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Electropoetic Coffee: Sacramento’s Ross Hammond & NSAA

Presented by Swell-productions.com at Luna's Cafe & Juice Bar

September 18, 2010

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Sacramento’s Ross Hammond & NSAA Deliver the Word Made Fresh. This is Neo-folk, improvisational jazz poetry. If you start with the premise that the word is as important as the sound, you will get some sense of the team play of Electropoetic Coffee. An organic, adventurous project between two well-known and highly respected artists in Sacramento, guitarist Ross Hammond and poet/singer Lawrence Dinkins, Jr., a.k.a. NSAA, Electropoetic Coffee was birthed only late last year.

Their mutual admiration was apparent in this year’s 3rd Annual IN THE FLOW FESTIVAL, a festival Hammond co-founded in 2008. Dinkins helmed the Fest’s wildly successful opening night, “Poet VS. Band.” in mid-May. Now, the two are set to release their first full album, the eponymous Electropoetic Coffee (Prescott Recordings). 

Dinkins’ descriptive words are not improvised, but “there is a push-pull”—at play between the two performers. “I’m listening closely to Ross all the time” says Dinkins. “I might take a sentence out…I might repeat a line depending on the sound he makes.” And for a guy who the Sacramento News & Review describes as “a man who can probably express himself with a guitar better than most of us can with the English language...” there is a lot to work with.

Hammond’s use of guitar effects—layered harmonies and looped sounds turned backwards, weave meaning with melody. “Hammond merges rock, jazz and free improvisation into a cohesive collection beyond category....flying under the radar of the mainstream…he straddles the border- lines of multiple genres, occupying a creative no-man's-land of the future.” is the way Hammond was tagged by All About Jazz. This broad palette of seductive sound and color applied to Dinkins’ poetry keep each of them acutely tuned to the moment and one another. There is no rote with Electropoetic Coffee.