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MTE 082LP
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$35.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/7/2025
Onilu is an all-percussionist trio utilizing the extensive family of drummed and tuned percussion instruments to deliver beautifully composed, arranged and executed small ensemble music. Nothing about this all-percussion band feels rarified, or missing anything musical. To the contrary, Onilu create a soundworld where nothing is missing, and everything is musical -- defying the stereotype of modern percussion ensembles as esoteric or academic pursuits, reaffirming the powerful social and sacred musics made in African diasporic communities and across cultures by drum and percussion groups since the beginning of human time. The members of Onilu are: Kevin Diehl, leader of the enduring Philadelphia-based Afro-Cuban Yoruba free-jazz ensemble Sonic Liberation Front; Chad Taylor, Artistic Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and esteemed drummer of long standing in many scenes. Highlights of Taylor's recent history include his work with James Brandon Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Marc Ribot, Rob Mazurek, and with Joshua Abrams in the duo Mind Maintenance-. Taylor was part of the community of young Chicago-based musicians organized around Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge in the 1990s that included Abrams, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, and Matana Roberts, among others; living legend Joe Chambers, who began his illustrious career as the drummer on now-canonical early Blue Note recordings by Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Wayne Shorter, and Mccoy Tyner. A 1970 founding member of Max Roach's pathbreaking percussion ensemble M'Boom, Chambers continues to record percussion-centered music as a leader for Blue Note records. After nearly three decades working with such historic drummers as Denis Charles, Walter Perkins, Sunny Murray, Hamid Drake, Milford Graves, Susie Ibarra, Charles Bobo Shaw, and Han Bennink, it is Eremite Records' joy and honor to give the drummers not some, but ALL the spotlight. From Dana Hall's liner notes: "These three artists are master musicians and the music they present here is masterfully conceived. The drum, and its entire global family of membranophones, shakers, and idiophones, are conduits for their collective creative voice. In addition to drummers, they are also composers, and their works here represent a synthesis of ideas, concepts, and their individual dialectics on the language and syntax found in much of African and African Diasporic musics. A music that uses call and response. One that honors the past while looking forward to the future. A music that is principally concerned with feeling, mood, and storytelling. One that eschews frivolity and the baroque. A music that swings and grooves. I found myself dancing to this recording. Trust me, you, too, will find yourself rightfully and unapologetically dancing to this recording." First Eremite edition of 999 copies pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140-gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, from Kevin Gray/Cohearent audio lacquers. Recorded by Michael Richelle, Philadelphia. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Hand screen-printed insert by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico.
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2LP
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MTE 080-81LP
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$44.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
Arriving in North America on Eremite, the debut recording by The Ancients, the intergenerational coalition of Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, and William Parker formed by Parker to play concerts in conjunction with the Milford Graves Mind Body Deal exhibition at the Institute Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and now a working group. Across 2 LPs of side-length long-form improvised sets recorded at 2220 Arts and Archives in LA and The Chapel in San Francisco, The Ancients bring the free jazz trio languages first explored by the Cecil Taylor Unit and Ornette Coleman's Golden Circle Band (expanded upon in later eras by Sam Rivers' trio and Parker's collective trios with Charles Gayle/Graves and Peter Brötzmann/Hamid Drake) into their own unique and scintillating realms of expression. As we tumble further into the throes of history's tides, people of hope and creativity rely on the works of our great artists to lift our spirits and focus our resolve. Ascension was recorded less than a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and four months after the assassination of Malcolm X. Journey in Satchidananda was recorded the month Reagan was re-elected governor of California. M'Boom made its debut recording weeks after the Watergate scandal broke and a couple months after the Wounded Knee occupation ended. The music of The Ancients builds on these great musical legacies. It resounds with the pride of survival and the joys of making and sharing music. It delivers to us hope and balm. Something real in you, real in history, and real in the music is shared, right on time. When Eremite records commenced operations during the 1990s free jazz resurgence, heavyweight freedom-seeking tenor saxophonists such as Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Charles Gayle, Kidd Jordan, and David S. Ware were at the height of their powers. Isaiah Collier's tenor playing in The Ancients is bracing testimony that the wellspring lives on. To hear the young Chicago firebrand blowing freely with veteran improvisers in an entirely open-form group music is a revelatory study of his vast talent, personal voice, and the intensity of his expression -- as well as a bold complement to his composition-based albums as a bandleader (including The Almighty, a New York Times' best albums of 2024 selection). I've admired drummer William Hooker since first encountering his music in a Hartford, CT, city park, early '90s (on a double bill with Jerry González and Fort Apache Band). From the man himself right off the bandstand I bought his even-then rare first recording, the 1976 self-released 2LP opus Is Eternal Life (reissued 2019 by Superior Viaduct). An imposing force on his instrument and an intrepid DIY cat, Hooker's been exuberantly swinging in-and-out of free time for 50+ years. Informed by the innovations of Sunny Murray and Tony Williams yet entirely himself, there is no other term for it than "pure Hooker." At age 78, with the Ancients and everywhere else, THE HOOK is in peak form. With a discography approaching 600 entries and 50+ years working across the musical maps, including in the history-defining bands of Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Peter Brötzmann, in his own wondrous ensembles from small group to orchestra to opera, a bastion of compassionate leadership and a poetic champion of his musical community, in tireless service to what he rather egolessly refers to as "the tone world," multi-instrumentalist, improviser and composer William Parker is a living hero of the grassroots and the Black Mystery Musics, not to mention one of the great bassists in the history of jazz. To quote George Clinton, conquering the stumbling blocks comes easier when the conqueror is in tune with the infinite. Free jazz is an enduring high art. Its greatest expressions belong to their particular moment in history, and live on to transcend and refract in amaranthine ways. Inside our present historical moment, we are fortunate to have the master musicians in the ancients bringing us their high-level creation. First Eremite edition of 1,299 copies pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140gram vinyl at Fidelity Record pressing, from Kevin Gray/Cohearent audio lacquers. Live to 2-track concert recordings by Bryce Gonzales, Highland Dynamics. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Album and concerts co-produced with The Black Editions Group.
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MTE 078-79LP
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Repressed. The next chapter of the Natural Information Society is here. Since Time Is Gravity, credited to Natural Information Society Community Ensemble with Ari Brown, presents a newly expanded manifestation of acclaimed composer & multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams nearly 15 year, 7 albums- &-counting flagship ensemble. Joining the core NIS of Abrams (guimbri & bass), Lisa Alvarado (harmonium) Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) & Jason Stein (bass clarinet) are Hamid Drake (percussion), Josh Berman & Ben Lamar Gay (cornets), Nick Mazzarella & Mai Sugimoto (alto saxophones & flute), Kara Bershad (harp) & Chicago living legend of the tenor saxophone Ari Brown. Recorded live to tape at Electrical Audio & The Graham Foundation, cover painting Vibratory Cartography: Nepantla, by Lisa Alvarado.
"Since first developing Natural Information Society in 2010, Joshua Abrams has been gradually expanding the group's conceptual underpinnings, its musical references & the sheer number of the group's members. Its music is, in a sense, an expansive form of minimalism, based in repeated & overlaid rhythmic patterns, ostinatos & modality. Its roots, its scale & its meaning become clearer in time. If time is gravity, it also allows us to carry more. Having begun as fundamentally a rhythm section with Abrams' guimbri at its core, the version here can stretch to a tentet, including six horns. Abrams has been expanding his minimalism gradually, but he has long understood a key to minimalism's potential: the breadth of its roots in the late 1950s & early 1960s, ranging from the dissatisfaction of young European-stream composers with the limitations of serialism to the simultaneous dissatisfaction of jazz musicians with the dense harmonic vocabulary of bop & hard bop. The former began exploring rhythmic complexity & narrow tonal palates in place of harmonic abstraction (Steve Reich's Drumming, Philip Glass' Music with Changing Parts; perhaps above all Terry Riley's In C & his late '60s all-night organ & loop concerts); the later reduced dense chord changes to scales (signally with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, but rapidly expanding with John Coltrane's vast project). In the 1950s the LP record opened the world with documentation of Asian & African musics, key influences on both minimalists & jazz musicians. If John Coltrane's soprano saxophone suggested the keening shehnai of Bismillah Khan, the instrument was rapidly taken up by two key minimalists, LaMonte Young & Riley, similarly appreciative of its flexible intonation, the same thing that kept it out of big bands. If the guimbri, the North African hide-covered lute that Abrams plays with NIS, involves a rich tradition of hypnotic healing music associated with the Gnawa people, Abrams' music also touches on other musics as well --other depths, memories & healings, different drones, rhythms & modes. As the group expands on Since Time Is Gravity, he has made certain jazz traditions in the same stream more explicit as well. If there is a mystical & elastic quality involved in the experience of time, both in direction & duration, you will catch it here. The parts for the choir of winds expand on the roles of Abrams' guimbri, Mikel Patrick Avery & Hamid Drake's percussion & Lisa Alvarado's harmonium: at times, the winds are almost looping in the tentet version, each hitting a repeating note in turn, at once drone & distinct inflection on temporal sequence. The brilliance of the work resides in Abrams' compositions, the NIS' intuitive execution & in Ari Brown's singular embodiment of the great tenor saxophone tradition, including the oracular genius of Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, & Yusef Lateef..." --Stuart Broomer, April 2022
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LP
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MTE 065LP
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2023 restock. The long awaited repress of Slight Freedom, acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's first solo album & a New York Times' best albums of 2016 selection, is here. Pressed on premium 120-gram audiophile-quality vinyl by RTI from lacquers cut at sterling sound by Steve Fallone, presented in a retro flipback jacket. Second edition of 1,399 copies. What we said in 2016: "Slight Freedom, Jeff Parker's first ever solo record, presents the first opportunity to hear the guitarist in fully self-revealed circumstances. recorded 2013 & '14 in the Hollywood Hills as he relocated from Chicago to Los Angeles, Parker combines the dark tonal palette & percussive attack he's long been known for with real-time processing elements & field recordings, deftly crafting a unique world of solo guitar music -- multilingual, mysterious, alive with extraordinary sonic events, with a sturdy intelligence in charge & a raw homestyle vibe. parker's title composition sets the album's cavernous mood. terse lines & ricocheting loops morph into a gnarly ambient section that resembles Neil Young droning out over a vg+ copy of discreet music. Parker creates a different sort of ambient space in his take on Frank Ocean's 'Super Rich Kids', bending the melody around a bossa nova rhythm into a moodsville tone poem. parker makes an extraordinary long-form statement out of Chad Taylor's 'Mainz', a piece he first recorded with Taylor & Chris Lopes on the album Bright Light In Winter. Twice the length of the trio recording, the multi-layered soliloquy finds parker leaping from the high rung to damn near orchestral heights, pushing his techniques & concepts to the breaking points. It's one of the great solo performances you'll hear from a musician this year. To say 'Lush Life' comes with formidable baggage is an understatement. Parker achieves instant classic status with a rendition that sounds beamed-in from a decommissioned satellite -- burned out, covered in space grit, yet still formally nuanced & beautifully reflective of Strayhorn's world-weary lyrics. twenty years into the game it's a joy for eremite to present work by an artist who's clearly taking his music to the next level." "It's not jazz, it's not ambient, it's not noise; it's something more idiosyncratic and more personal, something only Parker could have come up with. Perhaps this is what Slight Freedom is supposed to mean: Not an anarchic exploding of rules, not the total liberation proposed by free jazz, but a steadier, stealthier path -- dissolving boundaries, softening constraints, and wearing away at the edges of things until the ideas run as freely as water." --Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork
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2LP
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MTE 076-77LP
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2024 repress! "Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet, is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA's Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan's Live at the Lighthouse, Miles Davis' In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco & Black Beauty, & John Coltrane's Live in Seattle. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group -- just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It's tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras -- dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone -- suffuse the proceedings. Listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, 'we sound like the Byrds' (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they've established in Parker's -- The New Breed -- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker's beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers -- as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming -- bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker's unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker's music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together." --Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner Pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Triple Point Records, Queens, NY.
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LP
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MTE 073LP
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"David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country, & he knew it, & he coveted their audiences & their power, he claimed them as his rightful due. & when he could not have them, his disappointment became so dazzling, his greed assumed such purity, his appetite such honesty, & he stretched his arms so wide, that we were all able to recognize ourselves, & we fell in love with him." (Leonard Cohen). David Blue is the 'Blue' in Bob Dylan's "Baby Blue", the voluble chain-smoking pinball loner in Renaldo & Clara, a companion of Joni Mitchell's during the time she made Blue, the "blue's not right" art collector in Wim Wender's The American Friend. The second artist signed to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum records (after Judee Sill), Blue's 1971 Asylum debut Stories sold a woeful 2000 copies. Perhaps a factor in the album's spectacular failure to achieve traction is the almost harrowing emotional vulnerability of Blue's songs & performances. About Stories Blue himself said "if you listen to the record & say, 'god, what a downer,' then i've succeeded in doing exactly what i wanted to do." Recorded with Blue's foil, guitarist Bob Rafkin, & an A-list ensemble of LA session musicians that includes among others Ry Cooder, Rita Coolidge, Chris Ethridge, & Russ Kunkel, engineered by Henry Lewy (Blue, Gilded Palace of Sin) with string arrangements by Jack Nitzsche, Stories is the one true masterpiece of David Blue's short life (Blue died age 42 from a heart-attack while jogging in Washington Square Park).
Aficionados of the "stoners&loners" genre have slept on Stories. In the estimation of those long involved in the activities of eremite records, Stories finest moments (& there are many) foreshadow dark classics from later in the decade such as Gene Clark's No Other, Neil Young's 'Ditch Trilogy' & Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, spirit albums in which the artists' torments are transfigured into high art through bummer song. As an expression of appreciation & love to David Blue, eremite's edition of Stories surpasses all previously available versions in both audio reproduction & presentation. Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio gently remastered the music from the original tapes & cut the lacquers. Pressed on premium audiophile 120 gram vinyl at RTI, Stories is presented in a retro flipback jacket with a 12x12 hand screenprinted (in peacock blue ink) insert by Alan Sherry / Siwa that reproduces in-full Leonard Cohen's 1982 eulogy for David Blue. Stories is the only release on eremite records' subsidiary label Sister Rose (titled after the second song on side 1 of Stories). Edition 999 copies. In the words of Gil Scott Heron, "all the dreams you show up in are not your own."
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MTE 074-75LP
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[sold out, no repress currently planned] Rich in musical associations yet utterly singular in its voice, joyous with an inner tranquility, the music of Natural Information Society is unlike any other being made today. Their sixth album in eleven years for eremite records, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the first to be recorded live, featuring a set from London's Cafe OTO with veteran English free-improv great Evan Parker, & the first to feature just one extended composition. The 75-minute performance, inspired by the galvanizing presence of Parker, is a sustained bacchanalia of collective ecstasy. You could call it their party album.
This was the second time Parker played with NIS. Joshua Abrams: "Both times we played compositions with Evan in mind. I don't tell Evan anything. He's a free agent."
The music is focused & malleable, energized & even-keeled, drawing on concepts of ensemble playing common to musics from many locations & eras without any one specific aesthetic realization completely defining it.
"The rhythms that Mikel plays are not an exact reference to Chicago house, but that's in there," Abrams says. "I like to take a cyclic view of music history, can we take that four-on-the-floor, & consider how it connects to swing-era music? Can we articulate a through line? I dee-jayed for years in Chicago & lessons I learned from playing records for dancing inform how I think about the group's music. The listener can make connections to aspects of soul music, electronic music, minimalism, traditional folk musics, & other musics of the diaspora as well. It's about these aspects coming together. I don't need to mimic something, I need to embody it to get to the spirit, to get to the living thing."
For jazz fans, the sound of Parker's soprano & Jason Stein's bass clarinet might evoke Coltrane & Dolphy, even though they didn't necessarily set out to do that & they play with complete individuality. Abrams sees a bridge to the historical precedent, too. "Since we first met in the 1990s, one of the things that Evan and I connected on was Coltrane's music," he says. "I hoped that we would tap into that sound world intuitively. In this case, I think that level of evocation adds another layer of depth, versus a layer of reference."
Indeed, this is a performance in which the connections among the ensemble & the creative tension between improvisation and composition build into a complex mesh of associations & interactions. While the band confines itself to the territory mapped out by Abrams' composition, they are remarkably attentive & responsive, making adjustments to Parker's improvisations. When Parker's intricate patterns of notes interweave with the band, the parts reinforce one another & the music rockets upward. Sometimes, Parker's lines are cradled by the group's gentle pulse & an unearthly lyrical balance is struck.
Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery is locked-in, playing with hellacious long-form discipline, feel & responsiveness. Jason Stein's animated, vocalized bass clarinet weaves in & out with Lisa Alvarado's harmonium to state the piece's thematic material; the pulsing tremolo on the harmonium brings a Spacemen 3 vibe to the party. Abrams ties together melody & rhythm on guimbri, a presence that leads without seeming to. Like his bandmates, he shifts modes of playing frequently, improvising & then returning to the composed structure.
"As specific as the composition is, the goal is to internalize it & mix it up," Abrams says. "The idea is to get so comfortable that we can make spontaneous changes, find new routes of activity, stasis & byways every gig. It's like a web we're spinning. If someone makes a move, we all aim to be aware of it, make room for it. Experiencing & listening is what it's about, & Evan supercharges that."
& "supercharged" is the word for this album. With Parker further opening up their music, descension (Out of Our Constrictions) is the sound of Natural Information Society growing both more disciplined and freer, one of the great bands of its time on a deep run.
Mastered by Helge Sten, Audio Virus, Oslo. Lacquers by Kevin Gray, Cohearent Audio, So Cal. Liner Notes by Theaster Gates. LPs pressed on premium audiophile-quality vinyl at RTI.
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MTE 070-71LP
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Limited restock, on clear vinyl. Double LP version. LPs pressed on premium audiophile-quality vinyl at RTI from Kevin Gray Lacquers; Presented in a textured gatefold Stoughton "laserdisc" jacket with a cover painting by Lisa Alvarado. Jackets, retro-audiophile sleeves and record labels hand-screen printed by Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, Nick Mazzarella on alto saxophone, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet. A double album, Mandatory Reality is comprised largely of two performances, both Joshua Abrams compositions, 24- and 40-minutes in length. While new to the band's records, long duration pieces are familiar to those who've heard Joshua Abram and NIS in concert in recent years, where elaboration on a single composition for an hour or more is not unusual. Gradual tempos dominate Mandatory Reality. Recorded two months before the 2017 solar eclipse, Mandatory Reality is the sound of Joshua Abrams and NIS taking its time. Merging methodical compositions with sonically voluptuous orchestration, Abrams heightens the immersive and hypnotic qualities Abram and NIS music is known for, taking the band and the listener deep into a collective meditative space. A grand realization of long-form psychedelic music, Mandatory Reality is a dispatch from a sound world that is increasingly unique to itself. All performances on Mandatory Reality are full takes recorded live to tape by the full ensemble, magnificently captured by Greg Norman at electrical audio, Chicago -- the first true "audiophile" recording of Joshua Abrams and NIS. Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus, Oslo.
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MTE 071-72CD
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Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, Nick Mazzarella on alto saxophone, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet. A double album, Mandatory Reality is comprised largely of two performances, both Joshua Abrams compositions, 24- and 40-minutes in length. While new to the band's records, long duration pieces are familiar to those who've heard Joshua Abram and NIS in concert in recent years, where elaboration on a single composition for an hour or more is not unusual. Gradual tempos dominate Mandatory Reality. Recorded two months before the 2017 solar eclipse, Mandatory Reality is the sound of Joshua Abrams and NIS taking its time. Merging methodical compositions with sonically voluptuous orchestration, Abrams heightens the immersive and hypnotic qualities Abram and NIS music is known for, taking the band and the listener deep into a collective meditative space. A grand realization of long-form psychedelic music, Mandatory Reality is a dispatch from a sound world that is increasingly unique to itself. All performances on Mandatory Reality are full takes recorded live to tape by the full ensemble, magnificently captured by Greg Norman at electrical audio, Chicago -- the first true "audiophile" recording of Joshua Abrams and NIS. Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus, Oslo. Cover painting by Lisa Alvarado. Jackets, retro-audiophile sleeves and record labels hand-screen printed by Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico.
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MTE 068LP
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Simultonality is the follow-up to Joshua Abrams's critically acclaimed 2015 album Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015). Credited to Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society (NIS), it is the first recording in the project's nine year, four album history made by a regularly gigging manifestation, rather than a special assembly of friends. Recorded in 2014 and 2015 in single takes by the full ensemble during and after tours of the US and Canada, Simultonality once more affirms the project's unique approach to joining traditional musics, American minimalism, and jazz with the Gnawa ceremonial instrument the guimbri. Stasis, continuity, and repetition, central qualities of Abrams language, defined Magnetoception, listed by many as one of the best records of 2015. These same qualities form the heart of Abrams's music on Simultonality. But where Abrams once said Magnetoception is about "winter and death", Simultonality, in Abrams's words, is an album of "pure motion". Without sounding frenetic it is the most explosive NIS music on record, and without sounding over-determined, it is Abrams's most structured and through-composed music yet. Much of it is also fast, a mass of densely patterned elements swiftly orbiting constantly reconfiguring centers that are variously harmonic and rhythmic, clearly stated or implied. The music is at no time any more disorderly than a colony of bees pollinating a vast garden. Its many moving parts function in mutualistic relationship toward fulfilling Abrams's long stated intention for the project: to help listener's achieve a meditative center and to consciously use music as a gateway to living. Abrams credits William Parker as an inspiration for this intention. The musicians on Simultonality date back to the nascency of NIS. Along with Hamid Drake, Mikel Avery and Frank Rosaly are Abrams first-call drummers for the project. On Simultonality, Avery is in the left channel, Rosaly the right. Astute heads may recognize the rhythm in "Sideways Fall" as Jaki Leibezeit's drum break in Can's "Vitamin C". At Abrams behest, the two drummers divided the beat into separate parts. According to Hamid Drake, the rhythm was popularized, if not originated, by John "Jabo" Starks and Clyde Stubblefield of the J.B.'s. Nearly ten years into its existence, Abrams and the NIS wear their influences with creativity and ease. Long standing NIS members, Ben Boye and Emmett Kelly, were previously together with Abrams, or not, in Bonnie Prince Billy's band, and Abrams and Boye have at different times played in Kelly's band The Cairo Gang. Harmonium player Lisa Alvarado contributes the large format pattern paintings used by NIS at concerts and for its album covers. Personnel: Joshua Abrams - guimbri, bass, small harp, bells; Lisa Alvarado - harmonium, Leslie, percussion; Michael Avery - drums and percussion; Ben Boye - chromatic electric autoharp, piano, Wurlitzer; Ari Brown - tenor saxophone (on "2128½"); Emmett Kelly - electric guitar; Frank Rosaly - drums and percussion, resonator bells. Pressed on premium quality audiophile vinyl by RTI, presented in replica audiophile dust sleeves and heavyweight Stoughton LaserDisc jackets screenprinted by Alan Sherry/Siwa.
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MTE 059-60CD
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NYC free jazz cooperative TEST was literally an underground favorite -- as part of the Music Under New York program in the 1990s, TEST was out on the street and subway platforms year-round, playing long-form unadulterated free jazz with an energy and creativity rarely encountered. Even on a scene known for strong personalities, these guys were renegade cats. Eremite heard and recorded TEST many, many times over a ten-year period; Always Coming from the Love Side, a two-CD set from TEST's 1999 US tour captured live by Malachi Ritscher at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge just weeks before Y2K (on November 13, to be exact), is right up there among the band's strongest and most memorable performances. The cover photo, for those who don't recognize it, is of the Velvet Lounge's legendary wallpaper. Other images include a portrait of Fred Anderson in front of the club (shot November 2005 by Peter Brötzmann just months before the building was destroyed by the city of Chicago to build a parking garage) and Tony Getsug's photos of TEST tearing up the bandstand there, as well as art and photography by Joshua Abrams and TEST bassist Matthew Heyner. Tom Bruno, drums; Daniel Carter, winds; Matthew Heyner, bass; Sabir Mateen, winds. Edition of 550 copies. Presented in a tri-fold Stoughton sleeve.
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MTE 026CD
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2001 release. On his third CD for Eremite records, Alan Silva is back in front of an orchestra for the first time since 1982's Desert Mirage. An iconic figure in the avant-garde for three decades, Silva's contribution to the methodologies and vernacular of large ensemble improvisation is enormous, prefiguring the conductions of Butch Morris and John Zorn's game pieces. His three-album 1970 BYG recording Seasons is universally regarded as one of the high water marks in avant-garde jazz. Silva's orchestral pieces offer a broader view of his mad genius than perhaps any other context for his music. They also reveal an artist of uniquely American themes & sources, informed equally by the legacies of Ives, Ra, Ellington, and Mingus, developments in the visual arts (namely abstract expressionism), and a preternaturally warped response to the post-WWII American culture of show tunes, film music, radio theater, and cold war propaganda. This CD was recorded during the 1999 Vision Festival, a rare chance for Silva to work and extensively rehearse with a band of veteran improvisers, and again present his orchestra music on native soil (a first since 1968). The band's festival performance was plagued by every imaginable technical difficulty, including complete power outages and exploding television sets. They re-assembled in an empty hall one week later to play the spectacularly expansive music heard on this recording. Resolution 57! Twenty-three piece ensemble featuring Silva (conduction, vocals, some synthesizer) and Sabir Mateen, Roy Campbell Jr, Raphe Malik, "Kidd" Jordan, Joe Daley, Steve Swell, J.D. Parran, Bill Lowe, Rob Brown, Wilbur Morris, Karen Borca, Jackson Krall, et al.
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MTE 017CD
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1998 release. Alan Silva's playing and live composition have been a highlight of the avant-garde's living history for the past 35+ years. From his work with Sun Ra's Arkestra, through extended relationships with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler, on into the Celestial Communications Orchestra and the Frank Wright Center of the World Band, Silva has been one of the music's most consistently valuable thinkers. A child of Alan Silva's other-worldly strategies for double bass, William Parker is the premier bassist of the post-Vietnam era. A Hero's Welcome is a spontaneous composition dedicated to the spiritual essence of Sun Ra and to all the great string players of the 20th century. It was recorded at the first duo performance Silva and Parker undertook, and is volume one of Eremite's Silva/Parker duos. Two full improvising orchestras couldn't mix it up more completely.
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MTE 009CD
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1998 release. Denis Charles (drums), Nathan Breedlove (trumpet), Wilbert DeJoode (bass), Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax). Recorded by VPRO radio on 9 May, 1991, De Effenaar Cultural Center, Eindhoven, Holland. "The album you hold in your hands is a remarkable document. It is notable as one of only two recordings released under the leadership of the legendary Denis Charles. It is equally notable as the sole remaining evidence of a superb quartet, one whose existence was as brief as it was ecstatic. The opening piece, 'We Don't,' is my favorite selection. Mr. Moondoc and Mr. Breedlove achieve the rough, sanctified sax/trumpet interplay that was the Ayler Brothers' stock in trade. Mr. Charles takes a solo so evocative of West Africa's talking drum tradition as to lend the piece an ancient character. All the material on this album has a sweet congruence. This band never fails to fill you with the magnificent sense of individuals working towards a greater whole. Nobody steps on anyone else's notes, nobody shoves anyone aside, and it is obvious throughout that the interpersonal communication is happening at a very high level." --Byron Coley, Deerfield, MA
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2CD
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MTE 030/31CD
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2001 release. Moondoc (alto & curved soprano saxophones); Parker (bass, bombard, gralle); Drake (trap drums). Eremite continues its documentation of this remarkable duo, who have played together since 1973, with a double CD set (140+ minutes) featuring two cleanly recorded concerts from a November 2000 American tour. Parker's interest in double-reed instruments and Moondoc's introduction of a soprano saxophone moves their music into realms of joyfully non-tempered playing that recall the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Elsewhere, the old bass and alto slam it out. On disc two, Hamid Drake joins the duo at Chicago's Velvet Lounge for an emotionally-charged homecoming concert for Moondoc with much of his family in the audience.
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MTE 043CD
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2003 release. Eremite continues its extensive documentation of Jemeel Moondoc with this previously unreleased 1981 session. Recorded at Tucasa Sound Studio on Avenue B, Moondoc and authentic jazz legend Denis 'Jazz' Charles are completely and totally on fire from start to finish.
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MTE 049CD
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2006 release. John Blum (piano), Denis Charles (drums), Antonio Grippi (alto sax, alto clarinet), William Parker (bass). Studio recordings from 1998. There are few sessions to rival this one for sheer urgency and gusto. It's as if something pent-up in these four musicians waited for this combination of players to unleash it... the music explodes into action. Pianist John Blum is a secret hero of New York's free jazz community, known as a proficient and forceful improviser in the tradition of his mentors, Borah Bergmann and Cecil Taylor. Blum's performance on "Astrogeny" is his shining moment on disc to date. The legendary Denis Charles was at his best when paired with William Parker; together they formed one of the great, yet under-documented, rhythm sections in the music. Antonio Grippi, a shadowy figure in free-jazz history, makes an appropriately rousing contribution on alto saxophone.
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MTE 034CD
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2002 release. Recorded at the 1998 vision festival Jimmy Lyons memorial celebration, a powerful commemoration from four of Lyons's oldest and closest comrades. Malik (trumpet); "Mad" Paul Murphy (drums); William Parker (bass); Glenn Spearman (tenor saxophone). One of the best groups ever assembled under Malik's leadership, with all the concentrated drive, tautness, and ferocity characteristic of his strongest music.
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MTE 045CD
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2005 release. Sunny Murray: drums; Sabir Mateen: alto and tenor saxophones, alto-clarinet; Dave Burrell: piano; Alan Silva: bass; Louis Belogenis: tenor saxophone. Sunny Murray's talent is bigger than any category you could use to describe it. He's one of the most original musical minds of the past 50 years, a genuine innovator, the liberator of the drum kit, and an artist of uncompromising honesty. Murray's playing in the 1960s with Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and others opened up entirely new expressive realms for the drums in jazz. Murray's act of liberation -- to free drummers from their strict time-keeping role -- still outrages many listeners, and his militant individuality, his obstinate adherence to his artistic vision over the years, still make him something of an outlaw presence in jazz. It should come as no shock to his listeners, then, that the music on this CD and its companion volume (MTE 046CD), recorded on brief visits to the U.S. from Murray's home base in Paris, is full of fire and surprise, ornery as hell, charming and urbane, and totally, unstintingly true to his free-spirited aesthetic.
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MTE 046CD
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2005 release. Sunny Murray: drums; Sabir Mateen: alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet; John Blum: piano; Oluyemi Thomas: bass clarinet and c-melody saxophone. There's enough great music from Sunny Murray's 2003 Northeast tour to fill yet another volume, following Vol. I (MTE 045CD). The designation is dictated partly by chronology -- this material comes from the later part of the tour -- and partly by an aesthetic decision to program the music to show off the diversity and contrasts in Murray's handling of the different ensembles he worked with on the tour. Murray is a different drummer than he was when he first made jazz history with Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. Partly that's because it's harder at his age to physically sustain the intense high energy of previous decades. Partly, it's a matter of artistic growth, development, and change. Murray's drumming on these discs is unfailingly musical. His unerring touch, sensitivity to sound and color, his relaxation and swing are the mark of a mature talent who knows exactly what he's doing. Murray's creativity, wit, and power are at a mature peak and no aspect of improvised music is beyond this most individual -- and still radical -- drummer.
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MTE 036CD
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2022 restock; 2001 release. Vol I of the 2001 ICA concert in Boston, recorded on 23 February 2001. A 17-piece version of Little Huey perform Parker's five-section narrative suite based on the life of the late street musician Marvin Nunez (aka Uncle Marvin). Featured soloists include Parker (who solos four times on four different instruments), Roy Campbell Jr, Rob Brown, and vocalist Leena Conquest. A considerable leap forward in recording quality from the band's highly estimable past productions.
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MTE 061CD
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Eremite presents the first CD edition of Joshua Abrams's acclaimed 2010 LP Natural Information, now out of print on vinyl. Abrams's first record for Eremite is another fascinating entry in his discography of recordings that gather aesthetic input from all over the map into vivid personal statements. At the heart of Natural Information is the guimbri, a three-stringed animal hide bass traditionally used by the Gnawa people of North Africa in healing ceremonies. Combining solo, trio, and quartet formats with adroit use of sampling techniques, Abrams creates intricate, psychedelic environments that join the hypnotic character of Gnawa guimbri music to more contemporary musics and methodologies. Natural Information garnered praise from Downbeat, The New York Times, and Wax Poetics, appeared on best-of-2010 lists from WFMU, Dusted, and Aquarius, and was selected as one of the 50 notable records of 2010 by The Wire. Played with Jason Adasiewicz, Lisa Alvarado, Jim Baker, Ben Boye, Emmett Kelly, Frank Rosaly, and Noritaka Tanaka. CD edition packaged in a Stoughton high-gloss miniaturized gatefold sleeve with 20 minutes of previously unreleased additional material.
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MTE 006CD
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Debut release by a Montreal-based alto saxophonist who has played with Lisle Ellis, Raphe Malik, Malcolm Goldstein & others. His group here features William Parker (bass), Gregg Bendian (percussion) & Steve Swell (trombone). "Mr. Cauley has brought a distinctive & thoughtful alto saxophone response, informed by the trinity of avant-garde alto saxophone (Lyons, Coleman & Dolphy), but in no way beholden to it. A friendly & very particular recording, FINland introduces a new voice to the world of creative improvised music."
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