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MUSIC!





Making my way through the labyrinth of corridors to offices at Helsinki every morning is an exercise in emotional control. Mostly I'm excited about the myriad of projects underway and I want to dip my hand in every morsel of development. But, these days, for me anyway, building and crafting has taken a back seat to putting music and events on our stages and getting ready to serve up our Rustic Hudson Valley fare along with a tremendous wine list to everyone eagerly awaiting the opening of our Helsinki kitchens.

The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus hits the stage again on Friday, June 25 at 9 pm with an entirely new repertoire of acts and performers. Bring a date and sit back and marvel at their wildly entertaining extravaganza..

Next, be prepared to dance all night to the intoxicating rhythms of Groupo Fantasma. They hit the stage on Saturday, June 10th. Check out the review of their newest release.

Review: El Existential, by Grupo Fantasma
By Daniel Mee

For any Houstonian who truly believes Austin has nothing to offer but jam bands and warmed-over blues rock: allow Grupo Fantasma to enlighten you. So extraordinarily vibrant and original is this salsa-fusion big band that, if the so-called Live Music Capital had spawned nothing else of worth since the turn of the century, it still would have been a pretty good decade. Grupo Fantasma has been together since 2000, but its profile exploded in 2008, when the group's album Sonidos Gold was nominated for a Grammy and its horn section backed up Prince on the Tonight Show.

And yet, incredibly, the band was shortly upstaged by its own side project. Brownout, which includes every member of Grupo Fantasma except vocalists Jose Galeano and Kino Esparza, released the stunning Aguilas and Cobras in 2009, shying away from Fantasma’s commitment to danceable salsa in favor of tight, syncopated beats and titanic horn lines with a touch of hair-raising psychedelia, for all the world like a Latin Funkadelic.

Having thrown down the gauntlet at its own feet, Fantasma has gamely snatched it back up again on El Existential. The group has expanded boldly on the moderately paced Latin jazz of Sonidos Gold, varying the tempo, employing intricate, contrapuntal arrangements (especially for the horn section), and incorporating elements of rock, funk and R&B-influenced Latin styles far more than in their previous work. "El Consejo," for example, jumps effortlessly between an apocalyptic songo and a smoky, complex funk flavored with conga and timbale polyrhythms, flashes of wah guitar and declamatory Latin vocal harmonies. In turn, the vocals lead into the unhurried salsa of "Hijo," which teases with a unison walkdown between verses before launching into stomping psychedelia on the bridge. Together, the two tracks are a thrilling eight-minute fusion of masterful funk, searing rock and impossibly dense Afro-Cuban rhythm.

One of Fantasma’s hallmarks is the assignment of a montuno keyboard rhythm to the electric guitar, since, incredibly, the group has no pianist. This makes the appearance of legendary salsa pioneer Larry Harlow for a keyboard solo on "Juan Tenorio" logical, if not less awesomely gratifying. So what accounts for the emergence of Meat Puppets guitarist Curt Kirkwood amid the bopping, noisy bounce of "Telaraña?" One must imagine sheer giddy inspiration- the sense that the band can get away with just about anything. The crazy thing is, throughout the joyous melange of El Existential, it absolutely does.