Music Whenever: Denys Baptiste, Kid Congo, Gal Costa & More…

We start with a performance from UK saxophonist/composer Denys Baptiste: it’s “Dusk Dawn,” from last year’s album, The Last Trane. As you might expect from that album title, it’s based on the work of John Coltrane…this track is specifically from Coltrane’s 1965 album, Kulu Sé Mama. There’s really only one other thing to say about this: let it be your life goal to love something you do as much as the gentleman drumming in this video absolutely freaking loves playing the drums.

He was a member of The Cramps. He was with Nick Cave amongst the Bad Seeds. Hell, according to Wikipedia (which is always right), he was president of The Ramones Fan Club. And now Kid Congo Powers has The Pink Monkey Birds as his central music project. This is “La Araña,” from the 2016 album La Araña es la Vida. This, even with my diminished knowledge of Spanish, is “The Spider is the Life.” Which reminds me of Renfield. Because a lot of things do. Anyway, behold this video. It is ridiculous amounts of fun. And I think Kid speaks for us all when he ponders, “What the hell?”

Next, we have Gal Costa from her 1969 self-titled album, covering “Baby,” which was originally by Os Mutantes. You can check out their version here, which is nice, trippy tropicalia. But if you don’t dig Costa’s version, especially with those strings…you should probably seek professional help.

And so now we come to another entry from the UK, it’s Pilote–the nom du guerre of Stuart Cullen. This is a nice, bluesy, folksy hoedown if such a thing can take place while under heavy fire. Vocals provided by Charlie Parr, Minnesota bluesman. The album by Pilote is Libero.

Next, it’s Kutiman, who you might recall did the Mother of All YouTube Mashups a while back. He’s been busy ever since, and this track, “I Think I Am,” is from his 2016 album 6 am. Vocals on this track are from the Israeli singer Karolina…and oh man, they are choice. Slow and delicious funk is the name of this game.

Okay, so last but definitely not least, we have a fuzz rock gem by Los Angeles’ Melina Duterte, whose musical code name is Jay Som. From last year’s Everybody Works album, it’s “1 Billion Dogs.”

Where I’ve been able to, I linked to where you can buy the music as directly from the artists as possible. Gnaw on that and enjoy.