★International Anthem Recording Company
Panama 77
Panamá 77 – a vibrant and verdant suite of multi-textural, jazz-laced psychedelic instrumental folk-funk – is the debut album by Panamá-born, Chicago-based drummer and DJ Daniel Villarreal.
Gold
* Digipack CD* The lightning rod for Alabaster DePlume’s luminous follow up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 was personal. “Someone was going through a thing,” says the Mancunian poet-performer. “I said, ‘go forward in the courage of your love’. And then I thought 'yeah, that's what I need to hear as well’.” Gold is a sonorous double album that celebrates the communal act of making music and the relationships that can be explored when you purposefully avoid …
Recordings from the Åland Islands
*2023 repress* In 2017 Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer traveled together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. They headed to the islands with the intention of helping two friends (mother/daughter duo Jannika/Sage Reed) barn raise a small inn named Hotel Svala in Kumlinge (a municipality consisting of a small group of islands and a population of about 320). The idea was that, once completed, Svala would host art…
Kudu
Anteloper is the electric brain child of Jaimie Branch (fly or die, high life) and Jason Nazary (little women, helado negro, bear in heaven). Branch and Nazary have been playing together as trumpeter and drummer for years, since meeting at the New England Conservatory of Music in 2002, but in this duo both musicians include synthesizers to push further into the spectral space ship ether. With deep rhythmic passages, telepathic improvisations and effortless melodic negotiations, Anteloper pushes …
Forfolks
"It's a particular thing to hear Jeff play solo. He is an unusually selfless improviser, often times laying out and highlighting the contributions of his band mates. He's never been one to play three notes where none would suffice. On this recording however he is by himself, joined only by his own ideas, looped or frozen, to flesh out the music he's creating in his mind. Hearing him craft entire sound worlds on these eight selections gives us an opportunity to really see how Parker orders sound.…
Fly Or Die Live
Capturing a pre-Covid performance (just weeks before the pandemic really hit) in Switzerland, composer, trumpeter and singer Jaimie Branch has just released an incredible live album via International Anthem. Recorded in January 2020 at Moods in Zurich, and features live versions of tracks from Branch’s Fly Or Die Live I and II, compounded & flawlessly communicated in a singular epic of raw cosmic brilliance. It sees Branch on trumpet and vocals, Chad Taylor on drums and mbira, Lester St. Louis …
JP's Myspace Beats
* Edition of 777. Vinyl only! Limited edition! No digital, no represses * Two *limited edition* 160-gram TOM BLUE color vinyl LPs (pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago) inside a heavyweight reverse-board single-pocket jacket with poly-lined inner-sleeves."Jeff Parker's a man with many talents – not just a fantastic jazz guitarist, but a musician who's had his hands in many pies over the years – as you'll hear with this very enigmatic set! The music is dated a bit by the Myspace reference in the…
More Energy Fields, Current
'More Energy Fields, Current' is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of prolific producer/percussionist Carlos Niño. Featuring heavy contributions from many of the most exciting instrumentalists in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño’s has been a central force for over 2 decades), the album collects 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Co…
Where We Come From
Makaya McCraven’s mixtape is the product of an activist’s intuition, bringing together the brightest stars of the time between Chicago and London. How do we explain this meeting of two cities’ scenes if not via the buzz around each? Host to the locals on their turf, Makaya McCraven was surrounded by young English treasures (Joe Armon-Jones, Nubya Garcia, Theon Cross, Kamaal Williams, Emma Jean-Thackray) for two concerts at the TRC. Once recorded, they then placed the Chicago drummer in his curr…
The Oracle
Composer, clarinetist, singer and spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz and improvised music scene just a few years ago. In very short time, the potency, prowess, spirit and charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night you can find Angel adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, or Damon Locks, or Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or e…
Live
**CD Edition** Live was mostly recorded on November 1st, 2019, at Haus der Berliner Festspiele in Berlin, Germany, during the 2019 edition of JazzFest Berlin. For Angel Bat Dawid and her band Tha Brothahood – which includes Deacon Otis Cooke, Viktor Le Givens, Xristian Espinoza, Norman W. Long, Dr. Adam Zanolini, and Asher Simiso Gamedze – it was the first stop of their first European tour. Forty-eight hours before the show, Angel and members of the band were on their way to the airport in Chic…
Heritage of the Invisible II
"Heritage of the Invisible II" follows Navarro and Holmes’s rise to prominence as members of free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements. In March of 2020 in "The Nation" writer Marcus J. Moore said "Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism." The revolutionary ethos that drives Irreversible Entanglements is no less present in Navarro and Holmes’s duo work, though their duo finds them much more wholeheartedly and jubilantly…
Dimensional Stardust
Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortois…
Universal Beings E&F Sides
A new project by Chicago-based drummer / producer Makaya McCraven. An addendum to his critically-acclaimed 2018 release Universal Beings, which The New York Times said "affirms the drummer and beatsmith's position as a major figure in creative music," Universal Beings E&F Sides presents fourteen new pieces of organic beat music cut from the original sessions, prepared and produced by Makaya as a soundtrack to the Universal Beings documentary film.Directed by Mark Pallman, the Universal Beings do…
Chicago Waves
In process of stocking. In late November of 2018, long-time collaborators (and life-long Los Angelenos) Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson flew to Chicago to participate in the album release performance of Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings. Just 11 months prior, Carlos and Miguel were part of recording the ‘Los Angeles Side’ of Universal Beings at Jeff Parker’s house in Altadena, California, and this performance in Chicago would be the first time that all of the musicians reunited to re-lea…
Tour Beats Vol. 1
In process of stocking. Anteloper is a duo of psychedelic sonic compatriots starring a pair of raggedy celestial sound warriors: trumpeter Jaimie Branch and drummer Jason Nazary. These longtime friends and collaborators met as young explorers and consider their electronic duo a continuous experiment into the unknown sonic abyss. Recent results have come back as mind-bendingly abstract head boppers, improvised organisms guided by a unique desire to hear what hasn’t been heard before. This is musi…
Transition East
"Transition East" features two new pieces of music created by Angel Bat Dawid in response to Emma Warren's 2019 book "Make Some Space" – i.e. the book that chronicles the history of London DIY music institution Total Refreshment Centre. Angel Bat Dawid, who first met Emma Warren at Total Refreshment Centre in 2017, composed & recorded "Transition East" alone in her space on the Southside of Chicago, originally to be accompaniment for the audiobook version of "Make Some Space." Angel conceptualiz…
Who Sent You?
A sprawling meditation for afro-cosmonauts, a reminder of the forms and traumas of the past, and the shape and vision of Afrotopian sounds to come
To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1
In the words of Emma Warren: Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly, and this makes him very happy. DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid, Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem’s growing family of progressive musical explorationists. Whilst mu…
Where Future Unfolds
Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir),…