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Club d'Elf

To the naked eye, Club d’Elf looks exactly like a world-class instrumental band: five or six fierce players laying down heavy grooves and exploratory solos on distinctive original material, as audience members dance or listen in rapt attention. To its fans, however, and its large and colorful cast of musicians, D’Elf is all that and much, much more.

The paradox and the power of the unusually named Club d’Elf become increasingly clear through repeated encounters. Unlike almost any other band, D’Elf’s personnel changes radically from show to show. Fans have their favorite configurations and players, but unlike groups where musicians’ tenures are finite, D’Elf-ians revolve in and out, reappearing in endless combinations. Beyond the cavalcade of characters, the music itself is in constant flux. Individual songs can vary dramatically from performance to performance as new alignments of players make every moment fresh. No two sets are alike. Yet the feeling and philosophy that animate D’Elf remain consistent, the product of the vision and dedication of leader Mike Rivard (aka Micro Vard) and the ongoing contributions of his talented collaborators. Devoted fans have been setting their clocks by the group’s bimonthly appearances at their home base, the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for twenty years now, and the message has traveled around the world.

Club d’Elf began in 1998 at the Lizard as a kind of controlled jam session, featuring Rivard’s friends and associates from various bands. Mark Sandman, the leader of Morphine, was an important catalyst, suggesting that it was time for Rivard to form his own band.  An in-demand sideman, the bassist had earned notice with Jonatha Brooke, the Walkers, the Either/Orchestra and a Sandman side project, Hypnosonics. He envisioned a band that wasn’t built around the specificity and spotlight that frontmen usually demand, but one that would follow spontaneous cinematic soundscapes created by each member of the collective. Out of the original D’Elf jam pool emerged a core group, usually augmented by one or two other players from a rotating cast. The core was eventually honed to its essentials: Rivard and drummer Erik Kerr, followed eight years later by drummer Dean Johnston.

“I didn’t want to feed the musicians with too many ideas of what the music SHOULD be,” says Rivard, “because what keeps it fresh and alive for me is me being astounded by what other people come up with. The thing that really excites me is somebody coming in and taking over, taking us down avenues we haven’t traveled before.”

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6
Live Review

Club d'Elf At Foam Brewers

Read "Club d'Elf At Foam Brewers" reviewed by Doug Collette


Club d'Elf Foam Brewers Burlington, Vermont June 3, 2023 Less than a week before the formal commencement of Burlington Vermont's Discover Jazz Festival, Club d'Elf set the bar high for the fortieth anniversary celebration of that annual event. Currently in the ongoing process of recognizing a significant milestone of its own--a quarter century mixing exotic strains of rhythm and melody into an ever-so-heady blend--the Massachusetts-based band also continues to make up for lost time visiting ...

4
Radio & Podcasts

Club d'Elf, Naïssam Jalal, Bill Laurance, Michael League, George & New Releases

Read "Club d'Elf, Naïssam Jalal, Bill Laurance, Michael League, George & New Releases" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


This week we put together a set which is centered around jazz influenced by Gnawa music, and musicians and bands which know how to “develop and envelope," i.e. develop a melody and mood which envelopes the listener. Happy listening! Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Bill Laurance, Michael League “Tricks" Where You Wish You Were (ACT) 0:16 Host talks 4:59 Club d'Elf “In a Perfect World" As Above ...

4
Album Review

Club d'Elf: As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge

Read "As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge" reviewed by Doug Collette


The music of Club d'Elf's debut album, As Above, speaks volumes in terms of the group's mystical and stylistic roots. In fact, it is perfectly reflective of the actual ancient quote from which the title is taken; 'As above, so below...' suggests how the rhythm motifs are as fully and completely developed as the melodic themes. Recorded in 1999 and 2000, at the Lizard Lounge in Boston, which has become Mike Rivard and company's home base over the ...

5
Album Review

Club d'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


You Never Know is the Club d'Elf studio album that captures the whirling, overlapping orbits of acoustic, electric and exotic sounds of the floating improvisational collective, which has recorded and performed together for more than two decades, with crisp studio clarity. But more importantly, You Never Know celebrates light born from darkness. Bassist and bandleader Mike Rivard, the sole constant in the collective's 24-year run, suffered a near-death experience from a pulmonary embolism which struck him while he ...

12
Album Review

Club D'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris May


Near-death experiences can reboot the mind, separating the important from the trivial. It seems to have worked like that for bassist and composer Mike Rivard, founder and leader of Boston's world-dub-jazz band Club D'Elf. A few years back, Rivard was nearly felled by a pulmonary embolism while seeking spiritual insight in the Amazonian rain forest. A long, dark period of depression followed, before Rivard emerged recharged into the light, having been sustained in large part by gnawa, the Moroccan trance ...

4
Album Review

Club d'Elf: Night Sparkles

Read "Night Sparkles" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


On December 16, 2011, bassist and bandleader Mike Rivard and the rest of the floating Club d'Elf instrumental ensemble assembled at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge (MA), for their regular gig at the regular location in the extended live residency that the band began at the Lounge back in 1998 (and continues to this day). Guest musicians often dropped in after finishing their own Boston area gigs to join the Club and this evening would prove no exception, as Boston ...

2
Album Review

Club d'Elf: Night Sparkles

Read "Night Sparkles" reviewed by Doug Collette


Night Sparkles follows bassist/sintirist Mike Rivard on his continuing adventures into the “Moroccan-based psychedelic dub" style he initiated with Club D'Elf in the 1990s. It's altogether remarkable he's managed to formulate such a novel approach to improvisational music while juggling the near-perpetual rotating cast of personnel, but it is to the great credit of the titular leader that his stewardship encourages invention from his bandmates, whoever they may be (in the not so recent past, keyboardist John Medeski and guitarist ...

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158

Recording

Club d'Elf: New Albums & Tour

Club d'Elf: New Albums & Tour

Source: rock paper scissors, inc.

Deep Trancing: The Hypnotic Grooves, Camel-Skin Bass, and Unifying Spirit of Club d'Elf

The music of Club d'Elf flies through North African trance, glitchy turntablism, improvisation, and rock psychedelia, but it's playfully altered states of musical consciousness that truly guide the band. Witness founder Mike Rivard's first night in Morocco, the country that had fired his musical imagination for more than a decade: In a strikingly vivid dream, he felt himself swimming upwards in the air as fantastic landscapes, mountains, ...

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Performance / Tour

Club D'Elf | 06.06.09 | Boston

Club D'Elf | 06.06.09 | Boston

Source: JamBase

By: Tim O'Keefe

Club d'Elf :: 06.06.09 :: Paradise Rock Club :: Boston, CA

Club d'Elf Sonorous notes emit from the stage at Boston's Paradise Rock Club. Its source, a Moroccan sintir, lies in the hands of Club d'Elf's bandleader, Mike Rivard. Animal skins stretch across the oblong-shaped, hollow cavity of this bass-like instrument, the neck, somewhat resembling a wooden stick, juts from the body and contains three ...

140

Event

"This is Our Music" Series Continues on April 16 in Brooklyn with Knucklebean, Club D'Elf and Jim Campilongo!

"This is Our Music" Series Continues on April 16 in Brooklyn with Knucklebean, Club D'Elf and Jim Campilongo!

Source: All About Jazz

Any and all friends of sound are invited to attend “This Is Our Music II," the second installment in a monthly series at the Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “This Is Our Music II" is set for Wednesday, April 16 at 8PM. This month, the series welcomes the legendary Club d'Elf, from Boston, the incredible Jim Campilongo Electric Trio, featuring Brad Jones on bass, and Knucklebean, the funkiest free band in the land. Tickets are only $10. The schedule ...

133

Recording

Club d'Elf To Release Long-Awaited Studio Debut "Now I Understand"

Club d'Elf To Release Long-Awaited Studio Debut "Now I Understand"

Source: All About Jazz

Boston's CLUB d'ELF to Release Long-Awaited Studio Debut NOW I UNDERSTAND on Accurate Records

All-star collective includes Mike Rivard, John Medeski, Billy Martin, DJ Logic, Reeves Gabrels, Mat Maneri, Duke Levine and many more

“The sound of the future is here." - Boston Magazine's “Best Of Boston"

“Club d'Elf combines the roaring avant-funk of electric-era Miles with the legato drift of the Grateful Dead...heady music that doesn't neglect the tail." - Time Out New York

Brooklyn, ...

Press quotes: "The roaring avant-funk of electric-era Miles (and) the legato drift of the Grateful Dead...Manic Berber bop, hypnotic Moroccan gnawa and blissful electronica are usually present in the mix as well...at its peaks conjuring a Derek and the Dominoes floating on a cough-syrup current. Heady music that doesn't neglect the tail." -Steve Smith, Time Out New York “One of the most inventive and ever-changing bands in all of new jazz…The songs are great, the playing superb, the variety obvious but the main thing is that the spirit of the music is so strong and unique

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Photos

Concerts

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

You Never Know

Face Pelt Records
2022

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Night Sparkles

Face Pelt Records
2019

buy

Live at Club Helsinki

Face Pelt Records
2017

buy

Now I Understand

Accurate Records
2007

buy

Left Hand of Clyde (Parts 1, 2 & 3)

From: As Above - Live At The Lizard...
By Club d'Elf

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