Jaimie Branch - FLY or DIE LIVE '2021

Tracks list

Full flight capture of the full Fly or Die suite, parts 1 & 2 compounded &
flawlessly communicated in a singular epic of raw cosmic brilliance.

full story in the words of Piotr Orlov here:

There is a moment near the top of jaimie branch’s FLY or DIE LIVE, the
new album recorded by the trumpeter’s quartet in Zurich, Switzerland on
January 23rd, 2020, which feels like it bears the weight of both that specific
pocket of time, and a prophecy for all that was soon to come. branch and her Fly
or Die crew — cellist Lester St. Louis, double bassist Jason Ajemian, and
drummer/percussionist/mbira player Chad Taylor — had just kicked off the
concert at Moods, with the opening tracks off their then-new studio album FLY or
DIE II: Bird Dogs of Paradise, the second of which, “Prayer for
Amerikkka” is among the best political songs written during the Tr*mp Era,
and when the moment in question pops off.

The multi-part “Prayer” begins as a goth-blues stomp, its moaning
ghosts flying around the room. A week into a European tour and after three
months of constant live performance, Fly or Die is at home in this new
song’s contours, messing with its internal machinery while guiding its
meaning. By now, “Prayer” had gained a tough spoken-word intro,
bringing the context as it slowly gearshifts the intensity: “It’s a
song about America,” off-the-cuffs branch while the band seethes behind
her, “but it’s about a whole lotta places — ‘cause
it’s not just America where shit’s fucked up...” Then
arrives the climax, at once site-specific and far-reaching: “...and
it’s not always time to be neutral, do you know what I mean?” The
gathered Swiss crowd knows, understands, and responds vocally, as
Taylor’s backbeats cue branch to bring the trumpet to her lips, and let
out a high-pitched wail. Her horn doesn’t know what’s about to
happen to our world, and yet, somehow, it does — with only the
catastrophic details needing to be worked out. For the next 12 minutes,
“Prayer” careens through its twists of wide-eyed racism and family
separation, Ajemian and Taylor driving branch’s punk-jazz Morricone horn
line. “This is a warning, honey…” cries the song, and over the
ensuing 70 minutes, the band echoes its sentiment, filled with glee and terror.

Where were you in January of 2020, those last moments of the Before Times? Where
was your mind, your body, your soul? Did you have plans, hopes and aspirations
for the oncoming calendar trip around the sun just starting its initial turn?
Were you embroiled in the turmoil continuing to roil the feeds and the
headlines, or steeling yourself for the ones that we all knew were incoming
during an especially contentious American election year? Maybe both. Or maybe
you felt there was some hope blowing in the air.

“There was so much promise for the year,” remembers branch. A world
of possibilities was certainly pending for Fly or Die leading into 2020 and that
Zurich gig. The group was in their favored environment, the stage, where their
individual relationships had been molded. branch and Ajemian had been playing
together since the mid-’00s in Chicago, and admiring Taylor’s work
with the Chicago Underground and at the city’s legendary Velvet Lounge
jam-session for just as long. When Fly or Die made its debut at
Brooklyn’s Manhattan Inn in 2016, they made up three-quarters of the
band. branch and St. Louis met in 2015 after jaimie first moved to New York,
while St. Louis was working at the Spectrum club where branch played on
occasion. (Soon St. Louis replaced original Fly or Die cellist Tomeka Reid, who
departed the band to concentrate on her own myriad of commitments.) In the years
since, this quartet had grown into a powerful unit, adept at conjuring musical
environments that could be forceful and rhythmic one moment, and fragile the
next.

“So much of what the band is about is the trust between the players and
the rapport on stage,” says branch. “The trust means no ones going
to drop the ball. The band is all improvisers, thats a really key thing. (A lot
of people improvise, but not everybodys an improviser.) And I feel like this
band especially is made up of them. So much of the music is led with the ears
first.”

On Fly or Die’s sophomore album Bird Dogs of Paradise, which dropped in
October 2019, branch had composed and recorded a batch of songs that showcased a
political perspective and cutting sense of humor, balancing experimentalism and
accessibility, party and erudition, “jazz” and the next thing. They
were now headed out on the road to show off these songs — “the most
touring this band would have ever done,” according to branch —
integrating them in suite-like fashion with music from branch’s
critically acclaimed 2017 debut. High on the work they were presenting, ready to
lock into, and have some fun with it.

The late fall saw a month-long tour of Europe; December featured record release
shows in LA, Brooklyn and Chicago; then in January, it was back to the EU for a
two-week (no days off) sprint, of which the Thursday night at Zurich fell almost
directly in the middle. The night before, January 22nd, at Oslo’s
Victoria Nasjonal Jazzscene was an upbeat one — St. Louis’ partner
had surprised him by flying in from the States; and branch, who earlier thought
she’d lost a bag with her passport, documents and cash, had it returned
by their van driver after the gig. (No reason for anyone to notice that the
Coronavirus had made its debut on the front-page of the New York Times that
day.) The positive energy carried over to Switzerland. Soundcheck at Moods,
“a big, nice theater in the middle of Zurich,” went well. branch had
to talk the venue into the band doing one long set instead of two, but she also
agreed to them making a multi-track recording of the set. “The vibe in the
band was pretty high,” says branch.

From the offset, it sounds like that’s the case on both sides of the
stage. The calm before the “Prayer” storm finds Taylor’s
mbira and branch’s muted horn in a gentle duet, interweaving textures and
melodies. The storm’s aftermath, “Lesterlude,” is a St.
Louis-bowed solo feature turn, moving the strings towards the noise. Each
individual song connects to the next, performed in a continuous, no-stop style,
a part of the group’s DNA on record as well as stage. By
“Twenty-Three N Me,” they are beginning to stretch into free spaces,
and the crowd’s timely enunciations betray the fact that the audience too
is up on every note. “Whales,” an Ajemian-led interlude, brings the
sound palette to the bottom of the ocean, before Taylor’s intricate,
rim-heavy beat returns us to the surface and gets the debut album’s
“Theme 001” rolling into a full-on dance number. Approving screams
pile up. The quiet-loud/fast-slow alteration continues: Taylor solos softly
(“Meanwhile”), before exploding alongside Ajemian to push branch on
a supple, double-time swing (“Theme 002,” with branch in Cootie
Williams mode). Later Ajemian’s bass is joined by Taylor’s
thumb-piano and St. Louis’ arco, before going on a solo stroll, upping
the tempo and ending in the funky second-line swagger of “Simple Silver
Surfer” (with great melodic counterpoint by St. Louis). It’s crisp
and fun, the laughter in the audience answered on-stage. By the forever
set-ending, self-indicting new-bar-standard, “Love Song (For Assholes and
Clowns),” branch is conducting the sing-along. Then, soon, it is over.

So, how was it? At the time, Moods was just another stop on a never-ending tour.
Italy next, we gotta go. The following month and a half was a blur too, amidst
the increasingly dire headlines: the February Pacific Northwest dates found Fly
or Die slaying PDX Jazz, but “we keep hearing whispers of this COVID
stuff,” and less than 10 days after playing in Seattle, the city finds
itself as the first American virus hotspot. In early March, before a gig at
DC’s Kennedy Center, there’s a cancellation or two (“a
little bit of gloom”). The following night at Brooklyn’s Roulette
— the last gig many in attendance would see before quarantine —
the bottom drops out (“six cancellations in an hour”). The tour
ends, and everything stops. Forever — or what increasingly feels like it.
Though a tape arrived from Zurich in early May, branch didn’t actually
listen to it until the Fall. “I didnt want to be disappointed,” she
says. Such was the headspace.

“I didnt have a memory of the show being an amazing show,” branch
says. “But sometimes when you have zero memory of it being good or bad,
those are the best shows. Because when youre in the zone, in those moments of
channeling creativity, there isnt time for judgment. So oftentimes a memory is
not created around that judgment, and thats actually a good indication.”
When branch did pop the tape in, she was unequivocal: “I think this is
like the best that weve ever played.”

branch’s personal highlight of FLY or DIE LIVE also comes on
“Prayer,” and it too speaks of something greater than what
you’ll hear on the recordings, or that the audience at Moods is likely to
have picked up on: “There’s a moment in Part Two of the song when
Jason flips the bassline and theres this moment of weirdness, but nobody even
stops—this is what Im talking about with trust. So I just added half a
bar more of a vocal, because I heard Jason got wonky. And then Chad added a
[verbalizes a fill]. Its my favorite part of the whole record because I hear the
mistake and I hear us bulldoze through it, turn the mistake into a dance
— because thats really what it is at the core of all of this, music as
dance.” No neutrality there either. 

aimie branch – trumpet, vocals, vibraslap
Lester St. Louis – cello, vocals, tiny cymbal
Jason Ajemian – bass, vocals, egg shakers
Chad Taylor – drums, vocals, mbira

Recorded Live at Moods, Zurich, Switzerland,
1/23/2020.

Tracklist:
1 01. Jaimie Branch - birds of paradise (Live) (06:06)
1 02. Jaimie Branch - prayer for amerikkka pt. 1 & 2 (Live) (14:14)
1 03. Jaimie Branch - lesterlude (Live) (02:43)
1 04. Jaimie Branch - twenty-three n me, jupiter redux (Live) (03:16)
1 05. Jaimie Branch - reflections on a broken sea (Live) (02:14)
1 06. Jaimie Branch - whales (Live) (01:00)
1 07. Jaimie Branch - theme 001 (Live) (04:41)
1 08. Jaimie Branch - ...meanwhile (Live) (01:56)
1 09. Jaimie Branch - theme 002 (Live) (04:16)
1 10. Jaimie Branch - sun tines (Live) (01:46)
1 11. Jaimie Branch - leaves of glass (Live) (06:31)
1 12. Jaimie Branch - the storm (Live) (02:52)
1 13. Jaimie Branch - waltzer (Live) (05:54)
1 14. Jaimie Branch - slip tider (Live) (02:42)
1 15. Jaimie Branch - simple silver surfer (Live) (04:49)
1 16. Jaimie Branch - bird dogs of paradise (Live) (03:12)
1 17. Jaimie Branch - nuevo roquero estéreo (Live) (07:58)
1 18. Jaimie Branch - love song (Live) (07:35)
1 19. Jaimie Branch - theme nothing (Live) (06:57)

Related artists