feature photo: Joshua Marc Levy & Asheville Art Family
America’s favorite gonzo percussionist has a whole new band with the same bad-assed attitude. Mike Dillon, long admired in this space for taking the vibraphone and marimba to all the fun places has a new fun release Inflorescence where he lets it all hang out (he’s incapable of doing otherwise). Often pigeonholed into jazz in the broadest sense because no one is really sure where to place him, and that probably suits him just fine.
Citing influences as diverse as Milt Jackson, Led Zeppelin, P-funk, Bad Brains and Frank Zappa, Dillon sees them all cut from the same cloth. They all did their own thing and valued artistic freedom above all else.
That’s what Dillon is about and certainly that’s what his latest backing group Punkadelick is about. As that name implies, this is punk rock, not so much the music but the mindset. Keeping it tidy as a trio, Dillon is joined by Brian Haas (keyboards, synth bass, recorder) and Nikki Glaspie (drums, vocals).
I like this new band because I like the bands these members came from. Haas is co-founder, keyboardist and leader of the long-running Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, while Glaspie (Beyonce, Dumpstaphunk) has helmed The Nth Power. Both combos have reputations as genre-hopping, funky jazz outlaws with vast jam capabilities. Those are things that suit Dillon to a “T”. Also, Dillon and Haas have been in a band together before; remember Nolatet?
With their musical history, Dillon probably didn’t need to coax them over to his brand of punk-jazz; they were pretty much at that spot already. To be sure, no one is really stepping out of character on Inflorescence, making this one of Dillon’s loosest, most balls-out records; Punkadelick is not thinking too much, they just play.
Haas shows off his aggressive side right away on electric piano with “Desert Monsoon” and of course, Dillon responds in kind, on electronically-altered vibes that gives it the crunchy sound that this thumper of a song call for. Marimba is also a Dillon specialty, first heard on the opening moments of “Inflorescence,” folding in vibes that sketches out the main motif under which Glaspie lays down funky pulses. Haas eventually emerges, making this a formidable two-man, three-instrument front line.
Dillon asked Haas to write a stoner-rock song for acoustic piano and vibraphone and “Slowly But Surely” is the result. Rife with riffs, Glaspie maintains a tough groove. Haas pulls out more from his bag of circuited keyboard tricks for “Stravinsky Spectacles” and runs free.
“Pandas” begins with Dillon’s reggae/dub figure on marimba and when it moves into the second figure, Haas and Glaspie come in and pile on rhythm and color. “Devil’s Playground” was the album’s first advance single, and for good reason. It rocks hard and the exuberance is palpable, but it’s also melodic as hell.
“Apocalypse Daydream” is a fierce reworking of Dillon’s “Apocalyptic Daydreams” from 2020’s Shoot the Moon and “Another Slippery Slope” is informally a three-part suite, going from funky to slow to Brazilian, each mood serving launching pads for vigorous soloing by Dillon and Haas.
Haas’s melodica paired with Glaspie’s wordless singing supply the French flavor to “Never Been To Paris,” but it would be a mistake to think that the trio would go soft here. It packs just a little too much wallop to serve as background music at a cafe along the Seine.
Hearing musicians with loads of chops is nice and all, but hearing musicians with chops who are on a mission to make you smile, stomp and buck is way better. Mike Dillon with Brian Haas and Nikki Glaspie deliver on that mission.
Punkadelick’s Inflorescence will drop on January 27, 2023, courtesy of Royal Potato Family.
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