75 Dollar Bill: Little Big Band at Roulette

About

75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. They immediately embraced an exhaustive local gigging schedule that found them playing at rock clubs, DIY spaces, weddings and on the street, and quickly gained a reputation in New York for their hypnotic, immersive live shows. Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms, played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s searchingly abstract guitar playing. Often using a custom quarter tone guitar, Chen’s improvisations are forays into a modal, microtonal sound world. The duo’s electric, richly patterned music can shape shift from ecstatic dance tunes to slowly changing polyrhythmic trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on early electric blues, the modal traditions of West Africa, India and the Middle East, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their home town.