Rob Mazurek’s 'Alternate Moon Cycles' was Internantional Anthem's first ever release. The incredibly spare single-note-centered cornet, bass, and organ chant was recorded to tape at pint-sized Chicago bar Curio as part of a performance series that predates any notion of the label’s existence. Documenting this performance - highly unique even within the depths of Mazurek’s vast catalog - stirred those notions, and soon talks began of releasing the recording on a fresh imprint.

The music unfolds glacially amongst the gentle creaks, clinks, whispers, and scuffles of the active room. It’s difficult to imagine a more honest rendering of the two sidelong pieces of organic minimal music, and nearly impossible to separate the sounds from their performance context. It’s also difficult to imagine a more subtly striking way to introduce a new label to the world.

Now this long-gone gem of supernatural frequency excavation is back in print with fresh liner notes by Mikel Patrick Avery and obi design by Aaron Lowell Denton. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Waxing Crescent #1
2. Waxing Crescent #2

Makaya McCraven’s International Anthem debut 'In The Moment' is the album that properly introduced the then-burgeoning drummer/producer to the world. In many ways, it also laid the groundwork for a working method that both McCraven and the label have returned to again and again over the years: nearly 48 hours of live improvised performance recorded by IARC house engineer Dave Vettraino at 1 venue over 12 months and 28 shows - culled, cut, rendered, and remixed into 19 potent pieces of organic beat music by McCraven.

This early exploration of the concept is based in the nightlife—in relaxed and unostentatious gatherings of prodigious Chicago musicians letting loose one moment at a time. That the individual stature of the musicians involved has risen dramatically in the years since is only proof positive that these sessions in a renovated bank vault were a casually high-level convention of some of the city’s best.

TRACK LISTING

1. Exploration Intro
2. The Jaunt
3. Slightest Right
4. First Thing First
5. Lonely
6. Gnawa
7. On The Spot
8. Butterscotch
9. TomTom
10. Three Fifths A Man
11. In The Moment
12. Quartz
13. Just Stay Right There
14. Untitled
15. Requests
16. Time Travel
17. The Encore
18. The Drop
19. Finances

Ben LaMar Gay’s de facto debut album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun, was International Anthem's attempt to introduce the legendary Chicago composer / improvisor / renaissance man to the rest of the world with a compilation of tracks from “7 albums he made over 7 years but never made the effort to actually release. ” The material showcases Gay’s penchant for genre-hopping—from Reich-ian soundscape voyages to Don Cherry-esque polyrhythm treks to Jorge Ben-style vocal-and-string earworms—while keeping his singular musical voice in focus.

In the years since its release, this long OOP collection has become a touchstone, foreshadowing the breadth and scope of Ben LaMar Gay’s output since. The songs-between-the-songs warped Soul Americana madness and beauty of Open Arms To Open Us, the unhinged long form freedom of Certain Reveries—each fresh mode would defy expectation if without the context established by Downtown Castles. To quote the OG press release, “to call it ‘eclectic’ would only scratch the surface. This music is everything.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Vitis Labrusca
2. Muhal
3. Music For 18 Hairdressers: Braids & Fractals
4. Jubilee
5. A Seasoning Called Primavera
6. Miss Nealie Burns
7. Me, Jayve & The Big Bee
8. Uvas
9. Galveston
10. Swim Swim
11. Kunni
12. Melhor Que Tem
13. Gator Teeth
14. 7th Stanza
15. Oh No...Not Again!

'A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole' is the latest album from London-based composer-poet-activist-improviser Alabaster DePlume, his first major work following 2022’s 'GOLD' and 2020's 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol 1'.

The 11-song album covers all of DePlume’s musical touchstones: lush and gentle instrumentals informed by ghostly ancient folk melodies; groove-focused rhythm explorations as a bed for self-searching spoken declamations; sweeping and beautiful string arrangements (in this case by Macie Stewart) set against his trademark vibrato-infused tenor sax whispermoan.

Most of all, 'A Blade...' finds Alabaster DePlume at his most purposeful and direct yet, building on foundations laid through years of writing and touring to craft this ambitious work. Here lyrical explorations of healing, dignity, and struggle set the tone of the music itself—the mysterious and tense sensuality of the Melody Nelson-like strings on 'Form a V'; the playful and idiosyncratic echos of the 1960s British Folk scene on 'Invincibility'; the golden-era Elvrum level of vocal intimacy on 'Too True' - it’s all handed over with such familiarity and intention that the album’s full sonic grandness reveals itself at an IV-drip-pace.

"A blade, because a blade is whole, it has forgiven itself, and because it will take a small piece of our opposite, for us to be complete. A blade has marked out these former selves on my hand, a blade made the lines that divine us and the blade is whole. A blade. While I forgive myself, and heal, and lead us in healing. We can only forgive each other once we forgive ourselves. We can only heal eachother while we heal ourselves." - Alabaster DePlume

TRACK LISTING

1. Oh My Actual Days
2. Thank You My Pain
3. Invincibility
4. Form A V
5. A Paper Man
6. Who Are You Telling, Gus
7. Prayer For My Sovereign Dignity
8. Kuzushi
9. Salty Road Dogs Victory Anthem
10. Too True
11. That Was My Garden

List of Demands, Damon Locks' first foray into creating an entire album from spoken and text-based work, finds the Chicago-based musician and educator collecting cultural abstractions and reorganizing them into a firm truth. The album lays out a vision of Black liberation and transmits it outward as a song cycle of bite-sized

MF DOOM-meets-Nikki Giovanni rhythm experiments. The sample-based constructions are steeped in a lifetime of not only keen cultural observation, but direct communal participation in the culture. Locks' decades-long resume connects the dots between experimental improvisation, sample based hip-hop, punk, and poetry - each done at the highest level and with a list of collaborators that could spin the head of even the most jaded listener. And that seems to be the point. To jump-start the entire personality spectrum into action. Ecstatic positivity examined via his nuanced grasp of reality, all working toward that ever-evasive concept of what could be.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reversed
2. Distance
3. Holding The Dawn In Place (Beyond, Pt. 2)
4. Everything’s Under Control
5. Isn’t It Beautiful
6. High Priestess
7. Meteors Of Fear
8. List Of Demands
9. The Signal Is Hot
10. Control Power
11. Click
12. Reversed, Pt. 2 (Something To Love)

'Skylla' is the debut solo recording of Italian-born and London-based composer, bassist, and vocalist Ruth Goller. This album of otherworldly detuned bass harmonics and dense vocal arrangements was initially released in 2021 by longtime collaborator Bex Burch's Vula Viel Records, and quickly went out of print. Since then Goller's notoriety has only grown, and her follow-up record, 'SKYLLUMINA', was released by International Anthem in early 2024 and met with high praise.

'Skylla' is the genesis of her sound, and it is a sound that is hard to place. Listeners could be convinced that these recordings came out of contexts as disparate as 80s Downtown NYC or some mysterious Bjork-adjacent project of the Icelandic 2010s. It's hard to imagine a person making this music despite the fact that its elements are instantly recognizable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Often They Came To Visit, Even Just To See How She Was (M1)
2. In More Turbulent Times, She Managed To Take The Perfect Shot (M4)
3. What’s Really Important She Wanted To Know - Part 1 (M6)
4. What’s Really Important She Wanted To Know - Part 2 (M7)
5. What’s Up Is Not What’s Real Most Of The Time (M5)
6. When They Came Closer She Realised They Were Alien Creatures (M3)
7. The Shine Of Gold Was Too Strong (M8)
8. When She Curled Up They Started Dancing (M2)
9. He Was Painting Her Face With Colours She Had Never Seen (M9)
10. I Is One (M10) 

In their first bout of new music since 2022's critically celebrated 'Mondays at Enfield Tennis Academy', Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet find themselves exploring the depths of improvised jazz grooves on 'The Way Out of Easy'. Featuring long time members Anna Butterss (Jason Isbell, SML) on upright bass, Josh Johnson (Meshell Ndegeocello, SML) on saxophone, and Jay Bellerose (Elton John, Punch Brothers), the selections are honed and focused to bring the atmosphere of one specific night's setlist. The delight of the space(now sadly defunct) helped Parker build a beautifully multi-textured, gently-shifting four-dimensional construction out of simple ideas.

TRACK LISTING

1. Freakadelic
2. Late Autumn
3. Easy Way Out
4. Chrome Dome

'A Willed and Conscious Balance' is the first album of material arranged for an ensemble by multi-instrumentalist composer Tomin Perea Chamblee. The bulk of the album was recorded in one day at The Bunker in Brooklyn, NY by IARC house engineers Dave Vettraino and David Allen, and features a truly incredible lineup that includes members of Irreversible Entanglements and jaimie branch's FLY or DIE. Tomin's work with this group of veteran musicians is singular though, instantly setting this material apart from the discographies of its contributors.

Imagine the density of a J.J. Johnson arrangement rhythmically stretched and pulled à la Thembi-era Pharoah Sanders, or the Dolphy infused bop squawk elegance of Booker Little's Out Front sent through the sonic washing machine of Bernie Maupin's The Jewel in the Lotus. With each listen, the potential for comparisons feels both endless and unsatisfying, and while there were certainly hints of this direction on Tomin's collection of solo recordings from 2024, Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina - simple & entrancing chord progressions, favoring the dirge, favoring the repetitive - the sounds heard on 'A Willed and Conscious Balance' take the listener somewhere new. Somewhere fresh yet familiar. A group exploration of simplicity that yields something complicated, just like life itself.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Deep, intoxicating compositions that exude mystery and atmosphere, ranging from dense walls of call-response horn trills and dusty percussion to snappy, funky lounge and frenetic improvisational swagger.

TRACK LISTING

1. Untitled Dirge (Intro)
2. Untitled Dirge
3. Love
4. 4alto Revisited (Interlude)
5. Movement
6. Life Revisited
7. Life
8. 4alto (Interlude)
9. Man Of Words
10. Humility In The Light Of The Creator

'Mighty Vertebrate' is the International Anthem debut from Anna Butterss. The Adelaide-born bassist / composer has been a first call for LA tour and studio work since relocating there in 2014 - racking up credits with notables across the experimental, jazz, and pop worlds alike - but their most notable contributions to the burgeoning LA scene have been as a member of both Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet and SML who Pitchfork says “represents the thrilling next phase of a vibrant LA community.”

Here they reconvene a onset trusted longtime collaborators to bring their compositions to fruition: Ben Lumsdaine (drums, guitar, production), Josh Johnson (sax), and Gregory Uhlmann (guitar), plus a smoking guest appearance from Jeff Parker. The breadth and scope of the results might have been difficult to achieve otherwise. From the Robbie bestia-in-groove-mode intro to the album opener 'Bishop' to the spacious cinematic doom of 'Seeing You', there is a lot to wrangle into one cohesive concept. But, on 'Mighty Vertebrate', Butterss and crew do just that.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bishop
2. Shorn
3. Dance Steve
4. Ella
5. Lubbock
6. Pokemans
7. Breadrich
8. Seeing You
9. Counterpoint
10. Saturno

On March 24, 2023 Rob Mazurek assembled his endlessly psychedelic and explorative large ensemble Exploding Star Orchestra under the dome of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium to perform material from their recently released album Lightning Dreamers along with a number of new pieces.

A digital projection flashed an ever-changing stream of vividly colored, abstract shapes derived from Mazurek’s paintings and animations over the audience’s heads, while the Orchestra, which on this night numbered eight musicians besides its leader, transformed the stylistically disparate pieces from Lightning Dreamers into an enveloping maelstrom. Electric pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn pushed layers of plush texture back and forth over the intricate, tripartite grooves of bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and two drummers, Chad Taylor and Gerald Cleaver. Mazurek’s trumpets and wordless cries, Tomeka Reid’s cello and Nicole Mitchell’s flute and voice periodically surfaced out of the flow, issuing sharp, energetic statements, while Damon Locks’ proclamations flickered in and out of the mix like an erratic signal from some interstellar radio announcer. Together, they reimagined the brooding sound of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew as a force for transcendent uplift.

At one point, Mitchell put down her flute, spoke into Mazurek’s ear and pointed up to toward the dome. As he looked up, his own horn came down, and for a moment, the two of them gazed with undisguised awe at the spectacle that the Orchestra had unleashed. In a time when so many forces conspire to bring people down, this concert was an invitation to look up and out past the horizon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dream Sleeper (Live)
2. Black River (Live)
3. White River (Live)
4. Underneath The Star Dome (Live)
5. Spiral Parable 1a (Live)
6. Parable 3000 (Live)

This is the repeated call and the rallying chorus of the nearly 40-minute centerpiece to composer and percussionist Asher Gamedze’s new album Constitution. The expansive double album, a minoritarian fellowship in breath, is Gamedze’s follow-up to 2023’s Turbulence and Pulse (IARC0057), and his first with The Black Lungs. The album – recorded in one day at Cape Town’s Sound and Motion Studios – is an elaboration of the possibilities of autonomous constitution in and through polyrhythmic, modal, large ensemble music.

On Constitution, the power of the question, the possibility of an improvised answer and the celebration of being together exists not in the solo but in the group, the ensemble. Here The Black Lungs collectively explore and deconstruct the conceptual, tonal, and atonal possibilities of themes which are at once of old and new dreams - curious and instantiative, melancholic and emergent.


“The Black Lungs is inspired by the revolutionary thought and practice of the Black Consciousness Movement. In particular, the relationship between antagonism – constituting a united front of all the oppressed against white supremacy and racial capitalism – and the possibilities for resistance and elaboration - the creative militant capacities of those assembled – enabled and unleashed by that process of constitution.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Find Each Other
2. Determining Facts
3. Antagonism
4. Elaboration
5. Constitution
6. Destitution
7. High Land, New Home
8. Melancholia
9. Deposition: A Song For The Dialectician 

Tomin is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, bioinformatician, and poet from Brooklyn, New York. His primary instruments are the flute, trumpet and alto clarinet, and he participates in the creative music scene as a performer, improvisor, composer and fan. Outside of music, he works in computational genetics, with a focus on oncology.

Flores para Caramina y Verene compiles recordings that he self-released across 2020 and 2021.

TRACK LISTING

1. Father And Son
2. Come Sunday, Bass
3. The Inflated Tear, V1
4. Fire Waltz
5. Desert Fairy Princess
6. Fables Of Faubus
7. Aquarius
8. Warm Canto
9. The Inflated Tear, V2
10. Come Sunday, Soprano
11. Assunta
12. Father And Son
13. Spirits Rejoice, Var 1
14. Ogún Bárá
15. Angela’s Angel
16. Naima
17. The Prayer
!8. Rahsaan Is Beautiful
19. A Walk With Thee
20. Humility In The Light Of The Creator
21. Love
22. Life
23. Love (Alternate Take)
24. Life Revisited

SML is bassist Anna Butterss (Jeff Parker, Daniel Villarreal, Makaya McCraven), synthesist Jeremiah Chiu (Ariel Kalma, Marta Sofia-Honer), saxophonist Josh Johnson (Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Nate Mercereau, Marquis Hill), percussionist Booker Stardrum (Amirtha Kidambi, Carl Stone, Lee Ranaldo, Patrick Shiroishi), and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann (Sam Wilkes, Meg Duffy, Perfume Genius). Their debut album 'Small Medium Large' began as a collection of long-form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park venue ETA, a major development site for the burgeoning new LA jazz & improvised music sound, which unfortunately closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023.

The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker’s 2022 album 'Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy,' was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Buterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are in the quartet featured on that record. 'Small Medium Large' was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML.

While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new concept (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven’s output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like 'Bitches Brew', 'On The Corner', and 'Get Up With It'. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay’s re-assemblage technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of Susumu Yokota’s floating patterns polyrhythm concept and we have a truly entrancing take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmenting with live percussion, yet maintaining that elusive human sway.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rubber Tree Dance
2. Industry
3. Herbie For Commercials
4. Search Bar Hi Hat
5. Window Sill Song
6. Switchboard Operations
7. Soft Sand
8. Three Over Steel
9. Chasing Brain
10. History Of Communication
11. Feed The Birds
12. Greg's Melody
13. Dolphin Language

In January 2023, Tom Skinner and his ensemble performed material from his recently released album Voices of Bishara at London club “mu”— a venue founded by the curators at Brilliant Corners and named after the seminal Don Cherry live album. The set was augmented by a rendition of Tony Williams’ “Red” and three pieces by Abdul Wadud, whose 1977 self-released solo cello album, By Myself, was a primary inspiration for Voices of Bishara.

The soloists featured on the album — Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia— are replaced in Skinner's live ensemble with saxophonist Robert Stillman (who also plays with Skinner in The Smile) and saxophonist / flutist Chelsea Carmichael. The extended rhythm section of Tom Herbert (double bass) and Kareem Dayes (cello) round out the lineup, with Skinner on drums. It’s clear from the jump that this band’s aim is to excavate the deep corners of this material, kicking the set off with a 15-minute rendition of Skinner’s own composition “Bishara” that employs the same relationship to rhythmic and tonal freedom found in the Abdul Wadud cello work that inspired it. That aesthetic connection is even more clear by the time the group moves into their 20-minute exploration of Waded’s “Oasis,” the stunning centerpiece of the set.

Hearing Skinner’s compositions - flexed and stretched with extended improvisation, and in context with works by Wadud and Williams - both places them and this band firmly in the creative music continuum they honor, and provides us with an unobstructed view of where that continuum is leading us.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bishara
2. Red 2
3. The Journey
4. The Day After Tomorrow
5. Oasis
6. Camille
7. Happiness

MESTIZX is Bolivian-born singer and multi-medium performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut album as co-composers, arrangers and musicians.

Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based Ferragutti and Rosaly dove into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create a deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest. They chose the title MESTIZX – a non-gendered version of the sometimes slurred Spanish colonial word for a “mixed person” - as a means of both challenging and embracing the liminality of their identities and artistic practices.

Rosaly says: “I grew up quite Puerto Rican in my home, but was taught to mask it outside my home. I wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish, so the drums eventually became my language, secretly tying together my own feeling of connection to mi tierra. This record is the first time I actively give voice to the nuance within myself, allowing me to take ownership of this in-between, which is what this album communicates for me… There is this unusual place that exists between these two cultures, of which I am both. There is a complex story in that sliver of in-betweenness, worthy of giving voice to all of us that live in-between.”

Ferragutti adds: “My personal understanding is one that stems from being placed in between lineages that carry the colonizer and colonized, the oppressor and oppressed, the demon and the angel… thus by definition is tied to post-colonial social constructs which we as Bolivians have to step in, like a 500 year novel that goes on and on… We have access to many memories and traditions, but not really, because we don’t fully belong to any of those… This makes us feel we're in a constant state of being the “visitors” and “outsiders.” On one hand, we are never truly part of one lineage. On the other hand, it makes us a travelers of worlds, storytellers in between multiple languages, cultures, and worldviews. We chose MESTIZX for this work as an act of recognizing the mixed state of being as a difficult and yet powerful one.”

The album was produced and recorded primarily at International Anthem Studios in Chicago, where Ferragutti and Rosaly were joined by a community of musicians and beloved friends including Matt Lux, Avreeayl Ra, Ben LaMar Gay, Daniel Villarreal, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye, and Mikel Patrick Avery, with addditional contributions from Chris Doyle, Guilherme Granado, Viktor Le Givens and Fredy Velásquez.

The music creatively infuses Latin rhythmic patterns and oblong swing from pre-and post-colonial Latin America into a collision of avant jazz, art punk, Chicago post-rock, bomba, plena, cumbia, Andean, minimal, electronica, and folk. A wholly original but undeniably universal sound – both of-the-moment and alluringly futuristic - MESTIZX contains points of reference and resonance for fans of Juana Molina, Café Tacvba, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Liquid Liquid, Arto Lindsay, As Mercenarias, The Ex, Tortoise, Tom Zé, Elza Soares, La Mecanica Popular...

It’s a vast, vibrant and encompassing spectrum of sounds, but at its core MESTIZX is a lucidly conscious collection of auto-biographical statements from Ferragutti & Rosaly on the deeply personalized effects of colonialism on geography, history, and identity. Despite its heavy subject matter, however, MESTIZX finds a lifeline in communal, celebratory, soul-bearing and movement-inducing music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Invocação
2. Destejer
3. Balada Para La Corporatocracia
4. Turbulência
5. Mestizx
6. Barro
7. Saber Do Mar
8. Bless Thee Mundane
9. Descend
10. Writing With Knots
11. Sirinus

In March of 2023 Mercury Prize nominated composer &alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi premiered acommissioned suite of music ni front of a sold out crowd at London's Southbank Centre. She wrote the piece - gratitude - for her flagship large ensemble seed., ni a special augmented formation that also featured turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra. Months later, Kinoshi passed the live recording to Dave Vettraino, who began the mixing process at International Anthem Studios ni Chicago. Kinoshi and Vettraino then convened ni November of2024 at Livingston Studios ni London to do final mixes and overdub additional sounds from members of seed.

Some know Kinoshi from her work as a former member of Kokoroko. And even beyond her work as leader of seed. (including Driftglass, the band's critically-lauded 2019 debut on jazz re:freshed) her compositional résumé extendsdeeply into orchestral work for concert hal, contemporary dance, film, visual art, and theatre, with high profile collaborators including London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. That depth of experience si on ful display here, with the textural and dynamic flexibility of her large ensemble covering musical ground from groove-focused modal melancholia ot anthemic brass and string themes. Striking upon first listen and even richer on repeat visits, gratitude scores the soul of contemporary Black London with philharmonic craftwork ni the tradition of legendary jazz arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Oliver Nelson, and Carla Bley.

TRACK LISTING

1. I
2. Ii
3. Interlude I
4. Iii Sun Through My Window
5. Interlude Ii
6. Iv
7. Smoke In The Sun

Goller is known for her bass and vocal work with Alabaster DePlume, whose music she elevates in live contexts with her genre-less improvisational intuition, and an incredibly diverse résumé that includes performance and recording with Bex Burch’s Vula Viel, Shabaka Hutchings, Rokia Traore, Melt Yourself Down, Sam Amidon, and even a very brief moment with Paul McCartney.

For 'SKYLLUMINA', her International Anthem debut, Goller expands upon the concept of her first solo album Skylla – de-tuned bass harmonics with layered voices – this time collaborating with a different drummer on each track. “As a bass-player, I love playing with drummers and I decided to focus on my close connection to that instrument and to the amazing people I met in my life who play it,” says Goller. “There were some who played tuned percussion as well, so it would give me another element to explore.” Her accompanists on the album include The Smile's Tom Skinner, go-to London drummer Seb Rochford, Berlin-based International Anthem labelmate Bex Burch, and ex-pat Chicago legend Frank Rosaly. But more importantly, the music is an immersive hyperfocus for Goller and her patently distinct, singular compositional vision.

'SKYLLUMINA', despite its highly conceptual origins, is heavy with human emotion. Its dark washes of melody and contrapuntal percussion could fit easily into a mixtape with indie downbeat / ennui royalty like Grouper or Low, while also being right at home next a Cage-Tudor prepared piano piece. And the piercing, siblant ice age siren song heard in Goller's powerfully feminine vocal arrangements find her in an otherworld only occasionally inhabited by the likes of Björk and The Knife.

TRACK LISTING

1. Below My Skin
2. Reach Down Into The Deepest White
3. Of Snowhere
4. Next Time I Keep My Hands Down
5. All The Light I Have, I Hand To You
6. She Was My Own She Was Myself
7. How To Be Free From It
8. From Breaks To Shreds It’s A Short Path
9. Don’t Follow Me
10. I Have For You - Simple Truth

In August 2022, Australia-based, French born fourth-world music legend Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists that have not previously collaborated to create new music together. Kalma was quick to suggest working together with two musicians whom he has never met – the International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut Recordings from the Åland Islands had been released just a few months earlier. Kalma sent an invitation to Chiu and Honer, which was received with great enthusiasm.

Chiu had been a fan of Kalma’s work for a long time, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. After meeting their goal of 20 minutes worth of music for the program (which was four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present, and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction; but simultaneously they felt like there was much more to be said, more work to be done. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those that had. The three musicians collectively agreed that they would continue work together and try to push the music further. The Closest Thing to Silence is the result of their efforts to take the collaboration further. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Ten Hour Wave
2. Breathing In Three Orbits (Intro)
3. Breathing In Three Orbits
4. The Closest Thing To Silence
5. Dizzy Ditty
6. Une Ombre Légère
7. New Air
8. Écoute Au Loin
9. A Treasure Chest
10. Stay Centered
11. Stack Attack 

An evolved, ecosystemic love expression of Carlos Niño’s self-described “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space, Collage” expression – (I’m just) Chillin’, on Fire is the prolific percussionist/producer’s most singular, intentional work ever, featuring a vibrant and abundant gathering of his “friends” (i.e. the highly skilled and accomplished musicians and improvisers that make up Niño’s extensive network of collaborators).

He's rolling deep on this one. Featured artists across 80+ minutes of music include saxophone titan Kamasi Washington, AACM-affiliated creative music legend Maia, synth-guitarist/producer Nate Mercereau, bubbling violinist/vocalist V.C.R, ambient dance innovator Photay, prodigious rhythmist Deantoni Parks, South African vocalist Sibusile Xaba, keyboardist and Alice Coltrane protégé Surya Botofasina, pianist Jamael Dean, Dntel, Aaron Shaw, Diego Gaeta, Laraaji, Adam Rudolph, Josh Johnson, Jamire Williams, Woo, and more, includingAndré 3000, who makes an appearance on flutes. For such a magnificent convergence of sonic journeyers and such a masterful presentation of sounds- al of which is hugged together by Niño's lucid post-productive guidance, as he makes Q-Tip/DJ Premier- like architectures out of fluid explorations and minimalist musical atmospheres - the undersold title "(I'm just) Chillin', on Fire" is both humorous and totally appropriate for anyone who is open enough to understand what this artist'" is all about. It's also Niño's answer to a question that he's frequently asked: "Are You aShaman? I feel the Medicine in your Music. You are a Shaman aren't You?" To such kind ideas Niño likes to reply: "(l'm just) Chillin',on Fire, Deeply Sharing..."

TRACK LISTING

1.Venice 100720, Hands In Soil
2. Mighty Stillness
3. Love Dedication (for Annelise)
4. Flutestargate
5. Maha Rose North 102021, Breathwork
6. Transcendental Bounce, Run To It
7. Taaaud
8. Spacia
9. Am I Dreaming?
10. Etheric Windsurfing, Flips And Twirls
11. Boom Bap Spiritual
12. Woo, Acknowledgement
13. Sandra's Willows
14. One For Derf
15. Conversations
16. Essence, The Mermaids Call
17. Eightspace 082222

Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement suite composed and arranged by Angel Bat Dawid, inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film “The Cry of Jazz.”

The original form of the music was premiered at the 2019 edition of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago, where Angel conducted a multigenerational fifteen-piece instrumental ensemble (all Black musicians from Chicago’s creative music community) alongside a four- person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble), dancers, and visual artists in performance.

Angel mixed and post-produced recordings from the performance – adding interludes, vocals and additional sounds, as well as transcribing a piece from “The Cry of Jazz” film. The final movement of Requiem for Jazz features Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Their contributions were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia in late 2020.

The final Requiem for Jazz work in album form is an immersive 24-track, double LP experience. The physical package is a deluxe, heavyweight gatefold jacket with liner notes by South African writer Nombuso Mathibela, artwork by Damon Locks, and a large fold out poster designed by Jeremiah Chiu, featuring poetry written by Angel Bat Dawid in dedication to all of her collaborators on the project. Additionally, there is a limited Thy Kingdom Come purple color vinyl edition of Requiem for Jazz available for the first pressing only.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jazz Is Merely The Negroes Cry Of Joy & Suffering
2. INTROIT- Joy N’ Suff’rin
3. Jazz Is The Musical Expression Of The Triumph Of The Negroes Spirit
4. KYRIE ELEISON- Lawd Hav’ Merci
5. This Endless Repetition Is Like A Chain Around The Spirit. And Is A Reflection Of The Denial Of A Future To The Negro In The American Way Of Life
6. DIAS IRE- Chain Around The Spirit
7. Another Restraining Factor In Jazz Are The Changes
8. TUBA MIRUM- The Changes
9. The Negro Experiences The Endless Daily Humiliation Of American Life Which Bequeaths Him A Futureless Future
10. REX TREMENDAE –Futureless Future
11. The Negro Transforms America’s Image Of Him Into A Transport Of Joy!
12. RECORDARE-Recall The Joy
13. Jazz Reflects The Improvised Life Thrust Upon The Negro
14. CONFUTATIS-Repression
15. Through Spirituals, Through The Blues, Then Through Jazz We Made A Memory Of Our Past And A Promise Of All To Come
16. LACRIMOSA- Weeping Our Lady Of Sorrow
17. Because Jazz Is The One Element In American Life Where Whites Must Be Humble To The Negro
18. OFFERTURIUM-HOSTIAS-Humility
19. Only When Whites Have Paid The Price In Suffering To Be The Negroes Equal
20. SANCTUS- Holy, Holy, Holy
21. The Jazz Body Is Dead But The Spirit Of Jazz Is Alive
22. AGNUS DEI-Jazz Is Dead!
23. LUX AETERNA-Eternal Light (Angel Bat Dawid) -The Cry Of Jazz (Sun Ra)
24. Long Tone For Rayna Golding (A Binti Zawadi Our Future)

Jeff Parker’s Forfolks — a new album of solo guitar works — was recorded by Graeme Gibson at Sholo Studio in Altadena, California (aka Jeff’s house) over two days in June 2021. It includes interpretations of Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” and the standard “My Ideal,” plus six original compositions including "Four Folks," "La Jetée" (a tune he recorded with Tortoise in 1998), and four totally new loop-driven, stratiform works that marry melodic improvisation with electronic textures.

“It's a particular thing to hear Jeff play solo,” writes veteran Chicago musician and longtime Parker collaborator Matthew Lux in his liner notes for Forfolks. “He is an unusually selfless improviser, oftentimes laying out and highlighting the contributions of his band mates… On this recording, however, he is by himself, joined only by his own ideas, looped or frozen, to flesh out the music he's creating in his mind. Hearing him craft entire sound worlds on these eight selections gives us an opportunity to really see how Parker orders sound.”

Forfolks follows Parker’s critically acclaimed 2020 record Suite for Max Brown, which Pitchfork called an “effortlessly detailed album, full of tradition and experimentation that spans generations … It lives at the vanguard of new jazz music.” The album went on to debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Current Contemporary Jazz Chart.

TRACK LISTING

1. Off Om
2. Four Folks
3. My Ideal
4. Suffolk
5. Flour Of Fur
6. Ugly Beauty
7. Excess Success
8. La Jetée 

Open The Gates is Philadelphia-based free jazz collective IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS’s third full length album (and first double LP length album). Recorded at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, across 73 minutes of music the band – featuring Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro & drummer Tcheser Holmes (who released their duo debut Heritage of the Invisible II on International Anthem last year), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart – supplement their raw, organic punk-jazz sound with firsttime experiments with electronics and synthesizers.

“Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism.” – The Nation

"The jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface.” – Pitchfork

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly soulful storm of free-jazz timbres and spoken word phrases bolstered with snappy counterpoint and harmonic dissonance, both unnerving and hypnotic, but thoroughly enthralling throughout. Brilliantly inventive and momentous.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. Open The Gates
A2. Keys To Creation
SIDE B
B1. Lágrimas Del Mar
B2. Storm Came Twice
SIDE C
C1. Water Meditation
SIDE D
D1. Six Sounds
D2. The Port Remembers

Taken from live improvisation to live sampling & recomposition to borderdefying beat collage – a new jazz mixtape tells a many-splendored tale of Trans-Atlantic collaboration in constant cadence. The vinyl edition of Where We Come From (CHICAGOxLONDON Mixtape) is a split-label release with London’s Total Refreshment Centre.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Halls
A2. McCraven On The Mic
A3. Ox Tales
A4. Suite For Artis Gilmore
A5. Jupiter Jawn
A6. The Oracle
B1. The Bounce!
B2. King Drive, '86 Cutlass, No Plates
B3. Run 'Dem
B4. Too Shy
B5. Drums&Bruk&FeelTheVibe
B6. Birthday Solo
B7. TRC Thank You Outro
B8. Where We Come From