Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: This Widowed Hoard

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (All-Set! Editions Double Release Celebration), April 27, 2019.

The Mike Smith Company - This Widowed Hoard

This dual release celebration ran with the double-up concept, putting both bands on stage simultaneously, each taking a couple songs at a time before flipping things over. Mike Smith (on synth and backing vox) was celebrating the long-gestating Songs of The Mike Smith Company alongside Robin Dann (vox), Rebecca Hennessy (trumpet) and Jonathan Adjemian (synth). Popsongs with prog ruffles and little sonic complications throughout, the tunes addressed a number of contemporary problems, from data forms with forced false settings to concerns about "what happens to your record collection when you die", as heard on this number.

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: Terms Of Venery

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 5), February 26, 2017.

The Mike Smith Company - Terms Of Venery

After a couple special events, this set saw the Mike Smith Co. back in its "working" alignment, mostly playing skewed pop material that's newer than the stuff on last year's Famous Wildlife Movies and with plenty elaborately-layered vocals over the band's precision noodling.

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Songs: Bird's Lament + All Is Loneliness [composer: Moondog; arranged by Mike Smith]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (Moondog 100), December 3, 2016.

The Mike Smith Company - Bird's Lament

The Mike Smith Company - All Is Loneliness

Celebrating what would have been the one-hundredth birthday of Louis T. Hardin, the blind street performer better known as Moondog, this event invited two groups to reflect and refract his unique compositional sensibility. No mere busker, "The Viking of 6th Avenue" crossed paths with many of New York's musical legends, including Leonard Bernstein and Charlie Parker — and his friendship with Philip Glass and Steve Reich (plus his love of musical canons — "rounds" to row-your-boaters like me) cemented his status as a forerunner to minimalism. Mike Smith's arrangements, however, ensured the snaketime rhythms weren't treated with too much fustiness by imbuing them with some grooves — "All Is Loneliness" features a bouncy bassline (and some fine basso vox from Jonathan Adjemian) while "Bird's Lament" has the same sort of synth wiggles that pop up frequently in Smith's own compositions. In fact, the set included a trio of new Moondog-inspired works that will hopefully make their way back in other musical settings.

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: Famous Wildlife Movies

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (All-Set! Autumn Release Show), October 28, 2016.

The Mike Smith Company - Famous Wildlife Movies [part 1]

The Mike Smith Company - Famous Wildlife Movies [part 2]

This second release spectacular from All-Set! Editions added three new albums to their catalogue, and all three of the recombinant groupings played to celebrate. The highlight of the night was seeing the tunes from Mike Smith's new album presented by what was, by his own admission, "a large band".¹ That added to a history of Smith treating his compositions with a certain malleability — besides its "fixed" iteration as a recording, I've seen the album's title track take on a few different manifestations. These large group arrangements were quite lovely, going as often to smaller, quieter shadings with different subsets of instruments as veering into full-on big band wallops.

[A less-expanded version of the Mike Smith Company will be playing at the Music Gallery's Moondog 100 concert this Saturday (December 3rd), playing songs from their own book as well as some new arrangements of Moondog's pieces.]

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¹ If my notes are correct, the ensemble at this show was:

• Mike Smith – composition, conductor, flute
• Pete Johnston – bass
• Blake Howard – percussion
• Jamie Drake – percussion
• Jake Oelrichs – percussion
• Jonathan Adjemian – synth
• Ali Berkok – piano, clavinet
• Heather Saumer – trombone
• Tom Richards – trombone
• Rebecca Hennessy – trumpet
• Mika Posen – violin
• Jay Hay – Tenor sax, flute
• Karen Ng – alto sax, flute
• Jeremy Strachan – guitar, sax, flute

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: Forced False Setting^*

Recorded at Burdock Music Hall (The Music Gallery's Departures Series), June 28, 2016.

The Mike Smith Company - Forced False Setting

This group name has hitherto represented more of a concept than a "band", so it was perhaps no surprise to see a rather different cast of supporting musicians bringing some of Mike Smith's recent material to life. Recent co-transcombobulator Jonathan Adjemian was joined here by Bernice's Robin Dann as well as Mike Posen on violin. More pop that previous (in a bubblegum-prog sort of way), the band was bravely achieving some manner of fusion of Henry Cow and Young Marble Giants. After a couple new tunes (including this opening burst of false falsetti with backing vox from Posen and Mike Smith himself) there were some new group arrangements of the Transcombobulation material as well as the poppification of the previously-essayed "Dark Sequin".

^* Thanks to Mike for passing along the title to this one.

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: De Luxe

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), April 15, 2015.

The Mike Smith Company - De Luxe

This particular fit of transcombobulation was performed under Mike Smith's name, but frequent synth co-conspirator Jonathan Adjemian was on hand to help noodle the tunes. Plus, this time out saw some increased allocations of rhythm with Jake Oelrichs (heard here on the left), D. Alex Meeks (centre) and Blake Howard (right) filling out the stereo spectrum, as well as Pete Johnston on bass. That created all sorts of opportunities for the handcrafted mellowness of Smith's compositions to be disrupted and pushed forward.

[Mike Smith, Jonathan Adjemian and various other accomplices will be serving up some original recipe boogie blobs at Holy Oak Café on Sunday, May 3rd.]

Recording: The Mike Smith Company

Artist: The Mike Smith Company

Song: Famous Wildlife Movies 1

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), October 23, 2013.

The Mike Smith Company - Famous Wildlife Movies 1 [Part I]

The Mike Smith Company - Famous Wildlife Movies 1 [Part II]

Full review to follow. It's been just over a year since Mike Smith dissolved his "prog-Americana" group Muskox. As always, though, he's been busy — touring distant lands, playing some keybs, playing some bass, and working on some new compositions. He mustered a large group, nine members deep, to try a few of them out (for the record: Ali Berkok, piano; Jake Oelrichs, drums; Jamie Drake, percussion; D. Alex Meeks, percussion; Pete Johnston, electric bass; Jay Hay, bari sax + flute; Tom Richards, trombone; Jeremy Strachan, guit + flute) and there was plenty cool stuff over two sets. This long piece, suitable to soundtrack the nature clips of your choice, starts off like a lion resting in the shade before springing into action but ends like that time Shaft wrestled that crocodile.