Les Rhinoceros – Bandwidth

Damu the Fudgemunk, OV

Joe Warminsky — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 19:23:17 +0000

Songs featured Oct. 27, 2016, as part of Capital Soundtrack from WAMU 88.5. Read more about the project and submit your own local song.

Tired All the Time – Bloody Toothbrush
Damu the Fudgemunk – Never Off (On & On)
Social Station – Awfully Pretty
Warren Wolf – Lake Nerraw Flow
OV – Perc Song (Chords)
Craig Gildner and The Blue Sky 5 – Sittin’ Pretty
Yoko K. – mimi’s heart muted
Astronaut Jones – Turkey Grease
Lilac Daze – Kathleen
A Shrewdness of Apes – Summer Job
Nitemoves – Ask Me Anything!
Peals – Trillium
The Iris Bell – Shade
The Orchid – The Arrow and The Song
Jon Miller – Jello
The Red Lines – Windy City
The Soul Searchers – Ashley’s Roachclip
Les Rhinocéros – What Do YOU Know About VELCRO
Protect-U – Down the Tubes
Nate Belasco – Automatic

Les Rhinocéros, Jau Ocean

Ally Schweitzer — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 08:20:27 +0000

Songs featured Aug. 6, 2016, as part of Capital Soundtrack from WAMU 88.5. Read more about the project and submit your own local song.

Lance Neptune – Circle Rose
The Jet Age – It Always Starts With a Bang
Jon Camp – I Exhale Sawdust
Save the Arcadian – Dance Floor
John W. Warren – Nisene (Dream In a Forest)
J. Reid – Smoking a j at the end of the Anthropocene
Max D – Slick
NUNS – Blood Red Snow
Calm the Waters – Sinking Like a Stone
Aaron Agre – Stormglass
Jau Ocean – Lightly
Les Rhinocéros – Johnway
Matt Chaconas – Intro
Shannon Gunn and the Bullettes Septet – Warm Woman Blues
The Mean Season – Whisper (Acoustic)
the Sobel 4Tet – Acapulco
Nitemoves – Mikuni
Zenon Slawinski – Cookie 5
Teen Mom – Say My Name
John Lanou – Hannukah

Premiere: Les Rhinocéros’ Heavy Take On Gnawa Music

Ellen Rolfes — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:48:00 +0000

If you find yourself in a trance after listening to Les Rhinocéros’ third album, well, that’s kind of what the band was going for.

On the song “Jacob (Scenic 6)” (listen above), bass and ambient sound slowly build, and then layers of guitar, drums and effects reinforce a simple and hypnotic motif.

“Les Rhinocéros III” is out June 23.

It’s a tribute to gnawa music from Morocco, which founder Michael Coltun, 23, first heard in a New Orleans taxi nearly four years ago. The music used to be performed exclusively during healing rituals but has become extremely popular in the North African country.

Coltun, the band’s bass player and effects man, went on a deep dive into spirituals, poetry and rhythms from West Africa. Online he found a lot of mp3s ripped from old cassettes.

“It’s like crazy 40-minute pieces of the same riff, the same song. I just kind of found that really enjoyable,” Coltun said. “And so this song is sort of based on a simple [gnawa] rhythm that we kind of added more of ourselves into it, which is loops and more heaviness.”

Les Rhinocéros’ nomadic sound may be influenced by the band’s own transience. The group has humble beginnings at a Rockville, Maryland, high school, but its current members — Coltun, Amit Peled and Jonathan Burrier — split their time between D.C., Baltimore, New York and Israel. Songs are hashed out on the road and fine-tuned during performances.

“Nowadays, we practice once before a tour,” Coltun says. “We say that if we can’t figure the songs out in 30 days, then maybe we shouldn’t be a band.”

Reggae, rock, klezmer, jazz, world music and experimental sounds are woven throughout Rhinocéros III, due out June 23 on John Zorn’s experimental imprint Tsadik Records.

“One person described it as world music from a country that doesn’t exist, but I don’t really like to put something into a box,” Coltun says. “It is what it is. It’s music.”

Les Rhinocéros plays an album release show at Paperhaus June 13.