★577 Records
Shine Hear (Vol. 1)
Collaborations are unique to their combinations, producing totally original and innovative ideas with the addition of a single factor. In this case, legendary musicians and 577 mainstays join together in this unique arrangement for the first time, allowing for yet another reinvention. Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, pianist Leo Genovese, bassist William Parker (also playing Gralla and Shakuhachi on this album), and drummer and vocalist Francisco Mela, unite for another impro…
Know: Delirium Atom Paths
One of the most exhilarating shows he’d ever done, guitarist Chris Sharkey came away from his performance at the Fusebox in Leeds feeling alive. Just a few days before the world would slow, and two weeks before life in London would stop, keyboardist and 577 mainstay Pat Thomas, drummer Luke Reddin-Williams and Sharkey would go on stage to play for the first time together, having discussed and planned nothing. The improvisation, a gamble, worked. Recorded in one 50-minute track, one album, the pr…
Volume 2
Super groups are always risky—the potential for disappointing fans or warring musical styles is high—but when longtime friends and masterful improvisers come together, they usually work. Evident in their first collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, John Dikeman (Saxophone; When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) joined musicians Pat Thomas (Piano; Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess 2021), John Edwards (Bass; EMPoWered. 577 Records, 2021), and…
Wednesday Weld
Musician Paul Flaherty believes that the difference between pre-composed music and free-form improvisational music is a bifurcation of the mind, “The logical mind is reduced to a witness during free playing and the emotional mind is fully released.” Free from concept, outline or even leadership, the music is a free-form experience. This is realized on the newest release from Paul Flaherty (Tenor sax, alto sax) and his long-time collaborators Jim Matus (Electric guitar, Baritone guitar) and Larry…
Peach and Tomato
Leonor Falcón and Sana Nagano met in graduate school at Queens College in 2015, and have since collaborated in many projects. On this release, ‘Peach and Tomato,’ the duo offers fresh new compositions that display both their sense of imagination, and their deep appreciation for classical influences. This is particularly true with their version of two movements from the Prokofiev Sonata for Two Violins and the composition Etude 1 and 2, an homage to Bela Bartok and a fluent conversation between t…
World Without
Abstraction, with feeling. Saxophonist Paul Dunmall, a veteran experimental jazz musician, was feeling drawn to vitality. He wanted to organize a group of musicians that were driven by an underlying pulse and a central energy, beyond the abstract improvisations he had been familiar with for years. He had always appreciated jazz that had a driving, uplifting energy, and organized this quartet, inspired by these musicians’ previous improvisational performances. Alongside guitarist Steven Saunders,…
You Is You
What does it sound like to be a working artist? Here, flutist Joe Melnicove, joined by his mentor, saxophonist George Garzone, drummer Billy Hart and bassist Ben Street, tries to convey it. ‘You is You’ is inspired by a spirit of radical self-acceptance and self-knowledge, from a single melody he composed at home in Rosh Pinna, Israel. Recorded in New York, the songs have clear allusions to the experience of being musicians. Tracks like “Monday Night” and “No Applause” invoke the experience of a…
In The Wilderness
In The Wilderness opens with textured drums, a muted bass, celestial sound, like stars breaking into puddles. Confident engineering and gentle instrumentation invite the audience to wander into the unknown. The project draws from an experimental performance by drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist Brandon Lopez, at 577 Records’ Forward Festival, which was later deconstructed and rebuilt by hip-hop producer Hprizm of the Antipop Consortium. All three musicians were involved in visioning the project’…
22 / 23
Gerald Cleaver’s newest album, 22/23, journeys through genre, exploring the future and recalling history, in his most place-based album yet. Born and raised in Detroit, Cleaver is a product of the Motor City’s rich musical history. Long the manufacturing capital of America, Detroit citizens have never been afraid of imagination: technological innovation, a strong labor movement, techno-utopianism or afrofuturism. This spirit of innovation is felt on Cleaver’s newest album, particularly on songs …
Reflections 1952
In 1952, Thelonious Monk, joined by Bassist Gary Mapp, Drummer Art Blakey and Drummer Max Roach, drove to an early iteration of pioneering Sound Engineer Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, and entered a small and tightly-managed room that Van Gelder had strict technical rules for. In those recording sessions, and again in 1954, despite Van Gelder's tight management and an out-of-tune piano with tinny fidelity, Monk produced some of the most glorious music of his entire recording career and …
Vol. 1 Erie Live!
Daniel Carter, William Parker, and Federico Ughi have been playing together since 2005, the year in which they recorded their first album The Dream. The band has performed regularly in the US and Europe ever since, gaining considerable success, with a 2010 European tour throughout Portugal, Spain, and Italy that resulted in the live album Navajo Sunrise (2012). In 2015 the trio started to rehearse with multi-instrumentalist Watson Jennison (Toronto, CA). As a quartet, the band toured the US and …
Un Cacho de Metal, Un Resto de Vaivén
Nichunimu is a Chilean improvisational trio working at the edges of free jazz, ritualism, noise, minimalism and krautrock music. Since 2014, Benjamin Vergara (Trumpet), Nicolás Carrasco (Synthesizer) and Matías Mardones (Percussion) have been inspired by repetition, textures and friendship through the sound, focusing on circular shapes in music that bind them together. Based between the cities of Valdivia and Santiago, their members have also collaborated on projects like La Kut, Cariñito 3, Dub…
Anime Mundi
If life is about how we react to what is thrown at us, Sana Nagano chose wisely in the summer of 2020. After nearly half a year of anguished isolation, the violinist made an album of honest, graceful free improvisations with two of her mentors. Anime Mundi, out October 28th on 577 Records, pairs her with pianist/vibraphonist Karl Berger and drummer Billy Martin, veteran players at home in the unknown. And though recorded during the stressful first year of Covid, there is joy and curiosity in the…
Stepping Out
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Playfield has never played inside. Daniel Carter, a multi-instrumentalist and the founder of 577 Records, has always pushed to make sound more real, relying on outdoor performance and New York City's auditory ambience, to orchestrate his pieces. This practice, which is fundamentally improvisational and experimental, opens any final recording to the unpredictable nature of strangers' sound and offers a rich texture of a moment in time. Importantly for the artists,…
End of Time / KM-53 Project Vol. 1
South Korean Pianist Eunhye Jeong believes that, "after you travel far away from home, you get to know yourself more fully." Her new album, End of Time, is an existential exploration of that self-discovery, imbued with the spirit of the moon bear that lives in the Taebaek Mountains, a presence she was told about growing up. Throughout the album's three extended tracks, "Embark," "The Latitudinal Bands," and "The Elemental Life," she interfaces with a celestial, linear elegance, veering from a s…
Simple Twist
"I had absolutely no ideas about how I wanted the music to sound that day in the studio. None. I only knew how I did not want it to sound, and how I did not want it to feel. I didn't want it to be pretentious or slick. I didn't want it to seem safe or to feel precious. I like music that's wild. That feels unrehearsed. Music that's full of the mysterious and the humorous and full of sex and wonder and dance and all the other things that make life interesting. I guess what I mean to say is that my…
Smashing Humans
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* The Brooklyn-based noise-jazz violinist Sana Nagano often finds herself at the center of the storm. As other instruments crash and careen around her, her assuredly melodic violin works to ground and stabilize the overall sound. And nowhere is this better heard than on Smashing Humans, her new quintet album coming March 19th on 577 Records. Featuring Peter Apfelbaum on sax, Keisuke Matsuno on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Joe Hertenstein on drums, it’s an L…
Causa y Efecto Vol. 1
The world is more elusive than simple cause and effect imply, more typically, life circumvents causation in favor of an unknowable correlation. It seems like the more we know, the less we know. On this first volume from Zoh Amba and Francisco Mela, the duo brings their regional traditions, from Tennessee and Cuba respectively, and musical inclinations to the cause and effect behind their own life stories. Causa y Efecto, Vol. 1 is an ode to the unknown, transporting audiences between the New Yor…
Spam Likely
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* The world is breaking apart, but this trio holds it together. Made up of Jessica Pavone (Viola, electronics), Lukas Koenig (Drums) and Matt Mottel (Keytar, 3-string Guitar), all three players are drawn to the improvisational, experimental nature of their self-described, “free-range sonic stew,” a constellation of instruments served up for hungry ears. Their first performance together in 2019 was marked by the tragic, unexpected death of Steve Dalachisnky, a poet …
Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster
SSWAN presents their first outing "Invisibility is an unnatural disaster" a raucous jaunt of free jazz on the premiere fire music label 577 Records. The music is rooted in the Black American art form of jazz, stemming into the branches of free improvisation, noise and experimentalism while pushing to the edges of each idiom. The idiosyncratic playing of guitarist Jessica Ackerley starts off the album's title track and jumps headfirst into a Hendrix-tinged duo with drummer Jason Nazary. Patrick S…