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)

Makaya McCraven’s modern classic, International Anthem debut In The Moment is available on vinyl for the first time since 2015, when the album’s breakout success made the first pressing an overnight scarcity (in addition to an “Album of the Week” for Gilles Peterson on BBC, and eventually a “Best Album of 2015” in the Los Angeles Times, NY Observer, Pop Matters & Chicago Reader).

TRACK LISTING

A1 Exploration Intro
A2 The Jaunt
A3 Slightest Right
A4 First Thing First
B1 Lonely
B2 Gnawa
B3 On The Spot
B4 Butterscotch
B5 TomTom
B6 Three Fifths A Man
C1 In The Moment
C2 Quartz
C3 Just Stay Right There
C4 Untitled
C5 Requests
D1 Time Travel
D2 The Encore
D3 The Drop
D4 Finances

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

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 

City of Mirrors is a bold new collection of music from Chicago-based alt-Latinx band Dos Santos, which is comprised of bandleader / singer / lyricst / guitarist / keyboardist Alex Chavez, drummer Daniel Villarreal, percussionist Peter “Maestro” Vale, bassist Jaime Garza, and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Nathan Karagianis. Cinematic in its journey, the album was produced by multimedia artist and long-time friend of the band Elliot Bergman (NOMO, Wild Belle), and reflects sounds from across the Americas combined with Chavez’s compelling poetic narratives. Its 13 tracks consolidate the band’s unique identities, creative and cultural roots, and their penchant for honoring traditional Latinx music with contemporary compositional expressions and production techniques. It achieves the band’s mission to push against their own musical boundaries while also exploring themes of social justice, immigration, and contemporary human struggle. Chavez, a scholar who has produced albums for Smithsonian Folkways and conducted extensive ethnographic work on the music of the Texan US/Mexican borderlands (where he is from), articulates beautifully: “City of Mirrors is an assemblage… glimpses of tradition… reflections on our collective present… luminous echoes between love and solitude, hope and absurdity, euphoria and mourning. This album grapples with and transgresses these binaries because we have/and continue to cross borders. Yet, for us, the border is no metaphor — too much real staring back at us. We embody the border. We (our families) have crossed it. We (our stories) are coated with its residues. And so… we cross the border of self through our art – out of necessity.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. A Shot In The Dark
A2. Alma Cósmica
A3. A Tu Lado
A4. City If Mirrors
A5. Glorieta
A6. White. Lies.
A7. Palo Santo
B1. Crown Me
B2. Ghost. Me.
B3. Soledad
B4. Cages And Palaces
B5. Juguar De Rosas
B6. Lejos De Ti

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

“I’m always looking for ways to be surprised,” says composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker as he explains the process, and the thinking, behind his new album Suite for Max Brown, released via a new partnership between International Anthem and Nonesuch Records. “If I sit down at the piano or with my guitar, with staff paper and a pencil, I’m eventually going to fall into writing patterns, into things I already know. So, when I make music, that’s what I’m trying to get away from—the things that I know.” Despite its musical departures, in presentation Suite for Max Brown is an informal companion piece to The New Breed, Parker’s debut release on International Anthem, which was honored as one of the “Best Albums of 2016” by New York Times, Observer, and Los Angeles Times.

“I made The New Breed based off these old sample-based compositions and mixed them with improvising,” Parker says. “That’s in a nutshell how I make a lot of my music; it’s a combination of sampling, editing, retriggering audio, and recording it, moving it around and trying to make it into something cohesive… With Max Brown, it’s evolved.” Though Parker collaborates with a coterie of musicians under the group name The New Breed, theirs is by no means a conventional “band” relationship. Parker is very much a solo artist on Suite for Max Brown. His accompanists are often working alone with Parker, reacting to what Parker has provided them, and then Parker uses those individual parts to layer and assemble into his final tracks. The process may be relatively solitary and cerebral, but the results feel like in-the-moment jams—warm-hearted, human, alive. Suite for Max Brown brims with personality, boasting the rhythmic flow of hip hop and the soulful swing of jazz.

His collaborators on Max Brown include pianist-saxophonist Josh Johnson; bassist Paul Bryan, who co-produced and mixed the album with Parker; fellow International Anthem artists Makaya McCraven and Rob Mazurek; trumpeter Nate Walcott; drummers Jamire Williams and Jay Bellerose; cellist Katinka Klejin; and his seventeenyear-old daughter Ruby Parker on the opening track “Build a Nest.” Ruby’s presence at the start is fitting as the album is, in true Parker fashion, a familiar affair. “That’s my mother’s maiden name. Maxine Brown. Everybody calls her Max. I decided to call it Suite for Max Brown. The New Breed became a kind of tribute to my father because he passed away while I was making the album. I thought it would be nice this time to dedicate something to my mom while she’s still here to see it.” There is a multi-generational vibe to the music too, as Parker balances his contemporary digital explorations with excursions into older jazz. Along with original compositions, Parker includes “Gnarciss,” an interpretation of Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus,” and John Coltrane’s “After the Rain.”

Coltrane is a touchstone in Parker’s musical evolution. “I used to deejay a lot when I lived in Chicago. I was spinning records one night and for about ten minutes I was able to perfectly synch up a Nobukazu Takemura record with the first movement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and it had this free jazz, abstract jazz thing going on with a sequenced beat underneath. It sounded so good. That’s what I’m trying to do with Max Brown.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. Build A Nest (feat. Ruby Parker)
A2. C'mon Now
A3. Fusion Swirl
A4. After The Rain
A5. Metamorphoses
A6. Gnarciss
A7. Lydian
A8. Del Rio
B1. 3 For L
B2. Go Away
B3. Max Brown

Riding the ripples of their debut single “Escalator” (which BBC’s Gilles Peterson called “a winner,” and Supreme Standards’ Tina Edwards likened to “Radiohead on a Jazz trip”), Chicago collective Resavoir return with their first full length effort. The self-titled album presents a juicy suite of elegantly-orchestrated lo-fi jazz instrumentals germinated from home recording experiments by the group’s producer/arranger Will Miller. Applying a compositional approach attributable to his experience producing hip-hop beats as much as his studies at Oberlin Conservatory, Miller built melodic sketches on foundations of samples & loops before bringing pieces to the group for collective development. After integrating recordings of the full band into his home-produced impressions (not unlike IARC predecessors Jeff Parker and Makaya McCraven), he overdubbed another dozen friends into the mix (including Brandee Younger, Sen Morimoto, Carter Lang, Knox Fortune and Macie Stewart) before finalizing the arrangements. In Miller’s modest editing room, Resavoir grew from experiment into epic opus recalling the lush, psychedelic soul jazz orchestrations of David Axelrod & Charles Stepney… but in the sampled-laden style of Yesterday’s New Quintet, Broadcast, or Thundercat, with a lyrical affinity for minimalism & texturalism, like trumpeter/composers Jon Hassell & Justin Walter.

Resavoir is a diverse collective of instrumentalists – most of whom are Chicago born & raised, some of whom have been playing together since high school, all of whom represent exciting new directions in Chicago’s fertile contemporary jazz & creative music scenes. The core lineup features Will Miller on trumpet/synths, Irvin Pierce on saxophone, Akenya Seymour on keys/vocals, Lane Beckstrom on bass, Peter Manheim on drums and Jeremy Cunningham on drums. All highly active players, the band’s compiled resume includes collaborations with Noname, Chance the Rapper, Makaya McCraven, Jeff Parker, Saba, Nick Mazzarella, Mavis Staples and many more.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Resavoir
3. Taking Flight (feat. Brandee Younger)
4. Plantasy
5. Clouds
6. Woah
7. Illusion
8. Escalator (feat. Sen Morimoto)
9. LML

Drummer/producer Makaya McCraven’s epic 2018 album Universal Beings was a breakthrough release – both for Makaya as an artist and also for an entire class of “new jazz” artists who in recent years have been making waves from Chicago to New York to London and Los Angeles. Featuring an all-star cast of genreredefining players (incl. Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Tomeka Reid, Joel Ross, Brandee Younger, Jeff Parker…) recorded in the four aforementioned cities, the music of Universal Beings was composed in collective improvisational sessions before being post-produced by McCraven into twenty-two lyrical instrumental pieces of “organic beat music.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: If you missed this the first time around then you’re in luck, the Universal Beings re-release is here to save the day. Filled to the brim with beautiful jazz and featuring lots of inspirational names in the New Jazz era such as Nubya Garcia & Shabaka Hutchings and many more talented contributors. Delve into the four sections to guide you away to different parts of the world and float away on a jazzy-cloud.

TRACK LISTING

New York Side:
A1. A Queen's Intro
A2. Holy Land
A3. Young Genius
A4. Black Lion
A5. Tall Tales
A6. Mantra

Chicago Side:
B1. Pharaoh's Intro
B2. Atlantic Black
B3. Inner Flight
B4. Wise Man, Wiser Woman
B5. Prosperity's Fear

London Side:
C1. Flipped Out
C2. Voila
C3. Suite Haus
C4. The Newbies Lift Off
C5. The Royal Outro

Los Angeles Side:
D1. The Count Off
D2. Butterss's
D3. Turtle Tricks
D4. The Fifth Monk