Cold Duck Complex

BY KEN MAIURI
Thursday, August 17, 2006

Up until it closed its doors recently, I'd worked in a local record store, and in its last days, the most popular releases were by the Dixie Chicks, Springsteen, and Valley funk-jazz-hip hop band Cold Duck Complex, who'd just put out their new EP 'Enough.'

The Amherst quartet performed downstairs at Pearl Street last Friday night opening for the Pharcyde; their serious skills, playful presence and total command of the room proved that they're likely to get upgraded from the status of openers to main act in the near future.

Bassist Joe Cardozo went to the microphone after a particularly slamming song and asked the audience of 150, 'Has anybody here seen Cold Duck before?' The place erupted with hoots and applause. Then he asked, 'Has anybody here seen the Pharcyde before?' and there were some mild cheers. 'Oh s---, we win!' he said, laughing.

Cardozo and his bandmates, all in their early 20s, made it clear they were thankful for the gig and respectfully hyped the crowd for the still-at-it hip hop headliners (the Pharcyde had its heyday in the early-'90s). But Cold Duck Complex is on the rise, a star-caliber band, confident and inspired, and their Pearl Street set was a stellar hour of music that incorporated funk, jazz, hip hop, rock, punk and pop hooks.

Cardozo played fretless bass with bad-ass poise (more than once I thought of Little Feat's Kenny Gradney) and the virtuosic command of a jazz fusion player, without any of the noodling that sometimes comes with such skill. He and drummer Makaya McCraven made an unstoppable rhythm section, especially in their commitment to not allow a funky groove to rest on its laurels. They masterfully changed up the feel, in one tune moving from skipping sunshine funk to a riled-up Latin rhythm to a thundering slam-rock finale.

Off in the shadows of stage left was keyboardist Darby Wolf, playing a Hohner clavinet but mostly a beautiful beat-up Rhodes electric piano. After looking at their disc's liner notes post-show, I was shocked to learn Wolf was not a longtime member, but a temporary replacement for the band's recently departed original keyboardist. I hope they keep him around - his Rhodes finesse gave the grooves an added dusky, expansive, spacey dimension that seemed to fit the songs better than the acoustic piano that pops up on some of the band's recordings.

It's to Cold Duck Complex's credit that despite their surplus of musical muscle, they didn't show off and jam for hours; many of their tunes were concise and direct, kept to pop-song length. And when they did stretch out, the effect was revelatory, like the instrumental sections of 'Something Like,' which gave Cardozo plenty of room to shine. As McCraven and Wolf swirled around a mesmerizing, repetitive chord progression, the bassist strangled violent noise out of his distorted fretless, then switched to playing a sad, almost crying lead line.

Not quite center stage on the mic was Casey Hayman - aka Platypus Complex - baseball cap pulled down to his eyebrows, spitting out lyrics, working hard, but often losing the battle against the sound system, which either muddied up his flow or mixed him too low. On the band's CDs you can easily hear his well-crafted lyrics, but surrounded by amplifiers and booming speakers, his vocals often got demoted to percussion, rat-a-tat riding along on the music.

'I'm somethin' like an automoton, a perfect post-modern phenomenon,' he says on 'Sedimental Mood,' and his lyrics often deal with the philosophical, the political and the personal, all at the same time. They're full of clever references and turns of phrase, and then suddenly a simple and serious line will sideswipe you with stark, poetic honesty.

Hayman dropped the rhymes and sang the catchy chorus hook of 'Boy (Girl)' while his bandmates and the fan-filled crowd shouted along. And the show's finale peaked one song early with 'Since My Baby Left Me,' a story-time rap in the tradition of Slick Rick. The band rocked out unhinged, the audience bounced along fully engaged, and Hayman, his hat gone, drowsily and confidently knocked himself around the stage, feeling the sounds.

Cold Duck Complex had brought a party to Pearl Street. It was their night.
- Daily Hampshire Gazette

by Greg Saulmon
Thursday, June 29, 2006

Tickly pianos and eerie organs? Check. Smooth, jazzy drums? Check. WOMP WOMP low end traded for tongue-twisting basslines? Check. An MC that brags about doing crossword puzzles in pen and references everything from Robert Frost and Neil Young to the myth of Sisyphus and The Golden Girls? Check. Must be a new release from Amherst's hip-hop visionaries, Cold Duck Complex.

You can cram a lot of words into 4 minutes, and, in the case of Enough, that's a good thing -- vocalist Casey Hayman has more than enough to say. In fact, the only thing there are not enough of on Enough are songs. The EP checks in with just eight stellar specimens.

The snappy, driving bass and drum line that kicks off the album's opener, "Booze and Tapwater," belies the somewhat resigned and reflective mood that dominates the track and much of the record. The tone may be world-weary, but it also leaves room for hope. By the time Hayman's rhyming about a lover who "makes love not money/likes her eggs runny," it's hard not to feel like there's still something to smile about. The level of emotional tension and intricacy here -- matched by the music's dead-on dynamics -- is rare and wonderful.

From there, the highlights just pile up. "Killing Season" is the type of four-guys-going-batshit protest song Rage should've been writing while they were twiddling knobs for their tepid cover of "Renegades of Funk." "Boy (Girl)" is an infectious party track with a sing-along, throw-your-hands-up chorus that'd make Sly Stone proud -- and probably a little jealous.

The album's spiritual center is the gorgeous "Painkillers," which finds Hayman rapping about "finding god in low places, faith in silver linings" over keys that could've been lifted from Radiohead. "Catchy" doesn't seem like the right way to describe the unforgettable, hall-of-mirrors chorus, "God made man made god made man... ." "Hypnotic"is a little closer, but that still doesn't quite capture the way the words make you feel so good about feeling so confused. - Masslive.com Local Buzz

By Russ Juskalian
December 12, 2003



One part jazz, one part hip-hop and four parts college education is the recipe for Cold Duck Complex, the musical talent to bloom from the Pioneer Valley. The group is poised to introduce themselves to a broader audience by performing outside the local area.

"Figureheads," the latest release from the group, will be available tomorrow at Cold Duck Complex's record release show at the Iron Horse Music Hall. It's an album of strange origin: four college students - Joe Cardozo on bass, Jeff D'Antona on keyboard, Makaya McCraven on drums, and the vocalist Casey Hammond (Platypus) - all well versed in music theory, all with a vision to conjoin hip-hop and jazz in a way that brings fun, intellect and wit together.

"Son of a Snapper," the first track, starts off with a sample that sounds like it's from an Ed Wood movie. "Out of the slime and darkness it comes," the vocals ring, sharing the spotlight with a dark keyboard melody. Light percussion and a tension any Cold Duck fan knows can only mean one thing: Platypus is about to rhyme. And when Platypus does let go, he covers an array of topics: from sex, to reaching rock bottom, to the fate of hip-hop.

Musically and lyrically everything shines in the first track though at times the lyrics are difficult to distinguish and the sound is tinny. It's not a problem that poses a sizeable threat to the effectiveness of the album, but a greater depth in the sound would have bridged the small gap to perfection.

"Wake Up," a song about Sept. 11, is one of the album's strongest tracks. Again, D'Antona's eerie, and, in this case, sad melody sets a serious and regretful tone from the first licks. John Stifler, of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, perfectly described their musical and lyrical intelligence, " ... they cannot conceal their education," and it's true.

With lyrics like, "For anything to change then everybody's got to choose to take responsibility for history, and recognize that privilege stems directly from complicity," and McCraven marching a quick snare-drum out to battle, their Sept. 11 anthem reflects thoughtful preparation for a song about one of America's sorest wounds.

Among the better tracks is "Lucky Me," which starts with the sound of a small child's music box and segues into a beat that Eminem might have considered for one of his softer, more emotional and self-pitying songs.

Platypus deals with the social angst of the middle class male struggling to make sense of the "hand I was dealt," and reconcile social privilege with a desire to change the world from a personal and societal position.

Although much attention falls on Platypus for his smart lyrics and verbal rhyming schemes, the musical talent of the band cannot be overlooked. Tracks like "91 Norch," are instant classics - true jazz experiments. There's a sense of maturity in this music that rivals some of the better-known musicians putting out jazz today. Cardozo lets the bass travel, while McCraven's frantic percussion allows D'Antona to infect the music with a very urban jazz-sound from decades past.

What is really commendable on "Figureheads" is the overall coherence of the album, and the band. It feels like every aspect of the sound rests dependently on every other aspect - like a stone archway where the removal of any stone will cause a tumble. They are that tight - except it doesn't seem possible for a single one of the stones to be removed. Each instrument, including Platypus's voice, ranges from serious to goofy, from fast to slow, always accommodating every other instrument.

Somehow, Cold Duck Complex was able to fit together heavy content, high intellect, low humor and even at times sad references and still come out with an uplifting and empowering creation, or "method," as they like to call it. They run the gamut and do it successfully. The only music in this fusion of jazz and hip-hop that sounds better than Figureheads is a live Cold Duck Complex concert. As these guys mature, and if they can bottle more energy from their live concerts into their next album, the hip-hop world had better take notice, because the rest of the industry surely will.


- Massachusetts Daily Collegian

by Daniel Oppenheimer - July 3, 2003


Catching Cold Duck in the bedroom.

The art of hip-hop is reborn when I enter
I chill with Cold Duck and head south for the

winter

-- Platypus Complex, "None of the Above"

"So why is rap so dull onstage?" asks Jonathan Gold in his 1990 essay, "Why Rap Doesn't Cut It Live." His explanation remains persuasive. The form, though it began in the South Bronx as a "strictly live medium," has migrated to the studio, where the melodies, beats and lyrics are mixed to a complexity difficult to achieve on-stage with live instrumentation (consider, for example, almost any song by Missy Elliott). The alternative, says Gold, "a guy onstage talking over recorded music, as exciting as Sing Along with Mitch ... allows little room for spontaneity."

When performing, then, many rappers simply eliminate or subordinate the melodies, reducing what can be sophisticated works of art to a series of bass-and-vocal chants, distinguishable mostly by tempo. "Where a rocker lives or dies by what he does onstage, a rapper rarely does," says Gold. Success in the rap game is more dependent on getting your demo into the hands of the right producer or executive than on the gradual, tour-based acquisition of a fan base essential to other genres. Aspiring MCs may have to prove that they can freestyle -- improvise rhymes -- but it has more to do with establishing credentials than with the careful choreography, or rote practice of a repertoire of songs, prerequisite to a good live show. Rappers find their flow -- their voice -- in the process of enacting it, but their connection to the sound that backs that up is less intimate.

Philadelphia-based group The Roots, one of the few acts in hip-hop that plays its own instruments, are known to be good, though not extraordinary, live. Rock performers like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit have successfully incorporated rap into their sound, but a supply of good live hip-hop has yet to materialize.

It's premature to offer up Cold Duck Complex, a hip-hop band out of Amherst, as the savior of live hip-hop, but the group is at the least a herald of what is to come (a John the Baptist, perhaps, of hip-hop). Their sound -- "We introducing some jazzy type funk/Add a pinch of Parliament to Thelonius Monk" -- and their politics – "A generation raised on white right to life and black murder/Underbelly boiling with sentiments of Nat Turner" -- are traditional alternative, "conscious" rap. But they are instrumentalists, and good performers, in a studio/radio/video genre with almost none.

"We're looking to combine the atmosphere of a rock or jazz show, where there's an appreciation of the musicianship, with that of a hip-hop show, where there's more of a party feel, " says Casey Hayman, the band's MC. They came to their sound gradually, first coalescing in high school as the Cold Duck Trio, taking their name from the Les McCann song "Cold Duck Time" and playing his brand of soul-jazz. When bass guitarist Joe Cardozo and drummer Makaya McCraven lost their keyboard player to a distant university, they picked up UMass freshman Jeff D'Antona to replace him. A year or so later, Cardozo learned that Hayman, another high school friend and his freshman-year roommate, was an aspiring MC. They soon began playing together as Cold Duck Trio & Platypus Complex (Hayman's handle), and played their first show as Cold Duck Complex at Extravaganja, a festival organized by the UMass Cannabis Reform Coalition.

They've since headlined at the Iron Horse; played clubs in New York, Boston and Providence; and opened at UMass's 2003 Spring Concert, where, according to an article in the Daily Collegian , they easily outperformed headliner 50 Cent. "We all started taking it seriously," says drummer McCraven, "way before we needed to or should have." Though Cardozo, D'Antona and Hayman have a year left at UMass, they are intent on taking the band as far as it will go right now, and have already began booking a tour of venues in the Northeast for the summer. McCraven, who just finished his freshman year, jokes that "they're trying to take me away from my education."

"I think there are a lot of bands on our level," says Cardozo, "who are doing this kind of thing" -- supplanting the DJ with instruments, focusing on the peformative aspect -- "but it's true, there's not much at the national level." At the moment, their fan base largely comes out of UMass, but they've had MP3s downloaded from their website -- coldduckcomplex.com -- from all over the country. "Our name's been spread," says McCraven, "by a lot of high school students who saw us before they left for college."

They've recorded two demos, written about 40 songs, and are playing at Peking Garden in Hadley on Saturday, July 5 to raise money to produce their first official CD. Live, they mix it up between palette-cleansing instrumentals and lyrically-driven hip-hop, and though Platypus Complex's lyrics can tend to the preachy, he leavens that with self-deprecating humor -- "Truly not a player, so I guess that I'm a hater/I don't smoke the chronic, I'm a chronic masturbator" -- and even the political lyrics are delivered to good beats and melodies. Perhaps most indicative is the laughter that, on their demo, trickles up at the end of a song like "Na Na Na Boo Boo," a satire on self-inflating, player-hating battle rap. They're enjoying themselves, and it's a pleasure to see.

- Valley Advocate

By: Daniel Bourgeois, Collegian Staff
May 7, 2003
This year's Spring Concert played rather similarly to last year's. Once again, the main event was outshined by the act that played before. The band before that served to entertain a niche audience, while the first act completely amazed. The host was entertaining and hilarious, but someone needed to take the mic away from the DJ.

The show began with an astonishing six-song performance by local talent Cold Duck Complex. If Talib Kweli replaced Black Thought as the lyricist for The Roots, you would have these guys. The Cold Duck Trio and Platypus Complex played off each other perfectly, especially when they performed "Man Hate Man." As Platypus increased his vocal intensity, the band was right there to match it with their instruments, and the crowd ate it up.

[article continues w/out mention of cold duck] - Massachusetts Daily Collegian