Song of the Day – Rebop, Live Improv at Merge

By Seamus Gallivan

Like most Buffalonians who have been to Merge on a final Friday over the past year or so, I was sufficiently socknocked from the first sight and sounds of Rebop, a live hip-hop group improv experience led by one of Buffalo’s surefire showstoppers, keys/sax/singer Eric Crittenden, and joined by a cast of pseudo-regulars including the Chilharmonic Orchestra – DJ Cutler, Tone DiGesare on MPC, VJ Brown on guitar, and Nick Gonzales on bass – along with a slew of emcees and assorted ringers.

The combination of Cutler’s funky turntable tricks and DiGesare’s jazzy mad scientist MPC sampler comps lay a foundation rooted in innovation, with which Brown and Gonzales give a smooth and steady groove for Critt to turn it out, engaging and enveloping throughout as he releases himself to the rhythm. It’s a riot to watch, and there’s nothing else quite like it – the scene certainly served as inspiration for us to launch our Drop-In Sessions at Merge that drop a live band in with Cutler, showing that Merge was a fitting setting for the Cutler-plus-guests concept that I’d wanted to put on for a long time. It is our goal for these two monthly events to complement each other in their showcase of the creative and innovative talent that abounds in Buffalo, as well as the intimate venue that is so hospitable to these experiments.

On this the final Friday of the month, Rebops returns tonight to Merge (439 Delaware Ave, 10pm) – Cutler and DiGesare report that they’ve made five new beats for the occasion, the king of Buffalo freestyle emcees Mad Dukez is confirmed to be in the mix, and Critt is bound to lay it down even heavier now, emboldened by similar sounds and scenes brewing around the session he originally convened.

Here’s a past clip for you to get hip to Rebop, this one featuring AL Third on words and Zuri Appleby on bass…