Dumb Waiter

We've already mentioned the 2014 WRIR Spring Fund Drive to you this week, but we just received some new information about the event that only makes it clearer how important WRIR (97.3 on your FM radio dial) is to the Richmond music community. The fund drive kicks off today, Friday March 14, and between 5 PM today and 7 PM Tuesday March 25, WRIR will be hosting live performances by 18 different local bands.

Live performances on air are a semi-regular occurrence throughout the year on WRIR, but 18 bands in 12 days is a remarkable amount of music even for them. The performers will encompass every imaginable genre of music--jazz, metal, reggae, old-time country, and traditional music from Southeast Asia, among others. Most noteworthy will be a performance by Inter Arma, the local metal band whose 2013 second album, Sky Burial, has received acclaim everywhere from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone and is surely one of the biggest success stories of the RVA music scene in 2013. Also performing will be up-and-coming experimental punk-jazz instrumental quartet Dumb Waiter, psychedelic indie-folk crew Hypercolor, No BS! Brass-affiliated jazz combo the Marcus Tenney Trio, reggae powerhouse Mighty Joshua and his Zion #5 band, and many more! It all kicks off today at 5 PM on the Global A Go-Go show with a performance from Gamelan Raga Kusuma, a local percussion ensemble that plays the traditional Indonesian music known as gamelan.

Here's the full schedule of performances you can look forward to over the next two weeks... - RVA Mag

Dumb Waiter’s sound is as eclectic as the music scene they come from. The rising Richmond quartet has been blowing minds with their intricate jazz meets math rock fusion, crossing more musical boundaries in a few bars than some acts do in their entire catalogs.

This article is taken from the brand new print issue of RVA Magazine. Click here to read the digital version of this issue.

The group, comprised of guitarist Nick Crider, drummer Nathaniel Roseberry, saxophonist Tristan Brennis, and bassist Keith Paul, made their mark last year with the astounding debut record Is This Chocolate?. The record, like much of the group’s history, came to life around their de facto headquarters at Richmond’s Gallery 5, where they played one of their first shows with the renowned duo Lightning Bolt and recorded in the old firehouse’s upper gallery.

For Is This Chocolate?, Dumb Waiter enlisted some of the city’s best local talent to create the sprawling and musically rich sounds that fill the tracks. Local musician, producer, and general audio wizard Dave Watkins was brought in to engineer and help produce the record with the band. “He knows how to get the best performance out of you,” says Nathaniel Roseberry of working with Watkins. “He knows when you’re doing your best, and goes, ‘That’s the one.’”

The combination of Dumb Waiter’s accomplished musicianship and Watkins’ amazing production was made all the more impressive with the addition of the strings provided by Matt Gold and Treesa Gold of Richmond’s Goldrush. “We just gave them a few suggestions and they ran with it,” says Roseberry. “I don’t think a single track even took them more than an hour.“ “It was almost disappointing… we spent all this time making this really complex and hard music, and they just got it immediately, jokes guitarist Nick Crider. “We were like, ‘Come on, this should be harder!’”

The end result of the collaboration is nothing short of amazing. The record experiments with metal, noise, world music, and funk--and that’s all just in the first song. “What we’re going for now is to have more contrast,” says Tristan Brennis. “Where there’s the dissonant and the cacophonous, but there’s also the melodic and the resonant.” “It’s important to express everything,” adds Keith Paul.

Much like their compositions, Dumb Waiter is constantly evolving. “Halfway through the record, we figured out where we wanted to be,” says Roseberry. “There are about two to three songs on the record of us as a beginning band, and two to three songs with us where we are now and what we’re trying to make.”

Dumb Waiter has certainly hit their stride, and 2014 will be a big year for the band. They have another planned Watkins-helmed release in the mix, this time a split with RVA noise rockers Navi, and the band is heading down to make their SXSW debut this spring. Of all the big plans Dumb Waiter has coming up, one thing is for sure--their sound won’t get any easier to pin down, even to those closest to the group. Roseberry explains: “The album title came from Dave Watkins, when we were listening to something we’d just recorded. He was like, ‘What is this music? What is this? What the fuck is this? Is this chocolate?’” - RVA Mag

Sports Reference starts with a confusing blend of ideas which can not be quantified and labeled. You contemplate whether this is Jazz or Math-rock and the Latin underlining rhythm really doesn’t help the classification of this great track. Going from a gentle swaying to a punchy rainfall of syncopated fills, the band then applies Violin to the mix making an even deeper dislocation from normalcy.

Not really knowing what to expect, nsectaconduit takes the opportunity to blast you into hyper space with a short burst of macabre soloing with random screams and something very familiar to The Slaughterhouse 5‘s Celebrity Snuff Tape pt. 2. One wonders if the band even wants us to continue on this transdimensional exploration into a twisted vision of the future.

With a more corny approach and too much attention to horn, Vegan Mustache Jazz really draws the portrait of a hipster drinking his fancy coffee, with his scarf, his fucking hat and shit…

Indubitably Dumbfounded has a very tightly knitted product of overlapping musical melodies all coming together to make a very wide and spacy track. The altitude of this tracks mind is beyond the clouds and really invites you into a more serene state then the previous songs. The song is very punchy yet somehow maintains a solid funky flow. This dulling of the sharpened attacks of momentum is really something I haven’t seen before.

Total Trappist Tragedy is like a little kid who dropped his ice cream on the pavement and keeps saying “oh no! oh no! oh no”!

Rub-a-dub-dub-dub really enticed me from the first note. The soothing, more organic sounding release has a very tranquil and comforting nature. I would love more of this down tempo style within the project. Drums and bass have intercourse until the guitar is summoned and demonic tensions rise. The heavy riffs are muted by a strange horn line and a lot of ride cymbal. This song really has a special fusion of styles and is a must listen.

the 5|4 time signature of Neologizer is a great closing anthem which obviously falls into the destruction pattern of these musicians. I love, I love! However, I’m not sure if I love you or if I’m in love with you boys.. then again, I think that was your goal. Am I right? - www.dontspreadbullshitspreadmusic.com