10.31.2009

CMJ Day Five

Emanuel and the Fear @ The Delancy rooftop, Afternoon Scores


Emanuel and the Fear CMJ @ The Delancey


Emanuel Ayvas’ brought an ensemble of four and delivered lush scores with tabulators, and music stands in place. His poetic writing and emotionally delivered vocals, accompanied by violin, cello, and guitar, created a toned-down but perfect acoustic orchestral pop and afternoon score for a roof garden space. Their set was a smaller representation of a group.


Listening to Emanuel and the Fear recordings exemplifies the lush, ambitious arrangements full of complexities and swelling of orchestral passages with smart, lyrically emotionally delivered vocals.


Bryan Vaughan, founder of their label Paper Garden Records has a passion for music he loves and believes in, so I should have followed through and heard them sooner.

Flickr Set

Drink Up Buttercup CMJ @ The Delancey

                     Drink Up Buttercup @ The Delancey rooftop, Acoustic Muscle


Drink Up Buttercup is a very different band in the early afternoon. But this is not Drink Up Buttercup Lite, anything but. Although they abandoned their drums, amps, garbage cans, and kinesthetic body contortions, they highlighted the muscle of their vocal muscle. They stretched their harmonic layering of show-stopping standards, adding detailed appendages. Showing off their incredible versatility and giving the tired genre "Barbershop" a vibrato edge.

Flickr Set


Cale Parks CMJ @ The Delancey


Cale Parks 2 The Delaney Warmth to Techno

Cale Parks brings warmth to Techno, blending cascading dance beats and looping of original music with synth and drum machine. Live Cale Parks drumsticks twirl through the air and hit his mark. The baton twirler, soft crooner, and synth composer do it with precision and finesse. Adding two new players on guitar, bass, and keys to his live line-up. Performing as a one-man band is hard, he said as he introduced his new bandmates, saying, “how nice it was not do this alone.” The packed, dank basement at the Delancey was the perfect setting to be transformed into another place. Cale Parks and Company took me there.

Flickr Set

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