AMULET LP AMT-034: Billy Martin's Wicked Knee - Heels Over Head, 2012 USA SEALED
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March 8, 2021
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October 10, 2017
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Before becoming part of Medeski, Martin & Wood, Martin was part of the New York City Brazilian scene in the 1980s. He performed regularly with Pe De Boi, Batucada and several Bob Moses bands for over a decade. He also joined Chuck Mangione's touring group for three years. Most notably he has developed as a percussionist for The Lounge Lizards and with the John Lurie National Orchestra, and has collaborated with artists such as John Zorn, DJ Logic, Dave Burrell and Miho Hatori. He has also started his own record label, Amulet Records, specializing in eclectic percussion albums. Martin has also collaborated with Iggy Pop, Eyvind Kang, Chris Whitley, DJ Olive, Ikue Mori, John Scofield, Maceo Parker, Calvin Weston, Marty Ehrlich, and Min Xiao-Fen.
Martin also sometimes goes by the moniker Illy B. The most notable releases as Illy B include the Illy B Eats series of breakbeat records. DJ Logic convinced Martin to record a breakbeat album for DJs and other producers to use and remix. At the last minute, Martin decided to place an insert which invited remixers to submit their mixes for a follow up compilation, Drop the Needle.
Along with his percussion work, Martin is a visual artist. He does printmaking, painting, pencil drawings, and pastel drawings, among other mediums. His work has been displayed in several galleries and is also on the packaging of many Medeski Martin & Wood albums, most notably the cover of Shack-man.
2006 was a prolific year for Martin; he created new chamber compositions for John Zorn's Tzadik label, he released Out Louder on MMW's new label Indirecto, he produced many new artworks, and published a drum book entitled Riddim: Clave of African Origin.
Above all else, Billy Martin believes in the power of unguarded expression to capture glimpses of the truth – sometimes only fleetingly, sometimes for extended, intoxicating stretches. He pursues the ecstatic and the insightful from a variety of vantage points: as a drummer and percussionist, as a composer, as a filmmaker, sculptor, visual artist, and even as a carpenter. To varying degrees, each endeavor is marked by Martin’s dearly held belief that unfettered improvisation and an honest commitment to the moment at hand can bring about new levels of understanding, new perspectives, new sonic textures, and a more profound emotional impact. “In any circumstance, any medium,” he reflects, “you need to be sincere with yourself and with your audience. This is who you are, and you’ve got to be trying as hard as you can to create something for the situation that’s new and fresh. There are going to be some mistakes, it may not be perfect, but you’ve got to be willing to take that chance at any given moment.”
While Billy Martin’s own creative journey has had innumerable forks and bends, he is best known to music enthusiasts as one-third of the indescribable Medeski Martin & Wood. About to enter their twentieth year as a performing and recording aggregation, Medeski Martin & Wood are an entirely unique instrumental ensemble, able to apply principles from a staggering range of traditions (from free and modern jazz to classic R&B and well beyond) while remaining eminently relatable, even accessible. Via fifteen albums, tireless touring (performing everywhere from jazz clubs to jamband festivals), and collaborations with the likes of John Scofield and John Zorn, the trio have united audiences from disparate corners of the musical universe who react with equal awe and enthusiasm to the band’s infectious grooves and undiminished exploratory zeal.
Few if any major acts are able to simultaneously function so successfully – both artistically and commercially – as both a laboratory as Medeski Martin & Wood have, and their work exemplifies many of Martin’s ideals and principles as an improvising composer/performer. Forever refining and rediscovering his own signature sound, Martin vividly explores these notions of creative identity, of surrendering to the moment, of developing one’s own artistic voice, in Life on Drums, his feature-length directorial debut, which will be released on DVD by Vongole Films on October 8th, 2010. Sumptuously filmed in a disused New Jersey radio station, the informative yet atmospheric Life on Drums combines conversations with solo and group performances (some improvised, some composed) to create an engrossing portrait of Martin’s evolving musical aesthetic.
“Life on Drums is my reaction to all the bad instructional videos I’ve seen,” Martin elaborates. “Much of what’s out there tends to put a lot of focus on technique, but most creative things don’t come from technique. I want the viewer to see this and come away with the idea that they can be an artist – you don’t need this full spectrum of technique before you can start thinking creatively.” Accompanying Martin on this voyage is Allen Herman, Martin’s first drum teacher. The two converse about matters both practical and artistic, and it is their easy yet insightful rapport that helps to illuminate even the most elusive ideas. “It’s this strange kind of karma, this nurturing feeling I get from him,” Martin continues. “We first met in 1974, when he was my teacher. He has been in and out of my life a few times since then. He even stopped playing drums for a while. But now he’s turned it around, saying I am the one who is nurturing him. He is ecstatic to be back in the drumming world…”
When Martin first began studying with Herman, he was an energized, precocious teenager, residing in New Jersey – having relocated from Manhattan at age ten. His father, a classical violinist, photographer, and audiophile, ensured that Martin was surrounded by music for as long has he can remember. When recorded music wasn’t blasted from the ample sound system in the basement, the Martin home was alive with rehearsals and young Billy’s growing percussive prowess – initially sparked by the discovery of his older brother’s abandoned trap set. By high school, Martin’s musical obsessions began to flower: he was writing percussion cadences for the school marching band, performing with the student jazz ensemble, and had his first garage band – a power trio whose repertoire ranged from George Benson to Van Halen. He even sub’d for Herman in the pit band of the Broadway show Bob Fosse’s Dancin’.
Upon graduation from high school, Martin bypassed full-time college, electing to make a go at being a professional musician in New York City. His arrival there in 1981 coincided with the emergence of a downtown music scene that dovetailed perfectly with Martin’s own sensibilities, holding equal reverence (or irreverence) for free improvisation, classic jazz, film music, and even the kitschiest of pop culture. Embracing every possible opportunity, Martin performed alongside such luminaries as John Scofield, Bob Moses, Bill Frissel, Cyro Baptista, Dave Liebman, Jerome Harris, and more. He went on his first tour as a member of Moses’s ensemble, and indulged his fascination with Brazilian rhythms by co-founding the group Batucada, who were a fixture on New York’s Brazilian scene for two years. After touring and recording with Chuck Mangione for two years (1987-1989), Martin reinvested himself in the downtown scene, participating in John Zorn’s Cobra improvisational game pieces and performing with John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards.
Medeski Martin & Wood first convened in 1991, embarking on their remarkable journey, which continues to this day. By then, Martin was a formidable musician, armed with a rich cultural understanding of rhythm and a vast, tastefully deployed technical vocabulary. Over the past ten years, he has begun to impart unique musical philosophy in instructional contexts ranging from master classes to private instruction to his book, Riddim: Claves of African Origin, released in 2006. “I think that teaching can be as creative as performing and composing,” he explains. “I believe strongly that creativity and individual style is important. I feel so strongly about that, and the only way to be active or push people in that direction is to offer my teaching. Hopefully that will have a little ripple effect on the next generation of musicians.”
When not performing with Medeski Martin & Wood, Martin continues to collaborate with other musicians in improvisational projects, many of which are documented on his own Amulet Records imprint, which he founded in 1995. He also records and performs solo – with results ranging from the exploratory to the downright funky, as heard on his triple-LP/CD breakbeat extravaganza illy B Eats – and has taken an increased interest in composing for both percussion and chamber ensembles. An album of Martin’s chamber works, Starlings, was released by John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2006. “My way of composing is to write sketches out to musicians,” he explains, “and to then let them work in a way that allows them to improvise based on the limitations I have given. Even when I work with my students and my percussion ensembles, there is always a little room for them to interpret my compositions. It’s exciting to me because you never know exactly what’s going to happen – it’s more rewarding for me and for the listener.”
Parallel to his musical adventures, Martin is an accomplished visual artist, whose drawings have been featured on album covers and in gallery exhibitions. His burgeoning interest in filmmaking has resulted in several music videos and short subjects, with Life on Drums being his first feature-length project. “Making videos and films – the whole idea of images moving along in a time frame: that’s very musical and rhythmic,” he reflects. “Whether it’s music or films or my drawings, I take the same approach: I improvise. I do have conceptual ideas I try to realize, but I think the best stuff comes out of improvisation. It comes from the same place, the same creative part of myself in the moment.”
With so many outlets existing for his creative energies, Martin is always in the midst of multiple projects. Even now, as he is helping to formulate Medeski Martin & Wood’s upcoming 20th anniversary celebrations, he is working to bring to light recently-recorded chamber compositions for a bass clarinet quartet, a documentary of the making of Medeski Martin & Wood’s Shackman album from recently-recovered videotape footage, and a sculpture project that combines composition with visual arts via graphically notated scores welded to oversized metal canvases. “It’s all more complicated than ever,” Martin concludes, “because now I have two boys, who are going to turn seven and ten soon. Handling the family life and home life with my work and creative projects is a delicate balance – but I have a studio-slash-shed in my backyard that I can use to get away and still be home. Honestly, I try not to keep everything too separate: it’s all creative living, it’s all satisfying. It feels good with each little thing I accomplish. I just have to give myself the time to improvise, to experiment. Usually I find the meaning later, after I’ve created it.”
Twenty years after Billy Martin asked Steven Bernstein to help him hatch a freaky avant brass band, Wicked Knee delivers their triumphant full-length debut. Heels Over Head brings together four of the downtown jazz scene's most legendary improvisers for a collection of tunes guaranteed to drop jaws and move feet from the New York juke joint to the New Orleans street corner.
After a long series of way under-the radar solo projects, drummer Billy Martin has chosen a more accessible route in the last couple of years, beginning with his duo collaboration with keyboardist Wil Blades, Shimmy (The Royal Potato Family, 2012).
The followup to the eponymous seven-track EP, Heels Over Head is equally easy to digest, perhaps more so, even if the instrumental lineup of Wicked Knee is somewhat unconventional. Martin has enlisted longtime kindred spirit and master horn man Steven Bernstein to play alongside tubaist Marcus Rojas and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, and this collaboration is more diverse than initial listening might suggest. King Oliver's "Sugarfoot Stomp" doesn't appear 'til the seventh track, by which time Wicked Knee, by dint of tracks like "Button to Button" and "Rendezvous," has firmly established its feel for authentic New Orleans sounds.
In fact, the middleman in Medeski, Martin & Wood concentrates on second-line rhythms to the extent that Louisiana might seem to be his birthplace. Yet, on the opener "Chumba Zumba," he embellishes the beat in his own inimitable style and, as Heels Over Head progresses, his comrades personalize this music to the same extent. Martin's original tune "Muffaletta" may sound a bit conformist and thus too familiar for its own good, at least until the pulse of the Rojas' tuba kicks in and Fowlkes' trombone lines unfurl.
Bernstein long ago proved his versatility in leading his own groups such as Sexmob and Millennial Territory Orchestra, or collaborating with such estimable figures as the late Levon Helm and, over the course of many years, Martin. Thus, Bernstein's "Theme One" allows the whole quartet to shine at a pace both relaxed and rejuvenating, while his arrangement of the sole vocal track here, "99," highlights the sultry singing of Shelly Hirsch.
The tongue-in-cheek quality to that cut pervades the whole album and, like the rest of Heels Over Head's eleven tracks, it's economical for its duration. Nevertheless, there's a cumulative momentum as the album unfolds, its attraction as palpable in its generally celebratory mood as in the slightly foreboding mix of ambient horn sounds and exotic percussion called "Chaman's Interlude." The virtually indiscernible segue from that track into the insinuating arrangement of the traditional "Canta Y No LLores" suggests it would be very effective if such eerie atmosphere were more often woven in and out of the album. Still, the impact of those dynamics would be no more potent than that of placing "Noctiluca" as the album's concluding cut, offering appropriately timed moments to reflect upon the vivid experience that is Heels Over Head. - Doug Collette
What if drummer Billy Martin of the late-20th, now 21st-century band Medeski Martin and Wood had been born at the end of the 19th century in New Orleans? What kind of music would he play? Certainly, it would have a brass band setting and be inflected with blues feel. Invite Buddy Bolden over tonight, because we have some funky ragtime sound with Martin's new outfit Wicked Knee. This their first full-length release, that follows the EP Wicked Knee (Amulet, 2011).
Covering King Oliver's "Sugarfoot Stomp," Martin's brass band of trumpeter Steven Bernstein (Millennium Territory Orchestra, Sexmob), Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), and Marcus Rojas (tuba) sounds all-at-once old timey and wink-and-a-grin modern. The drummer's shuffle underscores the practical neatness of Bernstein and Rojas' solos, packaged to fit within the three minutes and forty-two seconds of recording space. What is old, is neither dusty, nor stodgy. Martin brings his love of groove to a brass band setting. His "Mbwemofolo" is an invitation to dance and the hypnotic "Chaman's Interlude" vibrates with enough of Rojas' low-end bass to rattle any pimp mobile.
Wicked Knee draws from the slick urbane and irreverent arrangements of Bernstein and loose feel of Martin's drumming. They can swoop from the mariachi ranchero song "Canta y No Llores" to The White Stripes' "Button To Button" hop, skipping, and jumping between cultures and genres without losing their dynamism. The band and the music is centered in the brass band tradition with songs like the über-funky "Muffaletta" and "99%"—the latter written and sung by Shelley Hirsch as a modern version of "St. James Infirmary." For Martin and Wicked Knee, everything old is undoubtedly old and at the same time very new again. - Mark Corroto
Here, drummer Billy Martin, of the inimitable Medeski Martin & Wood, leads his compact avant-brass group through its second release. Its name derived from Shake Your Wicked Knees (a compilation of piano rags, blues and stomps of the ’20s and ’30s), the quartet includes fellow Lounge Lizard Steven Bernstein on trumpets, tuba player Marcus Rojas and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes. Together they explore the New Orleans brass-band tradition through the prism of Downtown NYC jazz.
This unorthodox configuration offers space for engaging, often-whimsical interplay and inspired improvisation. Frank London’s syncopated “Ghumba Zumba” opens, underscoring the group’s second-line approach, its melody serving as a springboard for exploration. (A similar strategy is used on Bernstein’s infectious “Sugarfoot Stomp.”) The leader’s dirge-like “Chaman’s Interlude” features didgeridoo-esque blowing, bells and drum flourishes; his bluesy “99%” showcases guest vocalist Shelley Hirsch musing on hard times; and his drumless “Rendezvous” highlights brilliant brass hues. Covers include a stretched-out version of the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button to Button,” deftly arranged by Bernstein, and a bouncy rendition of the traditional ranchera “Canta y No Llores.” The otherworldly atmosphere on the collectively composed “Noctiluca” is created through Martin’s scraped cymbals, bowed waterphone and assorted percussive devices. Combined with Rojas’ droning and Bernstein’s echo and delay, the cut brings this set to an eerie yet satisfying close. - Sharonne Cohen Release date: 2012
AMULET Records vinyl LP Item - item is FACTORY SEALED LP made in the USA Pressing is in STEREO
Record Catalog Number: AMT034
Factory Sealed vinyl LP title, this LP features the music of - Billy Martin's Wicked Knee LP Title - Heels Over Head
Track Listing - 1. Ghumba Zumba - Written By – Frank London
2. Theme One - Written By – Steven Bernstein
3. Button To Button - Arranged By – Steven Bernstein Written By – Jack White
4. Rendezvous - Written By – Billy Martin
5. 99% - Arranged By – Steven Bernstein Written By – Billy Martin, Shelley Hirsch
6. Muffaletta - Mixed By – Darian Cowgill Written By – Billy Martin
7. Sugarfoot Stomp - Arranged By – Steven Bernstein Written By – King Oliver
8. Mbwemofolo - Arranged By – Steven Bernstein Recorded By – Scotty Hard Written By – Billy Martin
9. Noctiluca - Written By – Wicked Knee Performed by - Billy Martin: drums, percussion, waterphone
Steven Bernstein: trumpet, slide trumpet
Curtis Fowlkes: trombone
Marcus Rojas: tuba
Shelley Hirsch: vocals (5)
Executive-Producer – Allen Herman
Mastered By – Mike Fossenkemper
Mixed By – Billy Martin, Danny Blume, Mike Fossenkemper
Producer – Billy Martin
Recorded By – Danny Blume, Katsuhiko Naito CONDITION Details: The JACKET is in Mint condition. The jacket is completely intact, with NO seam splits. This item is FACTORY SEALED. The jacket has NO drill holes or saw marks of any kind. See picture with this listing for more detail. The LP is assumed to be in Mint condition! This item is FACTORY SEALED. A Short Note About LP GRADING - Mint {M} = Only used for sealed items. Near Mint {NM} = Virtually flawless in every way. Near Mint Minus {NM-} = Item has some minor imperfections, some audible. Excellent {EXC} = Item obviously played and enjoyed with some noise. Very Good Plus {VG+} = Many more imperfections which are noticeable and obtrusive.
Always properly clean your LPs before playing them - even new, sealed titles!
The LP is an audiophile quality pressing (any collector of fine MFSL, half speeds, direct to discs, Japanese/UK pressings etc., can attest to the difference a quality pressing can make to an audio system).
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