Jack O' the Clock / Dirty Snacks Ensemble / Reconnaissance Fly
Join three bands of interdimensional travelers as they share their musical findings on the Night Light stage!
Admission $10.00.
Oakland’s Jack o’ the Clock “conjures up stirring visions of a hybrid American history, part fact, part poetry, part visionary hallucination…” (Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector, UK). The quintet has been developing its subtle, acoustic avant-rock on stage and in the studio for nearly a decade, and has released five critically-acclaimed original albums as well as an EP of radically-reinvented cover songs. Fred Frith describes them as “one of the most original and compelling groups I know playing some amazing compositions that seem to tread effortlessly between Van Dyke Parks and folk music from an as yet unidentified culture, while making all the things you've always thought of as difficult sound as effortless and natural as breathing.”
The Dirty Snacks Ensemble is an instrumental music ensemble formed by Oakland based vibraphonist/composer
Mark Clifford in early 2011. In composing for the DSE, Clifford hopes to pay homage to his many musical influences which run the gamut from Kool Keith to Bela Bartok, and is interested in finding the balance between long form compositional structures, free improvisation, and short ditties while still maintaining musical freedom for his immensely talented ensemble. The Dirty Snacks Ensemble released their first full length record Tidy Universe (Recollect Records) in June of 2016, and will be releasing a follow up album of rarities and basement recordings, Another Man’s Treasure in March 2017.
Reconnaissance Fly was born in 2009 from the dormant and pupating remains of Polly Moller & Company, then the six-year-old vehicle for flutist and vocalist Polly Moller's spoken word compositions. Growing and transmogrifying, the band embraced progressive rock, jazz, funk, contemporary classical, and free improvisation influences, and became a team of goofball composers and superhero sidemen.
The five members of Reconnaissance Fly are
Brett Carson on keyboards; Rich Lesnik playing clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano and tenor saxophones; Polly Moller with voice, flutes and guitar; Larry the O on the drums, and
Tim Walters on bass guitar and electronics.