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A legendary yet long lost crown jewel from the early 80s
Japanese Electronic and Jazz Rock scene.
MARIAH used to be a Japanese outfit in the field of art pop, long way back in the very late 70s and early 80s with 6 albums up
their score from 1979 to 1983. The album at hand is the sixth and for the time being last album in this row, released as a double
vinyl back in 1983. Prices for original copies, that are at least in very good condition, are hard to find and go up to 250 Euro/USD.
The brandnew reissue on Everland, unlike the original and the first vinyl reissue from 2015, comes housed in a thick and artfully
designed gatefold sleeve with OBI, which finally does justice to the progressive spirit of the music you can find here.
The musical basement is a fusion of dreamy synthesizer pop and haunting new wave music, that could be found all around
the globe back in 1983. In the vein of TEARS FOR FEARS or more adventurous DAVID BOWIE stuff, with a touch of KRAFTWERK or
even BRIAN ENO here and there, but all this gets spiced up with an atmosphere of Japanese traditionalism, with a few bits and
pieces from the old music from this Far East island, which sounds so magic us Westeners. The progressive, wacky art pop of this
project was led by the popular Japanese composer and musician Yasuaki Shimizu, a relentlessly exploratory saxophonist who
even dared to rework Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites for saxophone.
As brilliant as this man is, the music on „Utakata No Hibi“ turns out to be. And the master himself approved and much
appreciated the brandnew remastering of this album by assisting a highly professional team of sound engineers who dusted off
the ancient tape reels. For certain the record sounds and feels 80s through and through, electronic to the very rhythmical bone
of each song sugar coated with catchy melodies that resemble Japanese classic and Enka music, which is a kind of folksy pop
music. The listener gets directly drawn into a feverish dream of steaming Far Eastern cities and their darkest and most depraved
corners where you find everything cheap in sleazy bars and unlighted backyards and alleys. The next moment he strolls through
a beautiful Japanese park surrounded by a sea of blossoms. This change in mood and style you will experience in the sparsely
instrumented tune „Shisen“, which indeed comes closest to classic Japanese folk tunes without any too catchy and pop oriented
melodies. But we certainly find these harmonies allover the album. Some tunes even feel like ancient BEACH BOYS compositions
and Brian Wilson creations played by a then contemporary electronic pop act and sung in Japanese.
An amazingly colorful album with songs that are based on solid substance rather than cheap pop structures. This is music for
the bold listeners and music lovers and this awesome reissue should quickly find it’s way into the record collections of 80s synth
and art pop aficionadoes.
Yasuaki Shimizu did what he wanted with MARIAH, pushed the borders of popular music further than anybody would have
thought. Listen to a track like „Shonen“ with a repetitive rhythm pattern that hypnotizes you and somehow silky melodylines by
saxophone and synth piano upon which a female voice sings in a very spiritual way. Praising pop or whatever this can be called,
it is sheer magic put in music. I wonder if this would have made it into the charts back then, but you never know. It is a piece of
musical art that shall be listened to.
Makaya McCraven, a leading drummer, composer, and producer in contemporary jazz.
Having gained prominence through his works released by International Anthem, as well as reimagined versions of Gil Scott-Heron and Blue Note recordings, this leading drummer, composer, and producer in contemporary jazz has released a compilation of four EPs titled ‘Off the Record’ through XL Recordings, International Anthem, and Nonesuch. The album features recordings of pure improvisation captured during live performances, with the space and presence of the audience reflected in the sound. It is composed of four EPs—‘Techno Logic,’ 'The People’s Mixtape,‘ 'Hidden Out!,’ and ‘PopUp Shop’—that are independent yet organically interconnected.
This work follows his 2022 masterpiece ‘In These Times,’ which the GRAMMY Awards described as “the most ambitious work in Makavely's career.” It revisits the essence of “organic beat music” that Makaya established in his 2015 debut album ‘In the Moment,’ and further developed in ‘Highly Rare’ (2017), 'Where We Come From' (2018), and ‘Universal Beings’ (2018). Makaya reconstructs his live recordings into his unique sound world through editing, overdubbing, and post-production at his home studio in Chicago. The compilation of these four EPs, ‘Off the Record,’ is not merely a collection of tracks but a documentary work celebrating the creative and collaborative moments of music that could only have been born from being present in that space.
Strut proudly presents a new edition of one of Sun Ra's most celebrated albums, Sleeping Beauty, reissued in its original artwork for the first time. Originally released in 1979 on his independent Saturn label, Sleeping Beauty captures Sun Ra and his Arkestra at their most soulful and serene. A masterclass in cosmic jazz, the album blends lush grooves, celestial soul, and meditative funk with Ra’s singular spiritual vision — a sound both grounded and otherworldly. The album emerged during an extraordinarily fertile period for Sun Ra in late-‘70s New York. Between 1978 and 1982, Ra “occupied” Variety Recording Studios on West 42nd Street, often staging marathon sessions following late-night Arkestra gigs around the city — from the Village Vanguard to Sweet Basil and even a wedding in Central Park. These were not just recordings; they were rituals. Ra and his core players — John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, June Tyson, Michael Ray, and others — would begin sessions mid-morning, often continuing past midnight, much to the dismay of the studio owner. Out of this creative whirlwind came some of his most enduring work, including A Fireside Chat With Lucifer, On Jupiter, and Sleeping Beauty. Across its three tracks, Sleeping Beauty showcases the Arkestra’s gentler side. From the dreamy sway of “Springtime Again” to the funk-deep uplift of “Door Of The Cosmos” and the title track’s meditative drift, this is music that floats, beckons, and unfolds. It’s a record of hypnotic beauty and quiet power — cosmic jazz for dreamers and seekers alike. This new edition features a selected version of the hand-drawn original cover, embossed with the Sun Ra logo and housed in a heavyweight card sleeve. Liner notes come courtesy of Arkestra member Knoel Scott and Sun Ra authority Paul Griffiths. Remastered by Technology Works. “Music is a language. You see, it’s not notes — it’s a language of the spirit. That’s why it’s so important.” – Sun Ra
Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinct sensibilities for something hypnotic and tangibly inviting. What started as a love letter to their shared admiration for ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian music evolved into a dynamic and sprawling body of work. These sunny and expansive tunes are as immersive as they are endlessly replayable.
Both Miller and Gold attended Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music together and in the years after graduating, they orbited each other around Chicago’s music communities. “We were showing up for each other as friends and taking an interest in each other's projects, noticing a lot of resonances and similarities working within in our music,” says Gold, who’s collaborated with artists like Makaya McCraven and Jamila Woods and stretched the bounds of jazz and Americana on solo albums Imagined Sky and Midnight Choir. “We had talked so much about eventually working together that it was almost like an ongoing bit at a certain point,” says Miller. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they first had their chance on “Inside Minds,” the breezy lead single on 2023’s Resavoir. While those sessions were remote, two had palpable chemistry.
It wasn’t until Miller left the touring band of the Chicago group Whitney in 2023 that their plans to make music together in person came to fruition. “When I first started Resavoir, I was chasing the desire to produce records and now that I had time to focus exclusively on that, Matt was the first person I called to come to the studio,” says Miller. The two had bonded over an admiration for the Brazilian guitarist Luis Bonfa and songwriter Milton Nascimento, especially the latter’s work with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, so they decided to use nylon string guitar as a starting point for these early sessions. “Canopy,” which opens Horizon, was the earliest track. Kicking off with bright acoustic chords, the song slowly unfurls into a slinking groove, samples, and fluttering leads from soprano saxophonist Tim Bennett.
As these initial experiments proved successful, Gold and Miller felt they could broaden the scope of their vision. “We were initially conceiving of it as this acoustic guitar driven record but eventually we wanted to frame it orchestrally and see how many shades and colors we can bring in around that sound,” says Gold. “Dewy” thrives within this orchestral palette of woozy synths, strings from Macie Stewart, Claire Chenette’s oboe, flautist Wills McKenna, and French horns from Lloyd Billingham. “We discovered that our multi-instrumentalist mentalities—using piano and bass, samplers, drum grooves, guitar ideas all as starting points— nurtured the broad orchestration across this record,” says Miller.
“The LP took about a year with on-and-off sessions,” says Miller. “The songs benefit from letting them ferment for a couple months, coming back to it, and seeing what sort of new flavors have developed.” Co-produced by Miller and Gold (and mixed by Dave Vettraino), Horizon proudly reflects the artists’ vast artistic community and musical network in Chicago and beyond. Along with Gold, Eddie Burns (Clairo), Peter Mannheim (Tony Glausi), and Carter Lang (SZA, Lil Nas X) provide drums and percussion throughout. On the dreamlike single “Diversey Beach,” New York songwriter Mei Semones lends vocals and along with her band members Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, collaborated on a mesmerizingly conversational string arrangement. “We wrote "Diversey Beach" on the coldest day of the year watching a blizzard coming down out of the window, where the sounds of the cars driving by sounded like waves crashing on a beach,” says Miller. “I sent it to Mei Semones, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. She's absolutely incredible and it’s amazing what she did with it.”
Horizon is a testament to the feeling of endless possibilities that come from collaboration. It’s a remarkable synthesis of two artists who share musical community and an artist lineage but have carved their own paths in unique ways. Nowhere is this more evident than “Hazel Canyon,” which boasts Gold’s silky pedal steel and a subtly enveloping arrangement that evokes Erasmo Carlos. “Musically, we're always trying to capture a fleeting moment of infinite expanse, feeling the vastness of things while knowing they'll always change,” says Gold. “This record keeps the light reflecting on the water just a little longer -- our collaborative process running through the backbone of these songs and rippling out in so many beautiful directions..”
The definitive edition of Patrice Rushen’s landmark album from 1982, ‘Straight From The Heart’.
Recorded during Elektra’s drive for ‘sophisticated dance music’ as many jazz artists created their own arrangements of disco and boogie, the sessions marked a progression for Patrice as she began exploring sonics as much as songwriting. “I was looking at different ways to experiment with the sounds on my records. Synths widened the palette available to us.”
Singles from the album included ‘Breakout!’, ‘Number One’ and the global hit ‘Forget Me Nots’. “Bassist Freddie Washington played the bassline during a jam at my family’s house. I caught it, we kept messing around with the groove, then I developed the lyrics and chorus. It was just about recognising that moment when it came up.”
“When I delivered the album to the label, the A&R said, ‘we don’t like anything on here.’ I realised quickly that they would give us no support so producer Charles Mims, myself and Freddie decided to engage a promotion company ourselves to start working the single. Although it took a while to pick up support, it paid off.” The single hit no. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1982 and the album became Patrice’s best seller globally from her time with Elektra / Asylum, securing a Grammy nomination. In more recent years, the album has become a regular source for samples in the world of hip hop and R&B. Most famously, Will Smith’s theme for the film ‘Men In Black’ and George Michael’s ‘Fastlove’ were both based, to varying degrees, on ‘Forget Me Nots’.
January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business.
Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.
With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line down the block for every show.
By January 2023 interest in Parker’s music was stronger than ever, coming off successes with the December 2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch release of Forfolks – a collection of solo guitar works – and the October 2022 Eremite release of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a double LP chronicling the ETA IVtet’s distinct, expansive approach to improvisation across four side-length tracks recorded and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales.
Mondays introduced the world to the ETA IVtet’s signature sound with a gathering of unnamed recordings from dates between 2019 and 2021. Parker’s new ETA IVtet offering stays true to that formula in some ways – as he returns to Gonzales’s archive of analog captures to gather four long recordings totalling around 80 minutes – while zooming in on a more particular moment in his journey. The Way Out of Easy provides us a macro-lens view of the ever-refining, infinite organic essence of the ensemble as they stretch out across a single night of soundmaking on January 2nd, 2023.
The engineer Gonzales is well known for the high-end audio gear he builds as Highland Dynamics, and even designed a custom mixer to be able to record the ETA IVtet, specifically, while only taking up a single space at the bar. In his liner notes for The Way Out of Easy, he colors his process and approach: “There are many different ways to make recordings and they all have their place. But for this band, the most important thing to consider is: not doing anything to get in the way of what they are saying to each other.” He refers to the simple schematic he used for capturing these performances – “basically only 4 level controls for one microphone per player” – which allows us an incredibly pure, honest, transparent and transporting experience of the music as it unfolds and is created in real time.
The set begins with an extended take on Parker’s composition “Freakadelic” – a tune he originally recorded for his 2012 Delmark release Bright Light in Winter. The B-side piece “Late Autumn” finds Parker swaying in alliterative, arpeggiating cycles, using just a few plucked notes as he lays the compositional foundation. At first it almost sounds like an echo of the humble tunes he wrote alone with his guitar on Forfolks, but in this space his ensemble joins him to help build a beautifully multi-textured, gently-shifting four-dimensional construction out of a simple idea. On “Easy Way Out,” Butterss’s bobbing bass line leads, paddling the ensemble into a placid expanse of tender psychedelia while Bellerose dusts off the drums like an archaeologist unearthing ancient artifacts.
It had become customary for the IVtet to end their shows every week with a standard or a tune – a practice that Parker embraced for wanting to give the audience something warm and familiar to take home after a long night of taking them out on creative limbs. Some of Parker’s more common calls were “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Burt Bacharach, “1974 Blues” by Eddie Harris, or “Peace” by Horace Silver. In this set, the IVtet closes not with a familiar song, but a familiar sound in the form of a dub/reggae groove (given the name “Chrome Dome” by Parker in post), developing spontaneously out of lyrical ad libs by Johnson on solo saxophone.
In early December of 2023, ETA co-owner Ryan Julio was forced to make a sudden announcement that the venue would permanently shutter at the end of the year. On December 23rd, Parker and the band played at ETA for the last time.
On July 22nd, 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners – a smiling Ryan Julio among them – at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Gonzales was there, recording with his compact analog setup just behind the band on stage. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.
Regardless of the confluence of events that led to this dream pairing, there’s a strong hint of clear-minded innovation to Promises. The debut collaboration LP from electronic musician Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points and legendary saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, backed to a lavish fullness by The London Symphony Orchestra, feels like the murmurs of an entirely new language for jazz, quite distinct from either participant’s prior output — in fact, it seems to illuminate a hidden lexicon we didn’t know either artist had in the first place.
We say jazz, but Promises truly defies categorisation with its moody atmosphere and indeterminate music-like patience. The nine movements of the LP gently cradle a circular note pattern in the way of a minimalist classical piece, as a flood of synth and string drones gradually fill the empty spaces in-between. As this deep meditation progresses, Sanders recalls his adventurous past work with the Coltranes by undergoing his own inner journey, his sax flitting between conversational licks, esoteric mouth sounds and white-hot fury, bobbing against the rising tide of electronics, organs and orchestra swells.
Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape during her four-year marriage to John Coltrane and after his 1967 death. By 1983, Alice had established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside of Los Angeles. She quietly began recording music from the ashram, releasing it within her spiritual community in the form of private press cassette tapes. On May 5, Luaka Bop will release the first-ever compilation of recordings from this period, making these songs available to the wider public for the first time. Entitled ‘World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda,’ the release is the first installment in a planned series of spiritual music from around the globe; curated, compiled and distributed by Luaka Bop.
This powerful, largely unheard body of work finds Alice singing for the first time in her recorded catalog, which dates back to 1963 and includes appearances on six John Coltrane albums, alongside Charlie Haden and McCoy Tyner, and 14 albums as bandleader starting with her Impulse! debut in 1967 with ‘A Monastic Trio.’ The songs featured on the Luaka Bop release have been culled from the four cassettes that Alice recorded and released between 1982 and 1995: ‘Turiya Sings,’ ‘Divine Songs,’ ‘Infinite Chants,’ and ‘Glorious Chants.’ The digital, cassette and CD release will feature eight songs. The double-vinyl edition features two additional songs, “Krishna Japaye” from 1990’s ‘Infinite Chants, and the previously unreleased “Rama Katha” from a separate ‘Turiya Sings’ recording session.
Luaka Bop teamed with Alice’s children to find the original master tapes in the Coltrane archive. The recordings were prepared for re-mastering by the legendary engineer Baker Bigsby (Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, John Coltrane), who had overseen the original sessions in the 80s and 90s. The compilation showcases a diverse array of recordings in addition to Alice’s first vocal work: solo performances on her harp, small ensembles, and a 24-piece vocal choir. The release is dotted with eastern percussion, synthesizers, organs and strings, making for a mesmerizing, even otherworldly, listen. Alice was inspired by Vedic devotional songs from India and Nepal, adding her own music sensibility to the mix with original melodies and sophisticated song structures. She never lost her ability to draw from the bebop, blues and old-time spirituals of her Detroit youth, fusing a Western upbringing with Eastern classicism. In all, these recordings amount to a largely untold chapter in the life story of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda.
In addition to the recordings, GRAMMY-winning music historian Ashley Kahn has written extensive liner notes on the collection. The package also includes a series of interviews with those who knew Alice best, conducted by Dublab’s Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and an as-told-to interview between musician Surya Botofasina (who was raised on Alice’s ashram) and journalist Andy Beta. 2017 marks what would have been Alice’s 80th year of life, as well as the 10th anniversary of her passing. Alice will be celebrated at events throughout the United States, Europe and South America in the coming year. With this in mind, the time is right to bring this meaningful piece of Turiyasangitananda’s legacy into focus.
Different Rooms is a collection of songs and musical motifs we composed, edited, and collaged in the weeks between late 2024 and early 2025. Most of the recorded material was performed during that editing process, except for live performances taken from improvisations we recorded with Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson some time in 2023.
In our typical process, much of our material is collaged and combines moments of live improvisation, field recordings, and in-studio experimentation. This record, however, marks an evolution in our approach to studio production.
Our studios are side-by-side. When we were writing this album, you might have found us tracking viola stacks in one studio while, in the other, we were writing through-composed themes and rearranging the material. Granular synthesis and tape manipulation are key tools we use to create variation and movement in a composition. This process often yields surprising results, capturing the emotion but expressing it in unexpected ways. It feels essential that we embrace a bit of chance.
In contrast to our first album, Recordings from the Åland Islands, we wanted this music to feel very present. Where Recordings was intended to transport you to another place, Different Rooms is meant to meet you where you are. It’s a decidedly urban album. The field recordings were captured on train platforms, in city streets, in rooms at home, and intentionally paint a quotidian sonic image, blurring the line between what you hear in your own environment and what is on the record.
The song cycle is set in palindromic sequence, figuratively, with certain pieces (reflected) by a reprised or recurring motif that is often reimagined with new instrumentation.
The sonic and temporal abstraction between what is performed in real-time versus what is recorded, manipulated, and collaged reinforces our intent to collect the works under the title Different Rooms, which literally expresses the way the material was recorded in different rooms while reminding us that our shared experience of present time is also one that is asynchronous, historied, and complex.
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 over-dubbed 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.
“Phi-Psonics is a spiritual exploration of being together and connecting,” says acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young of the immersive project he initiated in East Los Angeles in 2016. For his third long-player under the Phi-Psonics banner, Ford-Young marshalled a series of live recordings at Healing Force Of The Universe records in Pasadena, sculpting fourteen tracks, largely composed in the moment with a fluctuating cast of players, which wonderfully transmit his ideals of community and inner peace.
Ford-Young says of Expanding to One..."We live in increasingly dark times and while I intend our music to be a balm to those who connect with it, I also want the context of our musical conversations to include the outer as much as our inner worlds. The music we make doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the backdrop of injustice and tragedy in our world has to be part of our music.”
Performers:
Seth Ford-Young - acoustic bass, percussion
Sylvain Carton - tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, alto flute, bamboo flute, percussion
Randal Fisher - tenor saxophone, flute
Mitchell Yoshida - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Zach Tenorio - Wurlitzer 200a electric piano
Gary Fukushima - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Dylan Day - guitar
Dave Harrington - guitar
Rocco DeLuca - pedal steel guitar
Minta Spencer - harp
Sheila Govindarajan - Voice
Spencer Zahn - acoustic bass
Josh Collazo - drums
Jay Bellerose - drums, percussion
Mathias Künzli - percussion
Produced by Seth Ford-Young
Recorded February 7, 21 March 6, 20, April 3,17 - 2024
Live at Healing Force of the Universe Records, Pasadena California
Engineered by Seth Ford-Young
Mixed by Seth Ford-Young
In the Spring of 1966, ESP was given a grant by the New York State Council on the Arts, to tour the five colleges in the state with music departments. Artists for this tour included the Sun Ra Arkestra, Burton Greene, Patty Waters, Giuseppi Logan and Ran Blake. Accompanied by an all star backup group from among the participants, Patty's performances resulted in the album, "College Tour", her second recording for ESP-Disk'. The album expands upon the vocal acrobatics that were heard on her first recording, "Sings". "College Tour" won second place for Vocal Recording in Jazz and Pop Magazine in 1970.
Patty Waters is internationally recognized as one of the first major avant-garde vocalists. Her ESP-Disk' recordings cemented her reputation as a vocal innovator, and according to liner notes and public opinion, one whose influence extended beyond jazz to Yoko Ono and Diamanda Galas.
FFO: Jimi Tenor, Meridian Brothers, The Comet Is Coming, The Mauskovic Dance Band, Sun Ra Arkestra, Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids
Psychedelic dub, Afro-Latin rhythms and cosmic grooves come together on La Chooma’s self-titled debut for Batov Records. Drawing on Moroccan Gnawa, Colombian cumbia, Afrobeat, Jamaica dub & roots, and cosmic jazz, the six-piece ensemble create deep, hypnotic music rooted in global traditions and shaped for contemporary dancefloors.
Having already captivated local audiences with their hypnotic, organic live performances, La Chooma – now a six-piece ensemble – have been steadily building an international following. Initial singles “Magic Plant” and “Huachuma” earned support from tastemakers including BBC Radio 6 Music’s Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft.
“Magic Plant” distills the band’s signature blend of hypnotic grooves, lush percussion and woozy synths, like Jimi Tenor lost in the Colombian Amazon. A dreamlike, dub-infused trip driven by organic rhythm and cosmic textures. “Huachuma” picks up the thread, fusing Afrobeat percussion, swirling basslines and psychedelic flourishes into a hallucinogenic jam made for a tropical dancefloor.
“High Grow” conjures images of The X-Files set in Addis Ababa, with Ethio-jazz-style synths dancing and tripping across a relentless Mulatu-inspired bassline and Afrobeat drums, all drenched in foreboding dub delay. Perfect for dark, smoke-filled rooms in the small hours.
Like the lost child of Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids and The Comet Is Coming, “Lonely” hits like a sledgehammer of cosmic synth funk and intense Afro-rock drums, riding an acoustic bassline that breaks into a frenetic solo after a minute. The drums constantly threaten to overwhelm, but open up for the spiraling synths to peak half way through the track.
“Cozumel” follows seamlessly, moving to a slightly slower groove built on a deep electric bassline and irresistible four-to-the-floor Afro-Latin rhythms. Synths rise in harmony with the haunting call of the hand-carved Egyptian kawala flute as the energy builds in the third minute before the tension finally releases. There’s something in the music’s spiritual core and soulful presence that recalls the groundbreaking work of Jamaican legends Count Ossie and Cedric Brooks, who fused jazz with Rastafari drumming.
La Chooma draw dotted lines across time and space, finding hidden connections and shared frequencies, pulling threads together into a sound that hypnotises the mind and moves the body.
Mama Too Tight is an album by Archie Shepp released on Impulse! Records in 1967. The album contains tracks recorded by Shepp, trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, trombonists Grachan Moncur III and Roswell Rudd, tuba player Howard Johnson, clarinetist Perry Robinson, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Beaver Harris in August 1966.
Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.
One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.
Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”
The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.
Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.
“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).
Release date 2025-10-24. 1st eremite edition pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod). 1st 300 direct order copies include eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. CD & EU vinyl edition available from our partner Aguirre Records.
"An outstanding Chicago bassist, Joshua Abrams regularly contributes to a host of bands, drawing on roots from hip-hop to free jazz. He also leads a singular project, Natural Information Society (NIS), a band that stretches across time, origins, technologies and sources, and one which has mutated significantly in its 15-year history, documented on a series of Eremite LP releases. Abrams also plays guembri, the bass lute of the Gnawa people of North Africa, introduced to free jazz circles by Moroccan master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, who in the ’90s stepped outside traditional circles to play with saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Peter Brötzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake, the latter an occasional member of NIS. Recent NIS recordings include two double-LP sets, Since Time Is Gravity, by an 11-member Community Edition and descension (Out of Our Constrictions) by the current core quartet of Abrams, Lisa Alvarado (harmonium), Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) and Jason Stein (bass clarinet), with Evan Parker (soprano) joining them on a single 75-minute piece.
With Perseverance Flow, Abrams, as composer and producer, takes NIS in another direction, composing a piece for the quartet’s distinctive members and instruments, then editing and processing the results into a serene, pulsing, repeating work with regular shifts and time markers, transforming instrumental identities into novel sounds and short modular phrases. There’s a melody that’s regularly an extended and shifting ostinato, there’s another that’s a high-pitched soprano, more minimal still and not readily traceable to an originating sound, though the bass clarinet may be the likeliest contender. These alterations are such that only percussion and guembri are frequently identifiable. Stein’s bass clarinet only becomes strongly evident as itself nine minutes in. A certain repeating jump-start suggests a grand piano’s bass figure or the clicking of an MRI machine, yet this technological dream with its resonating soprano melody remains so fiercely human and fundamentally American that the album forms loose affiliations with music as far flung as Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Furies. The submerged instrumental identities contribute to the dream-like state, as if original sonic personalities have gone to sleep, and the results suggest a sustained techno-lullaby, a kind of mechanized bliss, a harbinger, perhaps, of the music currently most needed". --Stuart Broomer, New York City Jazz Record
"Joshua Abrams leads the Natural Information Society quartet into battle, or at least toward it, on the joyfully meandering instrumental album Perseverance Flow. Proceeding in a march of trancelike, intoxicating repetition, Abrams and his bandmates embark on a 35-minute pilgrimage to the place where jazz, contemporary classical, and multinational folk convene, achieving singularity in a state of ritual rhythm." --Pitchfork
"Spacemen 3 used to promote their music as being for the 'fucked up children of the world,' in addition to the more famous part about taking drugs to make music, etc. Natural Information Society could be described in a similar fashion, except they make music for the fucked up adults of the world, the kind who still take drugs and are baffled by their peers bending over backwards to make 'the kids' think they’re cool by slobbering over music clearly made for children. If you count yourselves among the former, the Chicago band’s latest is made for you: sophisticated psychedelia pulsing with rhythmic intensity and rich with droney waves of harmonium. Made up of a single slow-burning, 37-minute long jam, the movement here is subtle yet in its own way aggressive and sharply focused, carefully drawing the listener into the widening gyre at the center of the band’s humane, organic trance." --Mariana Timony, Bandcamp Daily Essential Releases
"The piece, called “Perseverance Flow,” began slowly, with Abrams playing rhythmically on a gimbri—a Sub-Saharan, three-stringed, skin-covered box—in his lap. Alvarado, on hand-pumped harmonium, let the reeds make chords that filled the room. Mikel Patrick Avery, on a drum kit, launched a bass drum’s beat through mists of percussion, and on bass clarinet, Jason Stein made sounds like swells and piercing winds. It was rhythms intersecting rhythms, and the room felt like an ocean, the seas shifting, tide coming in. But then, after an hour that felt like minutes, Alvarado’s chords led us home safe, the sounds calming, the room still vibrating, the chords resolved, the world a different place." --Robert Sullivan, Vogue
Anyone who’s studied meditation or watched a Formula 1 race knows you can travel great distances without going anywhere at all—and enjoy the process of not getting there. There’s pleasure in following a circuit so frequently and so closely that everyday bits of the landscape become landmarks (we always pass that bullet-holed stop sign on this route) and a pang when those landmarks change (they replaced the stop sign!). Natural Information Society’s music operates on similar principles, drawing together the thrum of Moroccan gnawa, the austere profundity of Philip Glass, and the circular structures of John Coltrane at his most spiritual into a sound that doesn’t progress so much as it rotates. Its pleasures come from the steady accumulation of repetitions and all the little tweaks and evolutions and devolutions that composer Joshua Abrams and his band have built into their music.
Perseverance Flow is Natural Information Society’s first non-collaborative record since 2023’s jazz-fractaled Since Time Is Gravity. That album presented a more relaxed version of the group, unfurling its music as though rolling out a dusty Turkish carpet. Perseverance Flow’s tight focus—one theme looped ceaselessly, with modest embellishment, for 35 minutes—feels like a microscopic view of that same rug. The phrase is initially tight and loping: a two-note harmonium riff, a lightly heraldic bass clarinet, Abrams’ clip-clopping guembri, a little one-two drumbeat, all of it held together as tightly as pencils bundled by a rubber band. The group performed the piece live for a year before recording, which gives the album a warm and lived-in feel despite its formal constriction; imagine the Sun Ra Arkestra in big-band mode, playing a single bar over and over until achieving liftoff. Taking equal inspiration from Jamaican dub and Chicago dance music, Abrams edited the one-take performance in post-production, dropping in tonal tweaks and rhythmic inversions with a jeweler’s eye for detail.
In the same way that a diamond’s symmetrical shine is both easy to admire and requires an eyepiece to appreciate in full, Perseverance Flow’s charm is shaped by the tiny variations built into the score. Once the theme is established and allowed to settle, harmonium player Lisa Alvarado flips her pattern, playing a palindrome of the simple rise-and-fall melody. The shift is so smooth it can take a moment to notice it’s happened, and even then you might second-guess the extent of the change. Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery loosens his percussion a few minutes later, playing something that sounds like pebbles sloshing in a plastic bucket. The soft shuffle is soon absorbed—whether actually or just by a kind of aural illusion—into the original pattern. Abrams anchors the sound with his Moroccan guembri, occasionally halting the steady limp of the primary line to tie a fluid knot without losing a step.
While it’s not unusual for repetition to turn a musical phrase inside out, similar to the way a word loses its meaning once you’ve said it a few times, Perseverance Flow’s emotional register stays constant. The phrases gradually begin to lengthen—at one point, Alvarado’s harmonium sounds more like an accordion playing a Cajun song in slow-mo—which gives the piece enough momentum to stay grounded. At no point does it even glance in the direction of chaos; you could probably thread a needle with the sound wave. Around the 19-minute mark, the entire ensemble pulls up together in a way that suggests a vamp, then immediately falls back into the pattern without anyone losing their place. It’s such a weird little thrill that, if you’re properly locked in, it feels like peaking in sync with a 2 a.m. bass drop.
While the instrumentation wouldn’t be out of place at your local roots festival, the dance music influence on Perseverance Flow is undeniable. Abrams’ frequent switches and intertwined notes mimic the braided bass hits and glitchy rhythms of footwork without ever leaving the aesthetic context of gnawa. Little clap-back rhythms pop up occasionally. At one point, something that sounds like a bag of shells being dropped on a snare drum introduces a new back-and-forth to the theme that matches the harmonium and brings the piece’s shuffle closer to something like hip-hop. It’s a canny way of making sure the listener’s body stays tuned in to what could easily become cerebral; you will not nod your head more insistently to a piece of experimental music this year.
Two-thirds of the way through, Avery pounds what sounds like a heavily padded kick drum in double time, just off-beat and distant enough to make it feel like the thump of a poorly insulated club. Abrams picks up the new rhythm and follows it, and for a few moments, the band seems to be playing both the main Perseverance Flow theme and a separate dance song at the same time, though the theoretical line between the two is impossible to find. Eventually, that intervention fades, too, revealing that each of the musicians is off doing their own thing, and despite that, feeling more like an ensemble than ever.
Music like this sometimes gets called “durational,” or likened to the theoretical impermanence of Zeno’s Arrow—an object that appears constant yet is recomposing itself in every moment. It is hard, listening to Perseverance Flow, not to think of the Buddhist notion of becoming, or something like philosopher Henri Bergson’s conception of the élan. Both of which are fair descriptions and logical reactions to a music that seems to do nothing but go in circles with academic confidence. But merry-go-rounds go in circles, too. As do pinwheels. You want durational? Major League Baseball teams play 162 games every season, usually for the same few thousand people. Despite the weight of the intellectual concepts and the elegance of the score, despite the band’s association with the cream of Chicago’s always-rich avant-garde scene, this record is no less approachable than an afternoon Cubs game. Appropriately enough, it gets better with each spin, too. --Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork
Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.
One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.
Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”
The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.
Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.
“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).
Release date 2025-10-24. 1st eremite edition pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod). 1st 300 direct order copies include eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. CD & EU vinyl edition available from our partner Aguirre Records.
"An outstanding Chicago bassist, Joshua Abrams regularly contributes to a host of bands, drawing on roots from hip-hop to free jazz. He also leads a singular project, Natural Information Society (NIS), a band that stretches across time, origins, technologies and sources, and one which has mutated significantly in its 15-year history, documented on a series of Eremite LP releases. Abrams also plays guembri, the bass lute of the Gnawa people of North Africa, introduced to free jazz circles by Moroccan master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, who in the ’90s stepped outside traditional circles to play with saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Peter Brötzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake, the latter an occasional member of NIS. Recent NIS recordings include two double-LP sets, Since Time Is Gravity, by an 11-member Community Edition and descension (Out of Our Constrictions) by the current core quartet of Abrams, Lisa Alvarado (harmonium), Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) and Jason Stein (bass clarinet), with Evan Parker (soprano) joining them on a single 75-minute piece.
With Perseverance Flow, Abrams, as composer and producer, takes NIS in another direction, composing a piece for the quartet’s distinctive members and instruments, then editing and processing the results into a serene, pulsing, repeating work with regular shifts and time markers, transforming instrumental identities into novel sounds and short modular phrases. There’s a melody that’s regularly an extended and shifting ostinato, there’s another that’s a high-pitched soprano, more minimal still and not readily traceable to an originating sound, though the bass clarinet may be the likeliest contender. These alterations are such that only percussion and guembri are frequently identifiable. Stein’s bass clarinet only becomes strongly evident as itself nine minutes in. A certain repeating jump-start suggests a grand piano’s bass figure or the clicking of an MRI machine, yet this technological dream with its resonating soprano melody remains so fiercely human and fundamentally American that the album forms loose affiliations with music as far flung as Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Furies. The submerged instrumental identities contribute to the dream-like state, as if original sonic personalities have gone to sleep, and the results suggest a sustained techno-lullaby, a kind of mechanized bliss, a harbinger, perhaps, of the music currently most needed". --Stuart Broomer, New York City Jazz Record
"Joshua Abrams leads the Natural Information Society quartet into battle, or at least toward it, on the joyfully meandering instrumental album Perseverance Flow. Proceeding in a march of trancelike, intoxicating repetition, Abrams and his bandmates embark on a 35-minute pilgrimage to the place where jazz, contemporary classical, and multinational folk convene, achieving singularity in a state of ritual rhythm." --Pitchfork
"Spacemen 3 used to promote their music as being for the 'fucked up children of the world,' in addition to the more famous part about taking drugs to make music, etc. Natural Information Society could be described in a similar fashion, except they make music for the fucked up adults of the world, the kind who still take drugs and are baffled by their peers bending over backwards to make 'the kids' think they’re cool by slobbering over music clearly made for children. If you count yourselves among the former, the Chicago band’s latest is made for you: sophisticated psychedelia pulsing with rhythmic intensity and rich with droney waves of harmonium. Made up of a single slow-burning, 37-minute long jam, the movement here is subtle yet in its own way aggressive and sharply focused, carefully drawing the listener into the widening gyre at the center of the band’s humane, organic trance." --Mariana Timony, Bandcamp Daily Essential Releases
"The piece, called “Perseverance Flow,” began slowly, with Abrams playing rhythmically on a gimbri—a Sub-Saharan, three-stringed, skin-covered box—in his lap. Alvarado, on hand-pumped harmonium, let the reeds make chords that filled the room. Mikel Patrick Avery, on a drum kit, launched a bass drum’s beat through mists of percussion, and on bass clarinet, Jason Stein made sounds like swells and piercing winds. It was rhythms intersecting rhythms, and the room felt like an ocean, the seas shifting, tide coming in. But then, after an hour that felt like minutes, Alvarado’s chords led us home safe, the sounds calming, the room still vibrating, the chords resolved, the world a different place." --Robert Sullivan, Vogue
Anyone who’s studied meditation or watched a Formula 1 race knows you can travel great distances without going anywhere at all—and enjoy the process of not getting there. There’s pleasure in following a circuit so frequently and so closely that everyday bits of the landscape become landmarks (we always pass that bullet-holed stop sign on this route) and a pang when those landmarks change (they replaced the stop sign!). Natural Information Society’s music operates on similar principles, drawing together the thrum of Moroccan gnawa, the austere profundity of Philip Glass, and the circular structures of John Coltrane at his most spiritual into a sound that doesn’t progress so much as it rotates. Its pleasures come from the steady accumulation of repetitions and all the little tweaks and evolutions and devolutions that composer Joshua Abrams and his band have built into their music.
Perseverance Flow is Natural Information Society’s first non-collaborative record since 2023’s jazz-fractaled Since Time Is Gravity. That album presented a more relaxed version of the group, unfurling its music as though rolling out a dusty Turkish carpet. Perseverance Flow’s tight focus—one theme looped ceaselessly, with modest embellishment, for 35 minutes—feels like a microscopic view of that same rug. The phrase is initially tight and loping: a two-note harmonium riff, a lightly heraldic bass clarinet, Abrams’ clip-clopping guembri, a little one-two drumbeat, all of it held together as tightly as pencils bundled by a rubber band. The group performed the piece live for a year before recording, which gives the album a warm and lived-in feel despite its formal constriction; imagine the Sun Ra Arkestra in big-band mode, playing a single bar over and over until achieving liftoff. Taking equal inspiration from Jamaican dub and Chicago dance music, Abrams edited the one-take performance in post-production, dropping in tonal tweaks and rhythmic inversions with a jeweler’s eye for detail.
In the same way that a diamond’s symmetrical shine is both easy to admire and requires an eyepiece to appreciate in full, Perseverance Flow’s charm is shaped by the tiny variations built into the score. Once the theme is established and allowed to settle, harmonium player Lisa Alvarado flips her pattern, playing a palindrome of the simple rise-and-fall melody. The shift is so smooth it can take a moment to notice it’s happened, and even then you might second-guess the extent of the change. Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery loosens his percussion a few minutes later, playing something that sounds like pebbles sloshing in a plastic bucket. The soft shuffle is soon absorbed—whether actually or just by a kind of aural illusion—into the original pattern. Abrams anchors the sound with his Moroccan guembri, occasionally halting the steady limp of the primary line to tie a fluid knot without losing a step.
While it’s not unusual for repetition to turn a musical phrase inside out, similar to the way a word loses its meaning once you’ve said it a few times, Perseverance Flow’s emotional register stays constant. The phrases gradually begin to lengthen—at one point, Alvarado’s harmonium sounds more like an accordion playing a Cajun song in slow-mo—which gives the piece enough momentum to stay grounded. At no point does it even glance in the direction of chaos; you could probably thread a needle with the sound wave. Around the 19-minute mark, the entire ensemble pulls up together in a way that suggests a vamp, then immediately falls back into the pattern without anyone losing their place. It’s such a weird little thrill that, if you’re properly locked in, it feels like peaking in sync with a 2 a.m. bass drop.
While the instrumentation wouldn’t be out of place at your local roots festival, the dance music influence on Perseverance Flow is undeniable. Abrams’ frequent switches and intertwined notes mimic the braided bass hits and glitchy rhythms of footwork without ever leaving the aesthetic context of gnawa. Little clap-back rhythms pop up occasionally. At one point, something that sounds like a bag of shells being dropped on a snare drum introduces a new back-and-forth to the theme that matches the harmonium and brings the piece’s shuffle closer to something like hip-hop. It’s a canny way of making sure the listener’s body stays tuned in to what could easily become cerebral; you will not nod your head more insistently to a piece of experimental music this year.
Two-thirds of the way through, Avery pounds what sounds like a heavily padded kick drum in double time, just off-beat and distant enough to make it feel like the thump of a poorly insulated club. Abrams picks up the new rhythm and follows it, and for a few moments, the band seems to be playing both the main Perseverance Flow theme and a separate dance song at the same time, though the theoretical line between the two is impossible to find. Eventually, that intervention fades, too, revealing that each of the musicians is off doing their own thing, and despite that, feeling more like an ensemble than ever.
Music like this sometimes gets called “durational,” or likened to the theoretical impermanence of Zeno’s Arrow—an object that appears constant yet is recomposing itself in every moment. It is hard, listening to Perseverance Flow, not to think of the Buddhist notion of becoming, or something like philosopher Henri Bergson’s conception of the élan. Both of which are fair descriptions and logical reactions to a music that seems to do nothing but go in circles with academic confidence. But merry-go-rounds go in circles, too. As do pinwheels. You want durational? Major League Baseball teams play 162 games every season, usually for the same few thousand people. Despite the weight of the intellectual concepts and the elegance of the score, despite the band’s association with the cream of Chicago’s always-rich avant-garde scene, this record is no less approachable than an afternoon Cubs game. Appropriately enough, it gets better with each spin, too. --Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork