★Rogueart
Flitting Splits Reverb Adage (Book)
An assignment: find the titles of Rob Mazurek’s records and the names of his bands. Put them in a line. Now tell me he’s not a poet. Mazurek is a bona fide polymath. He thinks in multiple media. One modality bleeds into another, the musical into the visual into the verbal. And they are cumulative, as seen and heard and read in these beautiful poems. Colors explode, repetitions draw musicality out of words, text refers to the shape of a sound. Conjuring a cosmic sonosphere, the sound-crust on the…
A Near Permanent State Of Wonder
RogueArt proudly presents A Near Permanent State of Wonder, the first duo recording by pianist Alexander Hawkins and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum. Two of the most distinctive and restlessly inventive voices in contemporary creative music meet in an intimate, exploratory session that balances lyricism and abstraction, rigor and generosity, fragility and fire.
The album documents a rare level of rapport between the musicians. Hawkins, celebrated for his agile navigation between tradition, avant‑gar…
Edges
For whom you play, for yourselves, for the departed who live within you, for all the dilettantes who listen to you, for the young and the old, for the joyful and the sad, the melancholic of all stripes, for the innumerable, unnamed crowd that flits about on the earthly ball, these are the words of Baudelaire before he evoked the itinerant musicians, “one of the two played one of his compositions, and the other improvised beside him a variation, an accompaniment, an underscore”. I really like thi…
We Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Almost four generations of musicians; four very strong musical personalities, four very rich musical careers and, above all, four musicians who know how much the confrontation of different ideas pushes music forward; and it is exactly what we had hoped from this band, that they find a common language richer than the sum of the individual languages of each of them, a coherent musical material that respect each personality without reducing the great diversity of their individual approaches. If the…
Here today gone tomorrow
"In the quartet on this album, Paul Dunmall has returned to his first love: totally free improvisation based on interaction between the four players. Many aspects of Paul Dunmall’s playing are apparent on this album. His approach is to listen very carefully to what is happening around him and to react to it. If you see him play live, you will see how he concentrates on the flow of the music, often stepping back and allowing the music to develop before choosing the right moment to enter or re-ent…
Color Systems
Rob Mazurek’s creations, dedicated to these six artists offered to Tomeka Reid, Angelica Sanchez, and Chad Taylor, to interpret freely. A foundation laid for these improvisations in the foursome’s forays into Mazurek’s music with the larger ensemble. Here something becomes distilled. Interaction is direct. The unit is unitary, the dynamics are gently modulated, the sounds are tendered with deliberation love and inter-ensemble generosity.
We Are On The Edge (A 50th Anniversary Celebration)
Special edition box. An 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, experimenta…
Duo (DCWM) 2013
What becomes quickly apparent when the music ends is that the parts of the brain wired for multi-tasking and instant contextualization have been swamped by Masaoka and Braxton’s palette, their bold strokes and the vaulting arcs they form.
Anaya
2009 release ** "Creative music making is a matter of energy, heart, and trust, and when all three are present the music flies. A meeting of three old Chicago friends and collaborators, flutist Nicole Mitchell, drummer Hamid Drake, and bassist Harrison Bankhead, the Indigo Trio soars with the kind of spiritual energy that has inspired Great Black Music from its inception... Building a bridge between composition and improvisation, Bankhead, Drake, and Mitchell have created an inspiring album. Wit…
Rex, Wrecks & XXX
Evan Parker and Matthew Shipp!Two (exceptional) musicians, two backgrounds, two approaches to music, two generations, an ocean between them: at the end, only one music, unique, outstanding, made of listening and respect of each other. The purpose is not to limit themselves to what they might have in common, but to expand the realm of possibility by assimilating in the moment what the other can bring.
The Astral Revelations
Jemeel Moondoc and his bandmates are masters of the terrifying art of communicating how they feel, an art which, of course, takes both great intelligence and great discipline… A fire burns in Jemeel Moondoc’s music and once it was ignited it keeps spreading; it’s the flame you can also feel in the playing of Matthew Shipp, Hilliard Greene, and Newman Taylor Baker. This quartet’s music is never easy, but it’s always truthful. Ed Hazel, excepts from the liner notes
The Sixth Decade - From Paris To Paris (Live At Sons D’Hiver)
The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, expanding to a chamber orchestra, marks its sixth decade as a vital force on the world music stage with an ear-opening live recording on two LPs. Recorded in France in 2020 at the Son D'Hiver Festival, this recording celebrates the legendary group's historic ties to Paris, where it was formed in 1968. When trumpet great Lester Bowie died in 1999, followers of the Art Ensemble of Chicago couldn't help but wonder whether the legendary quintet, which owed so much to his…
Lifetime Rebel
This amazing boxset is the complete recording of Joëlle Léandre's Lifetime Achievement evening that opened the 2023 issue of Vision Festival at Roulette, Brooklyn, NY, USA. It is most likely to best summary of the first 50 years of Joëlle Leéandre incredible carreer. It also contains a film of a 2023 interview of Joëlle Léandre that give a very good overview of who she is and what she went through. The gorgeous boxset contains four CDs, one DVD and one booklet: CD-1 features Tiger Trio (Joëlle L…
Some Jellyfish Live Forever
** 2021 Repress ** A great reunion of the Jeff Parker/Rob Mazurek duo – a pair who've only continued to grow strongly in the years since their Chicago Underground classics – and who bring all that sense of energy to play in their music! The sounds here represent the deeper, more mature styles that both musicians have hit – a way of almost being more powerful by being less aggressive – especially from Mazurek, who's got this wonderfully gentle touch on his horn at times – wrapped up in these wave…
Roscoe Mitchell on Rogueart
Roscoe Mitchell turned 80 on August 2020. At this occasion, we launch the following offer: 50 % discount for purchasing together the nine albums, 6 single CDs, two double CDs and one CD + DVD. These nine albums particularly illustrate the diversity of Roscoe Mitchell's music.
Three duets, two with two other great figures of current jazz, George Lewis and Matthew Shipp, the third with a contemporary musician, David Wessel, two very different trios, one with West Coast musicians, James Fei and Wil…
Cloud Script
Rogueart presents Joshua Abrams' Cloud Script. All compositions by Joshua Abrams. Recorded by Ken Brown on September 26th 2016 at Electrical Audio, Chicago, IL, USA. Joshua Abrams (double bass), Ari Brown (tenor saxophone), Jeff Parker (guitar), Gerald Cleaver (drums).
“Sharp, deeply interactive, and soulful music; brilliant quartet!” - Rogueart
Combinations
Joe Morris and Tomeka Reid offer a few new “standards” that are the fulcrum between a set of prepared instrument pieces where it is difficult to recognize either instrument and attention is absorbed by the overall density and character of sound, and a set notable for its sparseness as both Reid and Morris play primarily independent lines. Within that set, the effect, most apparent in the rare moments in which one musician briefly acknowledges the other then shifts onto a new independent line, is…
The Reward - Solo Piano Suite In Four Movements
* Edition of 500 * Released on the occasion of Matthew Shipp 60th birthday. This double LP is the first vinyl Matthew Shipp recorded since his very first recording, "Sonic Exploration", a duo with Rob Brown, released on 1988. All compositions by Matthew Shipp. Recorded by Jim Clouse on November 10th and December 1st 2015 at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY, USA.
Warning! Slowly remove contents from its package: while you think you are entering into new beginnings you are indeed beginning to reach…
Then Now
Since their 1988 duo album Sonic Explorations and through a number of group collaborations, the duo of alto saxophonist Rob Brown and pianist Matthew Shipp have extended and evolved their uniquely astute and confident dialog, as heard in this magnificent 8-part studio album, a reflection on their compatibility and perceptive artistry.
"What they have lost are the rough edges or, more precisely, they have been able to incorporate them into what they have learned over the past 30 years. The depth …
The Clawed Stone
Matthew Shipp (piano), John Butcher (saxophones) and Thomas Lehn (electronics) in a studio album recorded in France in 2017, a uniquely voiced collective trio of transformative improvisation, Lehn's additions and modifications blending perfectly with Shipp's solid foundations and Butcher's advanced technical expression, for an engrossing and expressive set of recordings.
"They manage to perfectly combine the many elements of the music while always keeping their individual identities intact."- Ro…