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 

A 4 song EP of remixes of songs from A Grape Dope's "Backyard Bangers" album. Featured remixers are Laetitia Sadier (of Stereolab), Four Tet, Jeff Parker (of Tortoise), and Roberto Carlos Lange (also known as Helado Negro).

Laetitia Sadier adds an air of whimsy, holding your hand as she guides you through the enchanted woodland of “Rat’s It Up”.

Jeff Parker's wobbly-refix reminds me of classic Derrick Carter! Shuffled and twisted to within an inch of toppling over; it's overlapping arpeggios, hushed robo-vox and multitude of intertwining melodies an overwhelming excursion into peak tech-house territory that'd make Suat squirm!

Side B begins with a more relaxed, jazz-indebted affair, Roberto Carlos' remix of "You Don't Have To" a traditionally informed, though rhythmically challenging number comprised of dry drums, piano, bass and some echo-drenched SFX.

Completing the record, Four Tet swirls the stems of "Rainbo Locals" into the stratosphere for a dizzying and highly elevating twist which seems destined to turn craniums inside out when unleashed on a mass of people.

Nice set of remixes to compliment a very nice album indeed. 10 outta 10.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rats It’s Up (Laetitia Sadier Remix)
2. Rats It's Up (Jeff Parker Remix)
3. You Don't Have To (Roberto Carlos Lange Remix)
4. Rainbo Locals (Four Tet Remix)

“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

Classic creative bop melodies and golden era beat memories woven into a vibrant new thread of psychedelic soul jazz. The New Breed received “Best of 2016” honors from NPR Music, Observer, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Aquarium Drunkard, and Bandcamp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Executive Life
2. Para Ha Tay
3. Here Comes Ezra
4. Visions
5. Jrifted
6. How Fun It Is To Year Whip
7. Get Dressed
8. Cliche