ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO - 'WE ARE ON THE EDGE: A 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION'

Formats

• ERATP123LE - 4LP SPECIAL EDITION

  4050486115145

• ERATP123LP - 2xLPs

  4050486115138

Details

Iconic, innovative and internationally renowned force in avant-garde music The Art Ensemble of Chicago released their 50th anniversary celebratory album We Are On The Edge in April, and Erased Tapes are honoured to announce the vinyl edition of this exceptional body of work. Led by surviving founding members Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, these brand new recordings involve a staggering array of contemporary artists ranging from across the jazz, experimental and improvised music spheres; from the visionary poet and musician Moor Mother, trumpeters Fred Berry and Hugh Ragin, who have performed with Mitchell for over five and four decades, to bassist Jaribu Shahid, supreme cellist Tomeka Reid, celebrated flute virtuoso Nicole Mitchell and the extraordinary voice of Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron. The vinyl edition, due for release on July 26th, will be available as a double album featuring a meticulous studio session of the newly assembled group of musicians, combining re-recordings of works spanning the last 50 years, some never before recorded, as well as new compositions. The 4-LP special edition also includes their live set recorded at Edgefest, the annual experimental jazz and creative new music festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Having witnessed this exciting new formation around Roscoe and Don live at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Robert Raths was compelled to start a conversation with their US label Pi Recordings, based out of New York, and support this project in any way possible. The Art Ensemble of Chicago is a band that has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since forming in 1969. It has also long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organisation that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. Now led by the surviving members Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, their new album We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is not only a commemoration of a half-century of magical music making, but also a loving tribute to the band’s three original members who have passed: Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and most recently, Joseph Jarman. The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music — Ancient to the Future”. Also important are the group’s disparate musical and artistic personalities, comprised of jazz, advanced compositional techniques, theatrical performance, poetry, Pan-African percussion, all tied together with improvisational flair, a taste for the absurd, and the exploration of pure sound and space. It is this open-mindedness – absorbed from the basic tenets of the AACM – that has made the band one of the most important in the history of music. Mitchell and Moye are now 78 and 72, respectively, but one would never guess by their outlook. Mitchell, who was recently named to a prestigious United States Artist Fellowship, is about to retire from his teaching position at Mills College, is most excited when you ask him about his upcoming projects, gushing about a dizzying array of performances, commissions, collaborations, composition ideas, and musical studies and inventions. There is, of course some wistfulness when looking back, particularly with the passing of Joseph Jarman earlier this year, but the overwhelming feeling is anticipation of what is coming next or, as Moye always says, "focus and forward motion". It’s a clarion statement that Mitchell and Moye are intent on ushering The Art Ensemble of Chicago forcefully into its sixth decade. As Moor Mother declares: "We are on the edge!" 

Tracks

1. Bell Song
2. We are on the Edge
3. I Greet You with Open Arms
4. Chi-Congo 50
5. Jamaican Farewell Part I
6. Villa Tiamo
7. Saturday Morning
8. Jamaican Farewell Part II
9. Mama Koko
10. Fanfare and Bell
11. Variations and Sketches from the Bamboo Terrace
12. Oasis at Dusk
13. We are on the Edge/Cards (Live)
14. Oasis at Dusk (Live)
15. Chi-Congo 50 (Live)
16. Tutankhamun (Live)
17. Mama Koko (Live)
18. Saturday Morning (Live)
19. Odwalla/The Theme (Live)

Press

As vibrant as any of the music the AEC released these past 50 years. Long live the Art Ensemble of Chicago ★★★★ ? All About Jazz

?The sheer breadth of the ensemble's expression on We Are on the Edge is staggering, a strident declaration that Mitchell and Moye will carry the AEC's powerful, boundary-less creative ethos full force into its sixth decade? ★★★★ ? AllMusic

Audio & Video

HERE LIES MAN - 'NO GROUND TO WALK UPON'

Formats

• EZRDR101 - LP

  603111732114

• EZRDR101CD - CD

  603111732121

Details

*COLORED MAGENTA VINYL RESTOCK* Here Lies Man took the music world by storm in 2017 with their self-titled debut positing the intriguing hypothesis: What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat? Since that time, Here Lies Man has expanded and expounded upon their sound and ideas of heavy riff rock and psych within the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave. The L.A. based band comprised of Antibalas members have toured relentlessly over the past 2 years, while also releasing a second album, You Will Know Nothing and an EP, Animal Noises, both in 2018. No Ground to Walk Upon is their third album, due in August 2019. It continues with an ongoing concept of HLM playing the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, with each song being a scene. The lead single “Clad in Silver” is the soundtrack snippet of a journey to the imaginary place called home, which can never be arrived at. With every step, the character imagines getting closer, but it is a hallucination that fades in and out of perception. Rough Trade named Here Lies Man in their prestigious Top 10 Albums of 2017. BBC 6 & Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year’s best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises. 2018’s You Will Know Nothing furthered the band’s reputation for genre-smashing rhythmic experimentation, topping many year-end lists as well as earning features from countless metal and indie rock outlets, plus cover stories in weekly papers. No Ground to Walk Upon is the next step in the band’s rapid ascent to what is bound to be influential upon riff based rock. “We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs,” explains founder and vocalist/ guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia (who also plays guitar in Antibalas) of the band’s sound. “Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are taking that same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi it was the blues, for us it comes directly from Africa.” No Ground To Walk Upon also includes an interesting conceptual mathematics to the entire proceedings, a theme begun on the prior album. “There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,” Garcia says. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.” Garcia and cofounder/drummer Geoff Mann (former Antibalas drummer and son of jazz musician Herbie Mann) recorded the album much like they did their previous releases, at their own L.A. studio on a Tascam 388 8-track tape machine. Additional layers were recorded with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod and other contributors in various other locations, all while the band continued its rigorous touring schedule. Here Lies Man has already spent much of the past three years on tour, with dates supporting Antibalas and Fu Manchu, as well as headlining treks through the EU & UK. The remaining months of 2019 and 2020 will see the band once again performing at numerous International festivals (including Austin’s Levitation Fest in November.) No Ground to Walk Upon will be available on LP, CD and download on August 16th, 2019 via RidingEasy Records. 

Tracks

Track List
Side A:
1. Clad in Silver
2. Swinging from Trees
3. Long Legs (Look Away)
4. Washing Bones

Side B:
5. Get Ahold of Yourself
6. Iron Rattles
7. Man Falls Down

Press

Audio & Video