Boston-based psychedelic dub-jazz collective Club d’Elf will released their new album Loon & Thrush on Friday via Royal Potato Family, and they’re bringing their sprawling, trance-heavy sound to New York State four times in the weeks that follow.
Recorded entirely live in the studio with minimal overdubs, the LP is the band’s first record without Brahim Fribgane, the Casablanca-born multi-instrumentalist and Gnawa tradition-bearer who joined the group in 1999 and died in 2024.
Fribgane introduced frontman, bassist and composer Mike Rivard to Gnawa, a centuries-old spiritual music rooted in repetition, ritual and ecstatic groove. Over time, Moroccan trance became the foundational pillar of Club d’Elf’s sound.
“Going into the recording of this album was a very heavy time for the band, as we had just lost Brahim, who was a core member,” Rivard said. “This would be the first album we had done without him, and the thought of never being able to play with him again was a reality that was very hard to grasp.”
Although never planned, a theme of flight gradually emerged across the album’s 10 tracks. It surfaces in the avian imagery of the title piece, in the band’s improvisatory style and in what Rivard describes as Fribgane’s spirit guiding the sessions from beyond.
The album opens with a Moroccan-infused cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Bird Song,” featuring Duke Levine, a longtime member of Bonnie Raitt’s band, on electric sitar. Rivard laid the track over a North African chaabi groove Fribgane had taught the group to play.
“Even though he isn’t physically present on the track, I felt his spirit guiding us in the studio,” Rivard said.
Rivard, who first saw the Dead as a teenager in the late 1970s and traveled across the Midwest to follow them, dedicated the track to the recently departed Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Fribgane.
The record also includes a cover of the Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie“, with Rivard on sintir, a three-stringed Moroccan bass lute, grounding the Dead’s Americana in the earthy resonance of North African trance. The rest of the album consists of Rivard originals, all shaped by Fribgane’s teachings and passing.
Built around Rivard since 1998, Club d’Elf has cycled through a rotating cast of improvisers while weaving together dub, electronica, jazz, Gnawa, hip-hop, prog and ritual trance. The band has drawn admiration from peers including Dead and Company bassist Oteil Burbridge and Phish bassist Mike Gordon, who praised Rivard’s ability to move between electric bass and sintir, saying both instruments sound “primal and deep” in his hands.
New York State dates begin Saturday, April 18 at Three Heads Brewing in Rochester, followed by Thursday, April 23 at Colony in Woodstock and Friday, April 24 at The Egg in Albany. The run closes Saturday, May 3 at Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Tickets are available at clubdelf.com.
Club d’Elf Tour Dates:
April
8 – Jimmy’s – Portsmouth, NH
9 – Big Picture Theater – Waitsfield, VT
10 – De La Luz – Holyoke, MA
11 – Oxbow – Portland, ME
12 – The Sinclair – Cambridge, MA
18 – Three Heads Brewing – Rochester, NY
23 – Colony – Woodstock, NY
24 – The Egg – Albany, NY
May
3 – Brooklyn Bowl – Brooklyn, NY
9 – Dharma Bums – New Hope, PA
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