Bright Dog Red - How's By You? (2019)

Bright Dog Red (BDR), an improvising collective from Albany, New York, fuses free improvisation, electronica, jazz, hip hop, psychedelia, and noise music. BDR will release How’s by You? September 13, 2019, the ensemble’s second album for Ropeadope Records, the influential Philadelphia area imprint.

How’s by You? follows BDR’s Ropeadope debut, 2018’s Means to the Ends, celebrated for its “exploratory sounds” (The Bolg) and “spirited and inspired jazz that skillfully weaves in…electronica and hip-hop” (Blue in Green Radio, UK).

BDR’s regular performances at New York destination venues like ShapeShifter Lab, Nublu, and Spectrum, have garnered the ensemble comparisons to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “electronic Ahmad Jamal,” (Don Lucoff), and to other psychedelic, jazz fusion, and hip hop luminaries.

The band has also earned esteem among contemporary musicians representing a wide swath of genres. Live looping artist Adam Ahuja of Infinity Gritty has implored his followers to immerse themselves in BDR’s “self-reflective swing hop.” Internationally renowned DJ M A N I K, has heralded BDR’s “dope fusion improv” on his syndicated podcast Welcome to My Crate. Bass virtuoso and neuroscientist Tyreek Jackson, who often plays with the group, credited BDR with expanding his horizons, “Playing in this band, where you know that things can change at any time, has opened up my ear…I become a better listener after every BDR gig.”

Founded by drummer and composer Joe Pignato, BDR is comprised of a rotating cast of players. How’s by You? features founding members Cody Davies (electronics) and Anthony Berman (bass), as well as long standing members Mike LaBombard (tenor sax) and MC Cully (rhyming and freestyling). The collective has its genesis in a series of freewheeling jam sessions led by Pignato, a professor at the State University of New York, Oneonta:

“I was inspired by one of my teachers, Yusef Lateef, who held jam sessions with his students. I’d have students out to my house and we’d play for hours, all of it improvised. It’s pretty gratifying to see the concept evolve, becoming a body of work, especially as it reflects an ethos cultivated during my own time as a student with Dr. Lateef.”