Inflorescence Mike Dillon & Mike Dillon and Punkadelic

• 1Desert Monsoon03:32
• 2Inflorescence04:42
• 3Slowly But Surely05:45
• 4Stravinsky Spectacles01:30
• 5Pandas03:26
• 6Devil’s Playground04:32
• 7Homer & Debs04:47
• 8Apocalypse Daydream04:03
• 9Another Slippery Slope05:39
• 10Never Been To Paris04:24
• Total Runtime42:20

Info for Inflorescence

Mike Dillon & Punkadelick makes its recorded debut with Inflorescence, an album of heady, instrumental rock highlighting a band deep in the throes of creative freedom, road tested and wild. Consisting of 10 tracks in 42-minutes, it’s an expansive, focused and fearless collection, representing a world where Duke Ellington and Augustus Pablo rub shoulders with crate-digger exotica, the freak-funk of Parliament and the ‘anything fits’ outsider ethos of acid-fried punks like The Meat Puppets.

A trio featuring Mike Dillon (Ricki Lee Jones, Ani DiFranco, Les Claypool) on vibraphone, marimba, Prophet 6, congas, and bongos, Brian Haas (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey) on Fender Rhodes, piano, bass Moog and melodica and Nikki Glaspie (Beyonce) on drums, cymbals and vocals, Punkadelick is the unified vision of six hands creating a world that often sounds like the work of an ensemble three times the size.

During 2020 and 2021, while many music venues were still shuttered, the group began touring, sweating their way through cuts Dillon and Haas had composed during quarantine writing sessions. Locking in on stage, it quickly became clear the band was functioning at a level that made the hair on their arms stand at attention—even for three live music veterans accustomed to life on the road.

“It became obvious to let this become a collaboration,” Dillon says. “This is really something all three of us are doing because we have so much love for one another and a love for the music that we started creating.”

“There’s only three of us, but we move together like a big, nasty school of fish,” Haas adds, laughing.

During the tail end of a 2021 tour, the band booked time to record with engineer—and functioning fourth band member—Chad Meise, and Inflorescence sprouted. Opener “Desert Monsoon,” sets the stage with a spiritual-jazz intro of organ, vibraphone, percussion and wordless vocal coos before crackling to life as a swaggering funk strut. The title track, and “Pandas,” dig into thick dub textures built around Glaspie’s drumming and Haas’s subwoofer-straining bass synths.

“Apocalypse Daydream,” which appeared as an exotic head-nodder on 2020’s Shoot the Moon (titled “Apocalyptic Daydreams”) is reborn as a meatier jazz-rock slab where Dillon and Haas circle each other like Television performing as a lounge act on a cruise ship sailing seas of psilocybin.

Bending ears and surprising audiences has long been part of Dillon’s MO and Glaspie and Haas act as perfect foils for forays into the weird. While Dillon bristles at the “punk jazz” tag, punk rock and jazz remain core influences to the band, in sound and spirit.

“We’re students of the titans of music. We grew up listening to punk and rock ’n’ roll but we also love instrumental music—particularly the forefathers of Black American Music. In our minds, Led Zeppelin and Milt Jackson, Parliament-Funkadelic and The Minutemen, The Bad Brains and Frank Zappa are interconnected influences,” explains Dillon. “All that comes together in how we approach instrumental creative music. Both punk rock and jazz are not prefab things, they’re about the freedom. We have no genre restriction in this band, and people who get it really respect that.”

Maybe the greatest example of the band’s punk-steeped sonic free-for-all is “Slowly But Surely,” a track Dillon told Haas to compose as if he were “writing for Queens of the Stone Age.” The song plays like QOTSA translated to piano runs, vibes and deeply swinging drums—big-riff stoner rock upended and played with huge smiles by America’s premier proponents of the unclassifiable.

“We try to challenge our listeners. We’re touching a nerve with people who maybe don’t want to see the same songs done in the same variations all night long,” continues Dillon. “Part of my mission is taking these instruments that are primarily designed for the orchestral or jazz world and taking them to the rock world, the club world, running them through pedals and effects. We’re not afraid to be soft, or to surprise. That’s what we all do in this band — get beyond our own conceptions of what music is supposed to be.”

“We are so blessed and lucky to do what we do for a living — it’s apparent in the music,” Glaspie chimes in. “It doesn’t matter how the day is going, but we get to the club, set up and crush the gig, all the other stuff doesn’t matter. We’re likeminded individuals who love life, love people and want to spread happiness.”

Punkadelick:
Mike Dillon, vibraphone, marimba, Prophet 6, congas, bongo
Brain Haas, Fender Rhodes, piano, bass Moog, melodica
Nikki Glaspie, drums, cymbals, vocals

Mike Dillon
How many artists have been praised a “punk rock provocateur,” “jazz vibraphone visionary,” and “percussion virtuoso” in the same sentence? There’s only one: Mike Dillon. Whether through his affiliation with artists like Les Claypool, Primus, Rickie Lee Jones, Dean Ween Group and Ani Difranco, and collaborations such as Nolatet, Garage a Trois, The Dead Kenny G's, Critters Buggin or bands he has led, including Mike Dillon Band, Mike Dillon's New Orleans Punk Rock Percussion Consortium, Billy Goat and Hairy Apes BMX, the Texas-native has set his own standard for 25 years now.

Over the past decade, Mike Dillon has released a number of acclaimed albums, intertwining a range of influences from Zappa-esque eccentricity to Fishbone punk funk, D.C. Go-Go to Milt Jackson-influenced vibraphone majesty. Never before, however, has he recorded music so personal and committed to a sustained mood as his latest album, Functioning Broke. The recording finds Dillon solo on vibraphone and various percussion, building each track into its own minimalist, but multi-dimensional auditory landscape.

The current version of the Mike Dillon Band features guitarist Cliff Hines, Bassist Nathan Lambertson and a rotating cast of drummers including Claude Coleman Jr. (Ween), Simon Lott, G. Maxwell, Doug Belote and Paul Thibodeaux. With this line up, Dillon has continued exploring the connection between New Orleans street beats, Ska, funk, Hardcore and jazz. The band will release a new record in February 2017 titled, “Life is not a Football." Produced in New Orleans by Richard Maloney and Dillon with engineers Rick Nelson and Robert Mercurio, this album sounds like a Spotted Cat trad band that grew up playing Dead Kennedys and invited Captain Beefheart over for a dinner cooked by Thelonious Monk. The Mike Dillon Band has supported acts like Galactic, The Revivalists, Clutch, Primus, and Fishbone, while continuing to play music festivals and in cities across the U.S.

In 2016, the Gambit's Big Easy Awards named Mike Dillon "Performer of the Year" and the Mike Dillon Band "Best Punk/Metal Band" in New Orleans. Living in New Orleans for over 10 years now, when not on the road with Rickie Lee Jones, Nolatet, or the Mike Dillon Band, Mike resides in the Musician's Village.

Mike's latest release, Life Is Not A Football, released April, 2017 (Royal Potato Family) is "A recording with the Big Easy coursing through its veins and equal parts Frank Zappa and The Butthole Surfers in its DNA. Life Is Not A Football, is a no-holds-barred affair, complete with rallying cries for justice, truth-to-power political and existential rants and plenty of inside jokes.

This album contains no booklet.