Late Post / Good Show

On Saturday one of my favorite local bands played just a few blocks from home (in San Francisco, down Balboa Street). A few times a year there’s a street festival on that stretch, and this time around the line-up included the Heavy Arts Ensemble, whom I’ve mentioned previously. Their first EP came out late last year. The lineup is a pretty standard jazz quartet formation (saxophone, guitar, bass, drums), except that a fifth member, Diego Munguia, does live sampling (of the guitar and saxophone) and also introduces his own sounds into the mix. He recently changed up his gear, so I was interested in how the group would sound. They’re fantastic, kinda droney jazz fusion, sometimes meditative, often ecstatic, like maybe if John Coltrane hadn’t died in 1967, and instead had followed in Miles Davis’ initial electric footsteps. Huh, weird. I set a few posts up in advance but this one didn’t go live, so I’m posting it belatedly.