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FPE 054CD
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"Paper, Not Plastic is the second album of solo taiko recordings by Kioto Aoki, and her first for FPE Records. Fusing the minimal with the maximal, Kioto creates a space where melody is embodied by rhythm, and composition's relation to motif is questioned. As with all of Aoki's practice (she's also a photographer and filmmaker), the medium imparts a veil: you can't see her choreography in this sonic space, but her movements are integral to the way it sounds, broadcasting through stick hits and hollow echo a robust and nuanced practice of being through time. The recordings, rich with detail and nuance, come from Aoki's close collaboration with producer Caleb Willitz, aiming to capture the aliveness of taiko in a room. Engraved here, aliveness is surely what you hear. Big declarations of boom, little punctuations of click, purrs of rumble and roars of motion. Distinctively, irrevocably human, drawn from nature, engaging fully with consciousness, balanced between what life is and what life comes from. A joy to listen to, to be with, and to know. Kioto Aoki is a taiko artist descending from an okiya (geisha house) performing arts family in Tokyo -- called Toyoakimoto -- with roots dating back to the Edo period. Her musical practice maintains a balance of retaining the artistic and aesthetic integrity of traditional Japanese music with a musical flexibility that extends beyond the measures of cultural preservation. Her playing is informed by the Japanese aesthetics of ma, while challenging the common misinterpretation and beliefs of percussion as rhythm, and often uses stoic gestures of sonic textures, abstracted soundscapes and embodied phrasing that incorporates choreography as part of melody."
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FPE 051LP
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"The sun shines somewhere all the time. Humanity bathes in nourishing light, children play, people dance, work, grow, bathe, learn. As long as the rays of the sun, longer even, the sounds of music emanate from our bodies. Tools amplify our breath, resonate from hits, twang and toll. People come together, travel long distance, just to make music together. Magic Carpet came together for this purpose years ago, some twenty summers and falls. At the core, six guys from diverse musical and cultural backgrounds, who set out to perform various traditions, bring old sounds into now, music enabling rapid travel. Maybe as an educational project? Perhaps, but also a weekly gig at an Ethiopian restaurant in Chicago. Over time they came to know each other musically, lock in, and their sounds flowed joyously through house parties, block parties, street festivals. One long weekend about seven years ago, Magic Carpet all had some time together in Chicago's Bel Air Sound Studio, and recorded the grooviest, loveliest, soulfullest, chillest set of tunes in the world. The rhythm section of Parrish Hicks (bass), Makaya McCraven (kit), and Ryan Mayer (percussion) unfolds hypnotic tales while Fred Jackson's soprano sax dances, Temuel Bey's guitar trances and Teddy Aklilu's keys fill the zone. The tunes wear different masks, from straight-up funk ('Aum U Wah') through smooth jazz-inflected bliss ('Flow'), to the West African grunge of 'Touareg Fever' and 'Rumba Gnawa.' Broken Compass is Magic Carpet's first widely-distributed recording, and it documents the band at the peak of their first stage, before Parrish Hicks's transition in 2017. Since then, the group has continued to evolve, more recently adding vocalist and dancer Tracy King to their lineup. Those in Chicago who know, know, and now you know too. Magic Carpet's light shines."
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4LP
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FPE 038LP
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"dragonchild's BLACK from FPE Records is meditative, spiritual Ethio-futurism, spread across four one-sided LPs designed to be played simultaneously. D.A. Mekonnen is a saxophone player, and the longtime leader of Debo Band, the acclaimed Ethiopian-American new-music ensemble. He is also an artist who thinks in cosmic terms, and for decades he has been thinking about the long and twisted history of the saxophone, and the noises it makes. BLACK, the first record he has produced as dragonchild, is the monumental result of that exploration: four one-sided albums, designed to be played simultaneously, creating an immersive and disorienting swarm of sound. BLACK was inspired by a trio of Black visionaries: the Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, the nonconformist American artist Lonnie Holley, and the American activist and author adrienne maree brown. It is dedicated to Alice Coltrane, the American jazz visionary, but perhaps you can also hear in it echoes of Getatchew Mekurya, the Ethiopian jazz visionary. In BLACK, these currents cross and combine, creating a mighty roar, ferocious but also meditative. You can't really listen to BLACK, but you can perform it. First, of course, you will need four turntables, and a space to set them up. (The album includes a diagram showing optimum placement.) You will also need three accomplices, so that all four tonearms can be dropped at once. 'Debo,' the name of Mekonnen's band, is an Amharic word meaning 'communal labor'; to truly experience BLACK, you need a community, too. BLACK comes in an innovative, immersive package, with artwork by the Ethiopian photographer Michael Tsegaye, depicting an active volcano in Eastern Ethiopia. Each vinyl record is translucent, with music on one side and a topographic map of lava fields on the reverse. This is a beautiful and audacious project: an artistic landmark, and an important addition to the long history of African-American cultural exchange."
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FPE 047CD
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"Elegant post-bop explorations and contemplations. Pianist Noah Barker's succinct Instrumental Memory begins with a daydream, clear and serene, mellow with curiosity and wonder. An insightful balm, not forcing undue conclusion. 'Fortune Teller' is more circumscribed, hesitant... what lies ahead? The answer is simpatico between father and son, junior burning while senior stokes the fire. Enter the klaxon soprano saxophone of Mike Troy, with Coltrane-esque intent. No sheets of sound, a focused prodding. Noah's father -- AACM legend Thurman -- skitters and splashes, somewhat martial and Ed Blackwell-like on the snare. He's a chamber music composer from time to time, an aesthetic for space and dynamic he shares with his son, who's pianism commands elegance and poise. There's the scent of Bill Evans in the equilibrium and intelligence of Barker's chordal peregrinations, anchored by Dean Torrey's ostinato bass on 'Theme from South Side Suite'; on 'Fortune Teller' too. 'Movement on McDonald' is an intro feature for soprano, with swinging bass entering to up the ante. Then Barker père calls into service his straight-ahead chops and groove-ability, taking the cut out with percussion taxonomy. 'Shively' is a bath in slightly murky salts, Barker's final solo an unprepossessing shimmer, the fleeting reflection of sun in rock pool. There's beautiful music here, transparently recorded, that never outstays its welcome -- more than a third of the tracks come in under two minutes. Crystalline and considered, yet with the lilt or agitation of genuine spontaneity."
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FPE 035CD
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"Tatsu Aoki has done a lot. The MIYUMI Project mastermind has composed jazz orchestral suites about the Asian immigrant experience in the US; performed and recorded with legendary Chicago AACM musicians -- Fred Anderson, Malachi Favors, Roscoe Mitchell on the short list; been commissioned by Yoko Ono to bless her SKYLANDING installation with music; worked for decades to help make the Asian American jazz and improv scene a Thing. Now he's ready to let the Ass flow. Bass Dreams minus B (get it?) is a group helmed by Aoki on Asuka Bass (it's the Asuka bass because it's autographed by reigning WWE champ Asuka), with Charles Rumback on drums, Coco Elysses on percussion, and the brain-boggling duo of Rami Atassi and Terry Tanaka on electric guitars, whose mission is to melt yr face bro till yr skull is plain white and there's a facepool on the ground, don't slip in the face. Where did it come from? 'Bass Dreams minus B was inspired by all my favorite bassists and wrestlers,' Aoki, master of understatement, explains. Specifically: 'My top five Dee Murray, Kenny Gradney, Tiran Porter, John Paul Jones, and Malachi Favors !!!!' It's the dream of the bass player -- dial up the groove, lock it in, and then have two master shredders fill every pocket. Not just the hip pockets and the breast pockets -- pockets you can't see -- inside pockets, surprise back pockets, lapel pockets. Every gap spied and excavated for maximum satisfaction. We're talking jamz, with a z. I was on it being like a 70s private press thing, fusion with a psychedelic hand drawn cover and lots of ringwear, but Tatsu set me straight. I had to head down to the local vinyl hole (shout out to Val's Halla!) and pick up Little Feat's live album, Waiting for Columbus (Tatsu said it's 'notorious'). Now I get it. Steal yr freakin face man. Tatsu's been chasing this flow for decades, a swirly dream come true, not a B to be found but the boogie in your butt."
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FPE 035LP
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"Tatsu Aoki has done a lot. The MIYUMI Project mastermind has composed jazz orchestral suites about the Asian immigrant experience in the US; performed and recorded with legendary Chicago AACM musicians -- Fred Anderson, Malachi Favors, Roscoe Mitchell on the short list; been commissioned by Yoko Ono to bless her SKYLANDING installation with music; worked for decades to help make the Asian American jazz and improv scene a Thing. Now he's ready to let the Ass flow. Bass Dreams minus B (get it?) is a group helmed by Aoki on Asuka Bass (it's the Asuka bass because it's autographed by reigning WWE champ Asuka), with Charles Rumback on drums, Coco Elysses on percussion, and the brain-boggling duo of Rami Atassi and Terry Tanaka on electric guitars, whose mission is to melt yr face bro till yr skull is plain white and there's a facepool on the ground, don't slip in the face. Where did it come from? 'Bass Dreams minus B was inspired by all my favorite bassists and wrestlers,' Aoki, master of understatement, explains. Specifically: 'My top five Dee Murray, Kenny Gradney, Tiran Porter, John Paul Jones, and Malachi Favors !!!!' It's the dream of the bass player -- dial up the groove, lock it in, and then have two master shredders fill every pocket. Not just the hip pockets and the breast pockets -- pockets you can't see -- inside pockets, surprise back pockets, lapel pockets. Every gap spied and excavated for maximum satisfaction. We're talking jamz, with a z. I was on it being like a 70s private press thing, fusion with a psychedelic hand drawn cover and lots of ringwear, but Tatsu set me straight. I had to head down to the local vinyl hole (shout out to Val's Halla!) and pick up Little Feat's live album, Waiting for Columbus (Tatsu said it's 'notorious'). Now I get it. Steal yr freakin face man. Tatsu's been chasing this flow for decades, a swirly dream come true, not a B to be found but the boogie in your butt."
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FPE 033LP
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"There's a sense of adventure in the grooves of Dereck Higgins's new album, Future Still. Like vaporwave of teens past, the sounds describe a future imagined by computer sounds of old. It's a joyous exploration: listening to Future Still feels like gliding smoothly through a bitstream, exploring digital vistas of liquid datascape. Nebraskan Dereck Higgins takes equal parts Kraftwerk, Prince and the Missouri River to come up with his own unique take on modern electronic music. He does this by laying down waves of sound that produce propulsive energy, which then mixes with water in the air, birthing glistening silver and gold droplets. A shimmering pattern is inscribed on the sky, spelling thoughts with shapes, coloring actions. A hue of golden pink, flashed through with emerald ivory. Opalescent mist of a tangerine dream. Dereck's history of involvement in Midwest music is decades long, primarily as a bass player in countless punk, psych and prog bands including Son Ambulance, RAF, InDREAMA, and Digital Sex. He also hosts a popular YouTube channel which has been described as 'comfort food for music nerds'. The last decade has seen a steady stream of self-released records of his own solo atmospheric electronics punctuated with psych workouts and the occasional pop song -- snapped up by the connoisseurs in his ever-growing fanbase. Future Still is his first release for FPE Records. The soundtrack to a world slowly re-emerging from lockdown, it's naturally full of openness -- even hope? Higgins declares his music is as full of feeling and soul as anything else around. Listen and feel it for yourself."
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FPE 027CD
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"The work of award-winning African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1996) use fiction to illuminate a horrific unraveling of 21st-century America into a despotic chaos where its once-middle-class citizens struggle to survive in an incredibly violent and fragmented reality, void of normalcy, family, and resources. In the 1990s, Butler's Parables warned readers about a possible disintegration of American culture and infrastructure, among the many risks of tyrannical rule. Within Butler's storyline, the character Lauren Oya Olamina, a preacher's daughter of African heritage, helps to rebuild her community through offering Earthseed, an egalitarian philosophy and spiritual practice which honors inquiry, independent thinking, and realistic acceptance of constant change."
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FPE 027LP
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LP version. "The work of award-winning African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1996) use fiction to illuminate a horrific unraveling of 21st-century America into a despotic chaos where its once-middle-class citizens struggle to survive in an incredibly violent and fragmented reality, void of normalcy, family, and resources. In the 1990s, Butler's Parables warned readers about a possible disintegration of American culture and infrastructure, among the many risks of tyrannical rule. Within Butler's storyline, the character Lauren Oya Olamina, a preacher's daughter of African heritage, helps to rebuild her community through offering Earthseed, an egalitarian philosophy and spiritual practice which honors inquiry, independent thinking, and realistic acceptance of constant change."
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CD
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FPE 026CD
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"The Velvet Lounge was a door that Fred Anderson opened continuously for decades, an access point through which the human soul could enter and explore the organization and chaos of the cosmos. Through this door the spirits outside also came into our little system. When the exchanges happened, it made a sound of joy, like el: those of us who weren't there are lucky that recording devices were. It's a generation removed and still we can feel their presence from the record. Tatsu Aoki and Hamid Drake played frequently with Fred at the Velvet throughout the 90s, wearing smooth the handle of that door. One night in December of 1994, their guest navigator was trumpeter Toshinori Kondo. The quartet screams at the start, rests beneath a tum-tum tree, picks their way over rocky shoals and sandbars, freaks out. Like a mind, flowing through a door, to a shore, three long tracks. Clarence Bright the bartender recorded the trip on a Tascam DAT recorder. Tatsu kept it two decades on a CD transfer. The CDr skipped badly and they had to use fancy software to extract the audio. Here it is. Trip way out with it."
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FPE 024LP
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"Crossing the genres of house, blues, jazz and rock, poet, singer and songwriter avery r. young has been on the scene in Chicago for decades, lending his pipes to albums by Catfish Haven, Marvin Tate, and many others. His debut album booker t. soltreyne: a race rekkid (2013) examined race relations in the Obama-Era and featured crowd favorites such as 'resurrec(t) fred' (for slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton Sr.) & 'ham sammich(es)'. This work led him to be co-writer and background vocalist on JC Brooks's Red, Black and Blue EP (2018) and featured vocalist on visionary composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (FPE Records, 2017), which was named #1 jazz album of the year in the New York Times and placed in the top 5 of the NPR Jazz Critics Poll. As a composer and producer he marinates social commentary in gospel, blues and funk to create a salty concoction he calls sousefunk. His band, de deacon board, channels Gil Scott Heron, Parliament and Curtis Mayfield, building on sounds of the past to chart a course for poetry and music through our rocky present. His newest work tubman. is a soundtrack accompanying his first volume of poetry neckbone: visual verses (Northwestern University Press, 2019)."
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LP
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FPE 022LP
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"Drawing from the vodou religion, Val recreates the ancient rhythm and pulse of Haiti through digital beats, while Momin has developed an original blend of electro-acoustic beats, drawing together the improvisational traditions in Jazz and Indian folk music. Together, they employ cutting-edge musical tools such as acoustic drums outfitted with Sensory Percussion triggers, Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) drum pads and Smart Fabric MIDI Controllers, still emphasizing the ritual aspects of creating music in the digital realm. 'Our full-length record, Map Of Absences is a reflection on the regressive state of human rights, deepening refugee crises and the worsening impacts of climate change worldwide. Imagine a world where refugees of color are free to cross borders, LGBTIA people are treated fairly and respectfully, and environmental healing technologies are widespread. These ideas are unfortunately absent from our current reality. We say 'absent' instead of 'forgotten' as the latter implies an instance of memory or a record of those things having existed. Musically, we drew inspiration from artists such as DJ Lag, Nidia, DJ Rashad, Nihiloxica, and Epic B amongst our other varied global influences. For the album artwork we tapped Marissa Malik, a UK based artist whose work evokes the mystical and empowered mythical beings. For remixes, we returned to Kenyan maverick Slikback (Hakuna Kulala) and also approached PlayPlay (who ran the legendary 'Party Illegal' in Durham NC for years) and the modular-synth wielding producer Nueve Vidas from Mexico City.' -Turning Jewels Into Water"
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FPE 021CD
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"Revolutionary drummer William Hooker leads a new trio with Mark Kirschenmann, trumpet, and Joel Peterson, bass. Recorded live in one take at Trinosphes in Detroit, Cycle Of Restoration starts at the bottom with no apparent leverage, in an hour of constant upheaval overturning the possibilities of music. Deceptively serene out of the zero code, you soon realize that your mind has been re-tuned to a new understanding of reality: reach into the part that psilocybin touches, without acid, and see the same tables, the same trees, the same windows and walls but now knowing that while these endure the human structures that imprison the self will fall away. Leading from the kit with long streams of felted cymbals, Hooker reveals a new chapter of his eternal unfolding, one that will surprise even those who have followed him these 40-some years. Cycle Of Restoration is a revelation of renewal with SE MI pillars Kirschenmann and Peterson filling peals, clangs and scrapes. We ascend. Climb. We keep on walking this way up, realizing this progress. Where do we go when we reach the top? How do we entertain the idea of a reality that moves in a circle? Not gone, just unfolded. Cycle Of Restoration. Revolutionary, for the mind, means we revolve. These sounds bring us full circle."
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FPE 020CD
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"maroon cloud, a powerful eight-part suite by celebrated flutist Nicole Mitchell, is a paean to the human gift of imagination and its ability to foster resistance in our dystopian times. It features a drum-less quartet with Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, pianist Aruán Ortiz and vocalist Fay Victor, recorded live at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series (March 29, 2017). In part, maroon cloud refers to the realm of creativity that we can enter simply by closing our eyes - an ability no one can take away from us. 'Imagination, especially black imagination is a really vital and undervalued resource,' the composer states. 'It's very clear that we can't continue in the same direction that we've gone, but we need to return to where imagination and creativity come from, because if we don't have another vision then we can't make a different future. What makes us special as human beings is our ability to imagine things that don't even exist yet.' Those future-seeking visions, for now, exist in what we might call the 'cloud.' 'Maroon,' meanwhile, has a number of meanings: it ties into the theme of resistance by referencing the Maroons -- those Africans who escaped slavery in the Caribbean and banded with indigenous people to form their own communities as early as the 16th century. Mitchell also cites the alternate meaning of 'marooned,' i.e., people being abandoned to their fate. And then there's maroon, the rich dark color we might see with eyes closed, imagining social and political renewal. Nicole Mitchell, a longtime Chicagoan and professor of music at the University of California-Irvine, recently received a Champion of New Music Award from the American Composers Forum. She has been hailed for her 'Afrofuturist vision' and credited as 'the most inventive flutist in the past 30 years of jazz' by The New York Times. Her varied projects and leadership as the first woman to chair the AACM have widened the scope of improvised music."
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12"
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FPE 019EP
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"Turning Jewels Into Water, the deep-beat ceremonial think-tank that sees the coming together of percussionist/rhythm-prophet Ravish Momin and Haitian experimental electronic engineer Val Jeanty, are set to expose the contaminating realities of our dysfunctional, dystopian present with an infectious blast of Blade Runner-esque retro-future. Half-organic, half-machine, total binary breakdown; their incendiary debut release, Which Way Is Home?, plots an emphatically liberated path. The duo's alliance was initiated in the fall of last year in Brooklyn, NY, during a jam session at Pioneer Works, the creative locus for prime multi-disciplinary misadventure, where Momin held down an artist-in-residence slot -- but that pact has rapidly evolved into a honed ritual revelation, where disembodied voices rise up amid scattered rim-shots and digital detritus, territories formerly deciphered in the linguistic dreams of hip-priest poet Nathaniel Mackey, where Martian phantasms encrypt gnostic cyphers between the tributaries of burnt-down cabling. Dial into the 1980s amusement-arcade delta of 'Lights Below The Water', the post-apocalyptic synth and abused syntax sprawl of the title-cut and set your course for home, anyplace where the absurdist jungle-temples of Raymond Roussel and Brian Catling are being cultivated by the cyber-horrors of Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo and the mischief-making syntax-gremlins of Kenji Siratori's Burroughsian novel Blood Electric. Which way's home? Take a tumble through a telescope. Pick your own planet. Home can be anywhere you make it. Which Way Is Home? EP features three original tracks, along with two remixes by Nyege Nyege Tapes-affilliated, Kampala-based producers Slikback and Zilla."
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2LP
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FPE 012LP
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2018 repress. Double LP version. "Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Recorded in May of 2015 at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, it features her longtime collaborators Renee Baker (violin), Tomeka Reid (cello, banjo), Alex Wing (electric guitar, oud) and Jovia Armstrong (percussion), along with new members Tatsu Aoki (bass, shamisen, taiko) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi). Also in the mix is Chicago artist, scholar and poet Avery R Young, who brings her lyrics to life with visceral humanity. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in jazz', continues the work begun when jazz visionary Sun Ra and his Arkestra first touched down on Planet Earth and told humanity that space (outer and inner) is indeed the place. As with contemporary Afrofuturist pioneers like cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, post-everything beat maker Flying Lotus, R&B cyborg Janelle Monáe and dystopian noise-rappers Death Grips, she uses Afrofuturism as a platform to launch her own, unique vision. Her vast sound often encompasses contemporary classical, globally oriented fusion, gospel, spoken word, funk-inspired groove research and even brittle shards of avant-rock. Mandorla Awakening II collides dualities such as acoustic vs electric, country vs urban, simple vs complex, while also sounding through intercultural dialogue between Black, European and Pan-Asian improvisational languages. The outcome is a creative music suite that blurs musical styles into recognizable fragments that weave a unique sound fabric, where human emotion and the struggles of today swim."
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FPE 012CD
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"Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Recorded in May of 2015 at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, it features her longtime collaborators Renee Baker (violin), Tomeka Reid (cello, banjo), Alex Wing (electric guitar, oud) and Jovia Armstrong (percussion), along with new members Tatsu Aoki (bass, shamisen, taiko) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi). Also in the mix is Chicago artist, scholar and poet Avery R Young, who brings her lyrics to life with visceral humanity. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in jazz', continues the work begun when jazz visionary Sun Ra and his Arkestra first touched down on Planet Earth and told humanity that space (outer and inner) is indeed the place. As with contemporary Afrofuturist pioneers like cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, post-everything beat maker Flying Lotus, R&B cyborg Janelle Monáe and dystopian noise-rappers Death Grips, she uses Afrofuturism as a platform to launch her own, unique vision. Her vast sound often encompasses contemporary classical, globally oriented fusion, gospel, spoken word, funk-inspired groove research and even brittle shards of avant-rock. Mandorla Awakening II collides dualities such as acoustic vs electric, country vs urban, simple vs complex, while also sounding through intercultural dialogue between Black, European and Pan-Asian improvisational languages. The outcome is a creative music suite that blurs musical styles into recognizable fragments that weave a unique sound fabric, where human emotion and the struggles of today swim."
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FPE 002CD
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"FPE Records is thrilled to release Intergalactic Beings, Nicole Mitchell's second avant-jazz suite based on the Xenogenesis novels of Octavia Butler, recorded live on April 30, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Black Earth Ensemble features a cast of Chicago's most respected players and improvisers. This is their eighth album."
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2LP
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FPE 002LP
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Double LP version. "FPE Records is thrilled to release Intergalactic Beings, Nicole Mitchell's second avant-jazz suite based on the Xenogenesis novels of Octavia Butler, recorded live on April 30, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Black Earth Ensemble features a cast of Chicago's most respected players and improvisers. This is their eighth album, and their first to see release on vinyl."
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