Lanzón

Lanzón is the collaboration between longtime Califone band mates Joe Adamik & Jim Becker. Aside from working together for over 10 years in Califone, Adamik and Becker perform and collaborate with Iron & Wine, which has yielded two Grammy nominations: Beast Epic (2017) and Weed Garden (2018). Lanzón evolved from moments on the road such as at a sound check in Lucerne or Hamburg, phone recordings of experimentations after a rehearsal, or random outtakes during recording sessions after everyone else had gone home. The music is a common language and short hand that has developed over the course of 15 plus years.

The debut release (self-titled) was mostly recorded live in Emmett Kelly’s (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Angel Olson) basement studio to a two-track reel to reel. The first song, Jelly Roll, is a slow entry into the unknown, with organ and fiddle floating above an ambiguous loop and lopsided rhythm. The Second track, Slug Bong, begins with drums carrying the listener into the strange instruments which might be clarinet synthesized with distorted Casio, folding into a slow through composed trip with an excursion into the bush. Mexican Dracula is a drum and Casio duet performed live in full rawness like a band on the beach in Rio de Janeiro after huffing out of a coke bottle. Mescalina puts Becker and Adamik both on electric guitars (Adamik on slide) for a long and weaving song full of textures. Another double guitar feature, Arc Minute shows the love of This Heat, Jeff Beck, and of course Led Zeppelin with other influences layered on top. Lhasa was inspired by a found National Geographic magazine from 1919 in which the writer ponders what is wrong with all these people in the town of Lhasa. “…all the men are monks, yet seem to just sit around doing nothing all day” – a bass clarinet, fiddle duet filled with appropriate dissonance.