This week at Skaņu mežs bar/music store at Miera iela 12 will witness an onslaught of genres – from ragtime to noise impro, from reggae to experimental techno and indie.
On Thursday, June 9, top purveyors of reggae and Jamaican music in Latvia, two young ladies from Crystral Sound System will perform at 9PM – Antara and Lady Krii.
CSS. Publicity photo
Friday will witness two highly original bands. At 9PM the very special and hallucinogenic Latvian noise improvisation band 1/2 h 1/2w will perform with one of their rare sets.
Fragment from 1/2h 1/2w Berlin installation hole. Photo: Māris Butlers
After 1/2h 1/2w have mesmerized the audience, the ragtime and Dixieland band Old Fish Jazz will immerse you in somewhat differently illusory experience by making you believe that you have travelled back in time to the 20’s shaking your hips on a Mississippi steamboat arriving in the port of New Orleans!
The Old Fish Jazzband is a Berlin based band formed by talented musicians coming from a wide variety of different backgrounds and nationalities. With a typical instrumentation of the 1910’s and 20’s we play you the oldest jazz in the world which at that time was called ragtime and Dixieland,originated in New Orleans and born out of the blues and negro spirituals in times of segregation and jim crow laws. Nowadays, this unique style is harder and harder to find and can’t be studied in any school or conservatory, but instead has to be studied from old recordings, books and biographies.
Old Fish Jazzband. Publicity photo
Saturday two groundbreaking Latvian DJ’s will perform. Ze Ivarzz who will control the decks from 9PM to 11PM is a veteran experimental techno DJ from 90’s when he along with his mates established the first innovative music promotion association No Rest in Riga.
After Ze Ivarzz will play Jānis Daugavietis, the founder of the legendary Latvian independent label Tornis Records from 90’s. Tornis (Tower) was established in a disused water tower in Āgenskalns suburb of Riga. Tornis nurtured the whole generation of Latvian independent bands and artists and established what one might say comes closest to “Latvian sound”. That sound often combined particular poetic restlessness with raw and noisy guitars and vocals and folk and hippie nostalgia. Tornis associated bands like Depo, Bērnības Milicija, Mazie Smirdīgie kociņi and Kartāga are among the few Latvian bands that have been played on the highly regarded independent radio station WFMU in New Jersey.
Photo from Jānis Daugavietis personal archive