04-02-19 | Songs for Listening | Joe Westerlund
Drummer, composer, and improviser Joe Westerlund picked tunes at Songs for Listening for Tuesday, April 2. Joe, along with brothers Phil and Brad Cook, made up the core of the band Megafaun. (A group they formed after their previous project, DeYarmond Edison, a band including the trio + Justin Vernon, split.) Megafaun was a wonderfully disorienting unit, made of roughly equal doses Americana (the old, weird kind), American minimalism, American funk, and odd American music (the stuff of Beefheart and Zappa). Megafaun put out 3 LPs and made their final release, an EP with Arnold Dreyblatt, in 2013; this week Songs for Listening will feature tunes picked by members and contributors to that fine band, Joe is up for Tuesday.
Following Megafaun, Joe's ongoing and intermittent affiliations include Mandolin Orange, Califone, William Tyler, Sylvan Esso, Bon Iver, and Gayngs. Joe attended Bennington College where he studied with the legendary percussionist Milford Graves. In 2014, Joe released his first recording as a solo artist, Diamonds & Tapestries: The Grandma Sparrow Story, under the alias Grandma Sparrow, in collaboration with Spacebomb Productions. In 2016, after relocating briefly to Los Angeles, he released Mojave Interlude on Northern Spy Records, a recording built largely from electronically manipulated percussion. Joe provided a list centered around meditative and groove-based percussion-driven tunes.
'Enter the Bristle Stream' by Eli Keszler from 'Empire'
'La Ferriere - Vue Des Alpes' by Julian Sartorius from 'Hidden Tracks: Basel - Geneve'
'Holy Lands' by Makaya McCraven from 'Universal Beings'
'INTRA-1' by Mark Fell from 'Intra'
