Don Giovanni News

On Monday, Don Giovanni Records will host Going The Distance, an all day online festival that will be streamed live via our Instagram account.

Broadcasting from the comfort of their homes, 20 artists from across our roster will perform music, comedy, and who knows what else for YOU, who -- we hope -- will be listening from the comfort of your own home. The whole gang is going to be there: Downtown Boys, Noun, Worriers, Bad Moves, DJ Haram, Mikey Erg, Teenage Halloween, Lee Bains, Jeffrey Lewis, Hprizm, Fat Tony, Dusk,and many, many more.

Going the Distance will kick off at 1pm EST and run until at least 11:00 pm. All ages! Free to the public! Find the complete lineup below.

SET TIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE SO KEEP CHECKING BACK UP TO THE DAY OF FOR CHANGES

Tune in

Turn on!

Stay home!

VISIT @DONGIOVANNIRECORDS ON INSTAGRAM

SET TIMES:

1:00 pm EST – Nato Coles

1:30 pm EST - Dusk

2:00 pm EST – Izzy True

2:30 pm EST – La Neve

3:00 pm EST – Painted Zeros

3:30 pm EST – Paisley Fields

4:00 pm EST – Teenage Halloween

4:30 pm EST – Fat Tony

5:00 pm EST – Lee Bains III

5:30 pm EST – Jeffrey Lewis

6:00 pm EST – Evan Greer

6:30 pm EST – Amy Klein

7:00 pm EST – Downtown Boys

7:30 pm EST - Noun

8:00 pm EST – Bad Moves

8:30 pm EST – She/Her/Hers

9:00 pm EST - Mikey Erg

9:30 pm EST - DJ Haram of 700 Bliss

10:00 PM EST – Erica Freas

10:30 PM EST - Worriers

11:00 PM EST- Sammus

WATCH "SO YOUNG SO"

PRE-ORDER "THE CYCLE"

Out May, 15th on Don Giovanni Records, The Cycle is the fifth album by Mourning [A] BLKstar. It’s the Cleveland-based collective’s masterwork -- a double LP spanning 20 songs and three singers, touching on neo-soul, hip-hop, and the cosmic expanse in between/beyond. It is their song cycle, written in a time that just may need a song or two in support of and in love and power to the living.

The Cycle was created in a 900 sq. ft. storefront on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, where Mourning [A] BLKstar practiced for three years. The band met weekly in that space on late Wednesday nights that often stretched into the early morning. Together, Mourning [A] BLKstar watched the flicker of the street lamps against damp sidewalks, listened to the sounds a city makes in every season and watched a cast of characters from the windows -- many of whom stopped to listen or dance along with the music.

The band wrote The Cycle together in that storefront; RA Washington brought in 12 song sketches and the rest of the group wrote their parts on the spot. It was an epic first practice -- a moment of spontaneous creative energy that lies at the heart of the record. The songs came together so fast that Mourning [A] BLKstar performed many of them for the first time just two days later at a showcase for The Panza Foundation, a local arts advocacy nonprofit dedicated to the support of Northeastern Ohio Musicians.

M[A]B is a multi-generational, gender and genre non-conforming amalgam of Black Culture dedicated to servicing the stories and songs of the apocalyptic diaspora.

"Reckoning simmers with frustration at the cycle of racism that has persisted in America through all of the eras its music references"
- Bandcamp on Reckoning

"One of 2019's sweetest and most soaring transmissions from black America"
- The Wire on Reckoning


MOURNING [A] BLKSTAR ON TOUR

4/4 - Cleveland, OH @ Mahall's w/ Ata Kak
4/24 - Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom *
4/25 - Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme *
4/26 - Detroit, MI @ Deluxx Fluxx *
4/27 - Cincinnati, OH @ Radio Artifact *
4/30 - Chicago, IL @ Schubas *
5/1 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club (2 shows) *
5/5 - Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall #
5/6 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg #
5/7 - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair #
5/8 - Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live #
5/15 - Cleveland, OH (LP Release Show)
5/16 - Toronto, ON @ The Great Hall #
7/18 - Yellow Springs, OH @ Springfest 2020

* w/ Oshun
# w/ US Girls

mourningablkstar.com

This spring, Don Giovanni Records will report to SXSW for another year of zeitgeist-nudging, algorithm-exploding, metric-crushing music discovery.

Organized in collusion with our pals from Arrowhawk Records, this year's showcase will feature performances by Sammus, Mal Blum, Paisley Fields, Shana Falana, Painted Zeros, and Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires.

The event will be held on Thursday, March 19th at Beerland. Doors at 7pm.

DON GIOVANNI & ARROWHAWK RECORDS @ SXSW 2020

Thursday, March 19th
Beerland
711 Red River St. Austin, TX
7:00 pm Doors

Lee Bains III + The Gloryfires
Sammus
Mal Blum
Paisley Fields
Shana Falana
Painted Zeros

Find the Don Giovanni/Arrowhawk SXSW Showcase on Facebook

To request music and/or information: aarondongiovanni@gmail.com

Art by Faye Orlove

(Photo Credit: Bob Sweeney)

Free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements announce their new album, Who Sent You?, out March 20th on International Anthem/Don Giovanni, and today present its lead single/video, “No Más.” The group is comprised of Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Tcheser Holmes. Who Sent You? is the punk-rocking of jazz and the mystification of the avant-garde. This record weaves kinetic soul fusion, dreamy yet harrowing poetry, and intricate rhythms into warmth-giving tapestries that comfort and conceal, confront and coerce all at once.

“No Más” was composed by the Panamanian-born Navarro in a harmonic echo of a Strata East free jazz classic over a movement-inducing Latin rhythm. Over its peak moments, poet/MC Ayewa professes: "No mas. No more... No longer will we allow them to divide and conquer, divide and oppress, define our humanity..." Its stunning accompanying video was shot in Johannesburg, South Africa by filmmaker and photographer Imani Nikyah Dennison. The video explores the concept of Africans escaping planet earth, on a path to liberation. A story of migration told through collage, stock footage, and movement, all being driven by the sounds of free jazz and poetry.

PRE-ORDER NOW

Originally performing as two different ensembles at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event in 2015 (in response to the NYPD slaying of Akai Gurley), the future members of Irreversible Entanglements recognized a shared ethos, and shortly after, assembled as a single unit for an impromptu studio date at Seizure’s Palace in Brooklyn. That session yielded their debut album, 2017’s Irreversible Entanglements. Critical and communal acclaim for the album (including “Best of 2017” nods from NPR Music, WIRE Magazine, Bandcamp, and others) fueled a high demand for the band in the live setting, and the group have since spent much of 2018 and 2019 on the road. They have collaborated in performance with many legends of creative music including Amina Claudine Myers, Pat Thomas, and Nicole Mitchell; and their highest profile shows have included Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, Le Guess Who Festival In Utrecht NL, Barbican in London, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

Where the band’s self-titled debut was all explosive noisy anthems and glorious cosmic bluster, Who Sent You? is a focused and patient ritual. Irreversible Entanglements take their time in between these grooves, stalking the war-torn streets of the Deep South and post-Columbian apocalypses—taking their time to dream up an amalgamation that sounds truly euphoric. More than the sum of its parts—war-like basslines, haunting saxophone, cyberpunk brass, the unwieldy storm of drums, and the oracular phyletic incantations of Ayewa—Who Sent You? is an entire holistic jam of “infinite possibilities coming back around,” a sprawling meditation, a reminder of the forms and traumas of the past, and the shape and vision of Afrotopian sounds to come.

PRE-ORDER NOW

Who Sent You? Tracklist:

1.The Code Noir / Amina
2. Who Sent You - Ritual
3. No Más
4. Blues Ideology
5. Bread Out Of Stone

IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS TOUR DATES

Tuesday, March 31 - Chicago, IL @ Co-Prosperity Sphere
Wednesday, April 1 - Iowa City, IA @ Mission Creek Festival
Saturday, May 23 - Atlanta, GA @ Atlanta Jazz Festival

Light Beams are a D.C. trio that uses samples and a live rhythm section to write songs about staying positive. No computers. No set lists. No dudes staring at screens onstage making music that reduces you to staring at your screen offstage. Instead -- Voila! -- music that makes you move, makes you feel good and never, ever overstays its welcome.

Founded in 2015 by drummer Sam Lavine, bassist Arthur Noll, and sampler/vocalist Justin Moyer, Light Beams has risen from the ashes of D.C. bands both legendary and obscure -- and definitely too numerous to mention. Self-Help, its first full length out 1/31 on Don Giovanni records, fuses its diverse influences -- abstract expressionist painting, Terminator X, 80s New York freestyle, Dischord bands, Sheila E. -- into a melange of cross-genre innovention the band calls "BLOCK ROCK." Recorded at Solar Power Station, Moyer's sun-kissed studio in downtown Washington, and mixed (in yet another twist) by metal legends Brian McTernan (Battery) and Mike Schleibaum (Darkest Hour), this record dares offer listeners overstuffed on streaming services' offerings something that cannot be contained by any playlist.