PRESS
ON IN VIVO
JazzTimes:
“Best kept secret in the avant-jazz underground…BDR has turned up nothing but aces over a rollicking three-album stretch on the Ropeadope label, sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music…part 1980s-era Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest….The consummate genre-juggling party band.”
Downbeat:
"★★★ ½. Proudly unanchored improvisation....an unedited stream of musical consciousness...burns with bop swing. The melodic cogency, rhythmic clarity and sonic ingenuity in these ad hoc live improvisations astounds.”
Glide Magazine:
“BDR melds the influences of free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop into their signature sound. Much is made about improvisation or playing in the moment. While some bands pay casual reference to those phrases, as if to think it will improve their credibility, Bright Dog Red (BDR) makes it their mantra. They are the epitome of in-the-moment playing."
Nu Jazz Sounds UK:
"Amongst the most exciting and creative jazz musicians out there today.”
Blue in Green Podcast, UK:
"A fantastic live set...genuinely thrilling."
Best of Jazz:
"Improvised music captured live...experimental jazz mixed with hip-hop, electronica, and a touch of krautrock: a refreshing discovery."
ON SOMETHIN' COMES ALONG
Nippertown:
"Best of 2020. How can you NOT love a group that can pair sharp, funny, intelligent lyrics with a borderline-chaotic mix of jazz, rock and hip-hop unmatched by anyone in the game? Bright Dog Red is not a gimmick; it is a force to be reckoned with, and may the reckoning come soon for all of us!"
Albany Times Union:
"Jazz outfit riding creativity high."
SF Gate:
"The most dynamic incarnation of Bright Dog Red yet." -SF Gate, US
Glide Magazine:
"Exciting, mesmerizing...hard-edged free jazz stylings."
Dan Ouellette, Jazz and Beyond Intel, US:
“Ups the ante of free music…bursting with improvisation that defies categorization.”
One Man's Jazz Canada:
"Successfully combines freer improvisation with contemporary street culture."
Constellations Radio, UK:
"Could be album of the year."
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
"They are the best at what they do."
Marlbank, UK:
"Spirited, a full throttle go-for-it charge for the line affair."
UK Vibe:
"★★★★★. The music runs a joyous gamut now synonymous with the BDR brand."
The Daily Gazette:
"Packed with improvised and innovative jazz elements, and funk."
Radio Ros Brera, Italia:
“Poetry and jazz play together like neighborhood children.”
Jazz in Family, Italia:
"Could find an important position among the most famous bands playing innovative jazz ."
A Closer Listen, UK:
"Folds in a generous amount of hip-hop, funk, poetry and freestyling. The fact that the band has opened for Parliament Funkadelic says all we need to know."
Bill Barnett, WVUD Radio:
“With two hours of music, this is the most generous helping of skronk-hop you’ll see this year, dig in.”
Joy Sounds Pod Cast:
“Bright Dog Red is making it up as they go along, literally. All of their music is created in the moment, through free improvisation...brings together hip hop, electronica, psychedelia and noise into a spontaneous soundscape taking the listener on a journey through their spur of the moment process.”
Notas Azuis, Portugal:
“It is invention that drives Bright Dog Red, spontaneous and unrepeatable invention, the meeting of brains and lungs, of muscles and hands and throats, of ideas and dreams, of different experiences. Because there is always something that appears, that takes us to some other place. Life, like this music, is made up of a constant flow, with an unstoppable force, like that of the locomotive that adorns the cover of this album.”
ON HOW'S BY YOU?
Modern Drummer:
“A seamless blend of seemingly disparate influences, creating a post-modern mélange that ranges from the familiar to the surprising…thought-provoking, toe-tapping, boundary-defying...inspired music.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Best of 2019. Experimental and diverse…you ultimately stop trying to comprehend this unravelling psychedelic experience and just learn to accept its mesmerizing nature.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Best of 2019. Absolutely brilliant!”
Nippertown:
“Best of 2019. Boundary-breaking alt-jazz improv.”
Glide Magazine:
“Fiery…free-flowing and immersive. Rhyming, noise and electronics weave in and out.”
Radio Le Grigri, France:
“Un chien nourri au hip-hop, à l’electro, au jazz et qui rappe ; assurément un chien d’avant-garde A dope album!” [“A dog fed hip-hop, electro, jazz and rapping; certainly an avant-garde dog. A dope album!”]
The Bolg:
“A stellar beatnik odyssey, filled with risks, that grows and unfurls more and more after each spin…a big musical Ouija board.”
Start-FM 94.2, Vilnius, Lithuania:
“What happens when you mix spontaneous jazz, hip-hop, poetry, psychedelics and noise? Bright Dog Red. Never stops evolving – just like we all should.”
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
“Spirited and free forming jazz with a bit of electronica and hip hop thrown in for good measure!”
ON MEANS TO THE ENDS
Nippertown:
“Divine madness…a brilliant package of vibrant, intricate, surprising pieces.”
Jazz Journal, UK:
“An enjoyable jazz and ‘hip-pop’ hybrid…a seamless and well-crafted product.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Spirited and inspired jazz that skillfully weaves in additional elements of electronica and hip-hop.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Wild, refreshing, creative music. A sense of mystery because you don’t know where it’s going, where it’s going to end up, but it takes you on a journey. Cracking good music.”
Green Arrow Radio:
“Doesn’t fit into anything, and that’s just fine! So much going on…takes many, many listens before you feel like you’re not getting that one off, ‘this is mine,’ experience… an incredible capture.”
ON BULLET PROOF SHOES
The Bolg:
“Exploratory sounds from a group on the rise… Strikes an insane balance of minimal tactile grooves with massive improvisational freakouts on a jazz club hip hop space odyssey...mixes Late Night Tales-type grooves with quality rapping and exceptional musicianship. A lovely journey in fusion and certainly worth a listen or two (if not more)Jazz fans who dig hip hop will love the quick trip into the hazy underworld of Bright Dog Red’s Bullet Proof Shoes.”
Emerging Indie Bands, UK:
“Extemporised psychedelic jazz-hop”
Masked Faces:
“Get lost in ‘Bullet Proof Shoes,’ and revel in musical metamorphosis.”
ON BRIGHT DOG RED
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
"Theirs is an unrivalled approach to contemporary jazz.”
Modern Drummer:
"Jazz that draws on psychedelic, electronic soundscapes, improvised hip-hop, funk, and more."
Jazzwise, UK:
"Mash-up of Maceo-style funk, old-school rap and jazz-rock riffage."
Jay Hunter, Jazz2K:
“Smokin’! spaced out.”
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
“Sonic Groundbreakers.”
Jazz Journal, UK:
“Starting as a jazz-meets-hip-hop jam band with a loosely-defined membership, Bright Dog Red has become a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene.”
UK Vibe:
“Inventive and Bold.”
The Alt Weekly:
“An innovative and psychedelic mesh of jazz, hip-hop and electronica.”
The Bolg:
“Put Albany’s Bright Dog Red on your radar as this jazzy psychedelic hip hop posse has potential for some progressive golden era goodness.”
Paul Schulman, Indie Music Veteran:
“Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets.”
Don Lucoff, DL Media:
“Electric Ahmad Jamal.”
New York Music Daily:
“Playful.”
Louis Marks, CEO Ropeadope Records:
“Bright Dog Red is perhaps the most unique band to grace the halls of Ropeadope, and that’s quite an accomplishment. Bright Dog Red hits the stage without charts or set list – they simply start playing and improvise, taking cues from each other and from the audience and room. It’s adventurous, and due to the skill and rapport of the players, surprisingly cohesive.”