Electric Love Machine (ELM) is best described as an outer space adventure through sound, infused with doses of electronic funk, traditional Americana and improvisational jazz, and whose foundation is built on a sense of community. Their first full-length album, XenofoneX, touches upon the aural sense, and travels through one’s heart, makes a stop in the brain, all while travelling across the cosmic plane.

ELM is part of a dedicated and diverse network of Live performance artists, acrobats, painters, graphic artists, musicians, fashion designers, and music lovers from in and around the Baltimore area who support each other and often perform together to make each show a profoundly unique experience.

Flying through their (fair-priced) interstellar journey, their tribe supports ELM not just in their hometown of Baltimore, MD, but also throughout the band’s multiple engagements spanning the Northeast, and future markets in the Southeast, Midwest, West, the Moon, and potentially our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (dependent on contract negotiations).

In addition to the many hallowed halls ELM has had the extreme pleasure of playing, they have gratefully performed with jam monsters EOTO, Papadosio, Dopapod, TAUK, Turkuaz, Electron, and PPPP, and have played multiple sets at such fine festivals as All Good Music Festival, The Mad Tea Party, Moonrise, Camp Barefoot, The Werk Out, Domefest, and Lunar Bay.

“Bryan Doherty bends the bass into something rarely heard, but entirely worth the price of admission.” So says All Music Guide, and they’re right: Much like Doherty’s brilliant bass playing, his band Hood Smoke blends soul and pop a la Rufus, David Byrne and The Band. Hood Smoke’s line-up reads like a “who’s who” of Chicago music masters, all of whom have played with everyone from Quincy Jones to Koko Taylor to Steve Coleman and Howard Levy. Rising star Sarah Marie Young’s voice will no doubt turn heads with its uncanny combination of grit and precision. Her voice and her bandmates’ undeniable chops make Hood Smoke’s album, Laid Up In Ordinary, a must-hear release of 2013.