Ben Sidran - Are We There Yet (Live at the Sunside) (2025) [Hi-Res]

As the saying goes, a parade is just a mob until the band shows up. It’s the music that gives the moment its shape, its future, its meaning.

Recording that music is the rare opportunity to capture lightning in a bottle, to transform the memory into something significant, a piece of history, a mark in time: this is what history feels like.

Back in the day, recording machines had a red light that went on when recording was in progress, and when musicians saw that red glow they knew they were being captured. Recording was serious. One had to live with it; the past crowds the future.

These days there is no red light and technology makes it possible for every child to turn a casual interaction into a document of their lives. Recording, instead of capturing the event, becomes the event itself.

And yet there remains something special about a live musical recording, about the moment the band shows up and the mob becomes a parade. For musicians this moment will always be magical, a chance to prove you were there, like those early humans who painted on the walls of the Lascaux caves.

ARE WE THERE YET is what history felt like on those nights at the Sunside in Paris in June, 2024, when the room was filled with swing, groove and the discussion of ideas like existentialism, hard times, and good feelings. Let history decide.

Recorded June 13 & 14, 2024 at the Sunside club in Paris
Recorded by Agnes Minetto
Mixed by Leo Sidran at Electric Poodle, Brooklyn
Mastered by Julien Basseres at Studios de Meudon

Ben Sidran: piano & voice
Leo Sidran: drums & voice
Billy Peterson: acoustic bass
Max Darmon: electric bass & voice
Rick Margitza: saxophone
Romain Roussouliere: guitar
Moses Patrou: percussion & voice