Spaghetti Eastern Electro Dub Debuts With 'Live At Green Kill Sessions'

For the past four years, a quartet of New York musicians has been entertaining audiences with a unique fusion of Jamaican dub, Indian raga, psychedelia, and modal jazz under the banner of Spaghetti Eastern Electro Dub. Now, they are showcasing their explorations with the release of "Live at Green Kill Session," a six-track album recorded at a performance at the Green Kill gallery in Kingston, N.Y. 

Spaghetti Eastern Electro Dub is a project initiated by guitarist/keyboardist Sal Cataldi, an offshoot of his long-running solo venture, Spaghetti Eastern Music. Cataldi's partners are bassist Tom "Spontaneous" Semioli, drummer Dirk Drazen, and Dawoud "The Renegade Sufi" Kringle. The latter adds an Eastern flavor to the proceedings with a hybrid instrument of his design, a fusion of sitar, cello, and guitar, the Dautar.

The tracks are anchored by bassist Semioli's rock-solid dub-styled thematic riffs, Cataldi's spacey looping textures, and Drazen's rock-steady drumming. As they progress, subtle evolutions in tempo and tone center develop as Cataldi and Kringle take turns adding melodic themes and solos. Kringle's unique instrument is sometimes bowed, plucked, or strummed - creating sounds ranging from Middle Eastern raga to vintage '70s Krautrock. Kringle and Cataldi manipulate their instruments with loopers, fuzz tones, ring modulators, harmonizers, Ebow, and more.

The quartet's sound has been compared to Miles Davis's early 70s electric period, Bill Laswell's dub explorations, Norwegian/ECM records guitarist Terje Rypdal's post-jazz atmospherics, Brian Eno and David Byrne's world music collaborations, and even Khruangbin's calming psychedelicized Eastern modal music.

Sal Cataldi debuted Spaghetti Eastern Music with the 2016 album, Sketches of Spam, followed by numerous EPs and singles. The New York Times says Cataldi "has a beat unmistakably his own," while Time Out New York praises his "delicate guitar work and the hauntingly moody atmosphere he conjures." Spaghetti Eastern has been called "beautiful and unique" by WFUV's Mixed Bag and "charmingly melodic and off-center" by WFMU. Hudson Valley One dubbed the project "part Sergio Leone fever dream, part Ravi Shankar raga, a whirling dervish of musical creation, a must-see." Chronogram Magazine called his exploratory solo guitar score for the dance piece 2x2x4, "cool, melodic, inspired and transcendent, a wave of sonic warmth and light."

"Spontaneous" is the nombre de musica of Tom Semioli, a New Yorker who not only expertly plays the bass, but writes, blogs and podcasts about what he calls the "king of instruments." Tom learned his craft in the music program at the University of Miami, from a coterie of instructors and alumni, including Jaco Pastorius. A veteran of many bands in New York and the Sunshine State, Tom is the riff meister of Electro Dub, composing the many riffs and harmonies that his associates build upon. He is also the man behind the long-running Know Your Bass Player blog and Notes from An Artist podcast who writings on music have been featured in Bass Player Magazine, No Depression, Huffington Post and many other media

Dawoud "The Renegade Sufi" Kringle is a musical composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. His unique ideas about music inspired/forced him to work with Limulus Musical Instruments to develop the Dautar, something he calls "the love child of guitar, sitar, and cello." He has been described as sounding like "Hans Zimmer and Jimi Hendrix fighting over a beautiful princess from another galaxy," which qualifies him to hang in the company of his fellow Spaghetti Easterners. Dawoud has performed in the U.S. and Europe, produced over 13 solo albums, and composed for film, theater, and dance performances.

Dirk Drazen is a musician who, in his own words, "works the 'stix' for this improvisational outfit." He issues a supple and dynamic rhythmic matrix of beats that draw upon jazz, funk, and progressive rock to lay a foundation for "deze cats to strew their mess upon." Dirk sometimes commutes to gigs on a skateboard when the band plays in Manhattan.