Here’s something that’ll really put you on the edge of your seat. Something that’ll keep you guessing until the very end. And someone that’ll erupt at any second. Her name is Sami Calamity. Her real name, Samantha Blosser, has kept the forms of both jazz and the progressive rock genre on a tight grip.
According to her website, Sami is a multi-based instrumentalist based in the Detroit scene, one of her compositions ‘Castles’ was featured at the 2022 International Alliance for Women in Music conference. Not only she’s a faculty member from the Music Hall’s education department, but also a mentor from individualized lessons and interactive clinics.
She picked up the saxophone when she was 12 years old and was accepted into the music program at Western Michigan University 11 years ago. From a range of big band, orchestral pop, funk, hard bop, singer-songwriter, avant-garde, and modern jazz, she graduated in 2018 with a degree in Jazz Studies. Her debut release entitled Arachnirithmitic, is an off-the-wall, yet explosive EP that’ll make you think that Bent Knee had continued where they left off with their second album, Shiny Little Babies.
There are elements of King Crimson, The Mars Volta, the Rock in Opposition movement, ranging from Magma, Slapp Happy’s Dagmar Krause, Lotte Lenya, Henry Cow, and Present, rolled into one. Sami knows her source material when it comes to the Opposition movement.
The album cover, says it all. Not only she bears a resemblance to Miss Christine, known for her appearance on Frank Zappa’s 1969 classic album cover Hot Rats, but nods to Alice Cooper during his Killer-era. She cries out to the gods the moment ‘mE mAnIa’ begins.
Both John Raleeh and Rob Kokochak channel the styles of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu years, and ‘Meeting of the Spirits’ before Amin’s bass and Zwolinski’s drum patterns set up this cat-and-mouse chase with its challenging time signatures for the doubling guitar players, walking on this dangerous tightrope that is waiting for them.
Blosser slithers and hypnotizes her listeners with her vocal lines. She puts you in full control as she becomes this raging inmate that’s taken over the asylum, and ruling the place with an iron fist.
The chaos is in full swings as the crescendo between the rhythm section is just all over the place, not knowing when they will come to a screeching halt. There is some resemblance to the climatic end of Crimson’s ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ where Fripp lets his bandmates go into a frenzy in a free-for-all momentum.
If you think that’s over, guess again. ‘Dmizia’ showcases the doom psychedelia approach as Sami reveals herself to be this Kakia goddess, waiting to unleash terror and raising hell in this little town by bringing in chaos, destruction, and eating massive loads of human flesh like there’s no tomorrow! Sami is someone you don’t want to mess with.
She brings it all out there. The roller-coaster itself becomes a dangerous ride of craziness. If you think this is one of those rides that you go to at Six Flags, this ride that she’s unveiled to the public will get attendees their money’s worth after an extensive trip they’ve just witness.
‘Little Miss Misanthrope’ (trying saying that three times fast!) is almost a continuation of where ‘Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus’ had left off as Raleeh and Kokochak take turns channeling the forms of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s arrangements in the jazz-rock orientation as Amin sets up the scenery to get their engines all revved up.
Sami finally lets it all out with her banshee-like howls when she hits those high notes very well. The sounds of Bent Knee’s Courtney Swain filling her voice range as if she’s watching her, knowing she’s got it down to a “T” and pulls out all of the stop signs by going into a blaze with her sax improv, channeling the styles of Ian McDonald, Captain Beefheart, John Coltrane, David Jackson of Van der Graaf Generator, and Archie Shepp.
Closing up shop with ‘Aelurec’. Here, Calamity has written one of the scores to either a Bugs Bunny short from the Bob Clampett years or the golden-era of Ren & Stimpy with the ‘Space Madness’ short. Sami walks into the Grand Wazoo’s lyrical textures from the One Size Fits All period, channeling ‘Inca Roads’ but with an ominous approach.
Here’s an artist that you need to be on the look-out for. Sami has brought in all of the ammunition she has needed to give it all she’s got by unleashing her debut EP this year. And if you think she’s going to pull a romantic song about one of her boyfriends, guess what, this isn’t that. This is the real thing that’ll hopefully be spreading like wild fire.
