pile out of the van. Most people don't believe we fit in there,' bandleader Elliot Bergman says. 'It's like Tetris with guitar amps. Russian nesting dolls — drums inside of each other.' ..."
Hear the interview and view the photo gallery of NOMO's hand made instruments at: www.npr.org
Elliot Bergman on The Voice of the Arts (AM 1690, WMLB Atlanta)
Click image to listen/download interview. www.1690wmlb.com
"Elliot Bergman, front man and saxophone player for NOMO, discusses the maturation of the band on their new album Ghost Rock as they branch out from their Afrobeat roots and explore modal jazz, rock, electronic, and even some Javanese Gamelan music."
Elliot Bergman on Radio M (Chicago Public Radio)
Click image to re-direct to CPR.
"Tonight on Radio M, Tony shares the mic with saxophonist Elliot Bergman. Bergman is the founder of the Ann Arbor-based afrobeat collective NOMO. The band digs deeper on its upcoming release Ghost Rock, going beyond the sounds of the father of afrobeat Fela Kuti. Bergman says it was a risky departure but is betting fans will come along for the ride. Tonight, Bergman shares stories of his music making as well as what sounds have influenced him. He'll be have in some of his favorite records to share with listeners."
"Ghost Rock is a giant leap forward. This is the instrumental band to watch. Period."
- All Music Guide
"Their follow-up, Ghost Rock, doesn’t just push that future-primitive envelope further, it punches holes right through it ... Guerrilla groove merchants, third-ear fakirs, lo-fi sci-fi square-root-of-pi pipers—call ’em whatcha want, this Ghost Rock shit fucking rocks."
- Montreal Mirror
"...the band pushes the envelope to include elements of electronica and comes up with something truly special ... This one conjures up trailblazers Brian Eno (circa "Before and After Science") and Miles Davis (circa "On the Corner") and is utterly astonishing. Still driven by horns and percussion, Nomo is in formidable form on "Ghost Rock," one of the most audacious and spirited albums so far this year."
- Detroit Free Press
"While American spins on African music have proliferated of late, few genre-crossing groups deliver the Tortoise-sized fusion of NOMO."
- Earplug
"Really a nice mix - the album is excellent!"
- Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio 1 / Worldwide)
Ghost Rock is the new album from the Michigan-based collective NOMO. The album, produced by Warn Defever, sheds light on the way forward for a band that has been forging its own vital sound. This is not the Afrobeat of Fela, nor the revivalist funk of a forgotten decade. This record owes as much to Can, Eno, and MIA as it does Kuti, Francis Bebey, and Funkadelic. On Ghost Rock, NOMO arrives in a new place. There’s no loss of steam as they incorporate new influences, instead NOMO breaks through with a matured and developed sound that is fully its own.
“World music, jazz, electronica, Afrobeat…I hope that we don't get marginalized by any of these terms. We are an American band, and in our hearts I think we're more of a rock band than anything else, but we do love so many different types of music,” says band leader Elliot Bergman. “We have a set of musicians, and we are trying to organize our sounds in a way that represents ourselves. We're not trying to make a record that sounds like it was recorded in the 70's and we're not trying to make anybody think that this was recorded in Nigeria. We're not trying to fool anybody, and especially not ourselves! This is our music. It is full of life, full of emotion. It’s funky, danceable, weird, heavy, exuberant, angry, joyous and raucous,” he adds.
The band’s perpetual grooves are deeper than ever. The horns are set ablaze and analog synths beam an electrified energy into the music. The homemade percussion arsenal is ramped up a notch, and the electric sawblade gamelan brings gong-like overtones into the tangled vine of synthetic and organic strands. The band taps into its full orchestral potential—the arrangements are filled with timbral variety, as the bubbling textures of the percussion meld with the soaring sounds of the horn section. Bergman describes how NOMO evolved to incorporate the wild looped sounds that can be heard throughout the album (nowhere more noticeably than on the screaming electric tone at the top of the introductory track “Brainwave”), “We toured non-stop for a while, and on down time, I would spend every night in my basement recording hours of loops and synth textures. I was fascinated with early Morton Subotnick records, the percussive parts, and when I ran out of records to buy, I just started making my own Subotnick-like loops. I didn't want the end product to sound like early synth music, but I loved the textures and gong-like tones of Silver Apples, Wild Bull, 4 Butterflies, etc,” he says. “Most of the loops were created with the instruments that I've been making, and have amazing variety, perhaps due to my inconsistency as an instrument manufacturer. Some sound amazingly bassy and others have a chime-like ethereal tone. Eno talks about generative music, and creating a system that produces music with little interference. I like that idea, and every night I would try to create as many loops as possible on these instruments without editing. Then I would go back a few weeks later and listen to these bubbling textures that can be heard in so many different ways. Trying to get the band to learn them always sparked heated arguments about where "the one” is!”
With the loops on Ghost Rock serving as the framework for the compositions the band were freed up to experiment with different ideas and a bigger, more orchestral, sound was born. Helping NOMO achieve this new direction were some heavy rhythmic contributors. Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph lend their percussive mastery to several tracks with Drake’s fiery drumming propelling “All the Stars” to new heights. Josh Abrams fills out the low end on “Rings.” What once was a rotating collective is now a tightly knit eight piece band. This is no longer a loose assembly of great players, but a band that relies heavily upon each other, each member playing a distinct role, with a vibrant personality. Dan Bennett's fiery baritone saxophone anchors the horn section. Justin Walter and Ingrid Racine hold down the brass section with contrasting approaches to the trumpet--Walter's lyricism provides a cool counterpart to Racine's raw and brassy punch--dig her wah trumpet solo on "all the stars." This record finds the percussion section deeper than ever, with percussionist rotating chairs-Dan Piccolo and Erik Hall play the kit, and Jason Murdy and Quin Kirchner fill in on the Congas. Erik's main role is on guitar, and he and Jamie Register seem to have a deep kinship. Her elegant, but muscular basslines tie in with the guitar work seamlessly.
The album seems to move in many directions at once. It is more electronic, and more natural, it is more exuberant, but darker. More spiritual and hymn like, but also more visceral. The songs are sweet, but they are dirty and distorted. It is as primitive as it is futuristic. While these seemingly divergent themes might sound like some post-modern musical meltdown, it’s clear that this is the sound of a band growing into its own collective voice. NOMO pulls from the past, but also points towards a hopeful future. Fans of the band will know that they like to start and end their live shows in the audience, and the opening and closing tracks on Ghost Rock echo this aspect of their performances. “I think that it's really important to participate--as an audience, as a band member, etc. and joining the audience for a song at the beginning or end of a show invites participation,” explains Bergman. “On a good night, it feels like everybody is working together. Having a few great dancers in the audience can really drive the band to new levels, and we love to sing together at the end of show. It ends up solidifying the bond between the player and the listener--and it starts to dissolve those typical divisions between active and passive. It helps to make people feel that music is an event; social, spiritual and communal rather than a commodity to be consumed.”
The band has toured incessantly since the 2006 release New Tones. That album garnered much critical acclaim and ended up on top 10 lists from NPR, Gilles Peterson, and Global Rhythm. The band has performed over 150 live concerts since the album, touring North America, and Europe including stops at Bumbershoot, Pitchfork Festival, the Montreal Jazz Festival, SXSW, and WOMEX. Able to fit anywhere (literally and figuratively)—their sizable lineup hasn’t kept them from sharing a stage with everyone from Earth Wind and Fire, to Konono No.1, to Sharon Jones, to Dan Deacon. |
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