International Anthem

Described as a joyfully irreverent psychedelic fantasia of folklore, free jazz, and avant-garde Blues, Chicago composer, improviser, instrumentalist, and musical folklorist Ben LaMar Gay announces his new album and shares the title track single, Yowzers.

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is proof that you don’t have to forsake traditional aesthetic notions of melody to make something experimental…this is music deep and alluring enough to get lost in and sparse enough to find yourself in. 

Alabaster DePlume’s new LP, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, is both a soother, a coping mechanism and a healer. This one might be the State of the Nation address that truly resonates.

Macie Stewart’s ‘When the Distance is Blue’ feels even more cerebral than her debut, more improvisational, and more rooted in landscape. But for all the meditativeness and all the improvisation, there is a single-minded artistry at work behind these pieces. 

Recorded in May 2024 at 2220 Arts + Archive, Los Angeles, California, watch Carlos Niño & Friends performing their 2024 album Placenta – a work of warmth and humanity and unruly, anarchic joy that’s perfectly captured on stage.

Featuring four of America’s most potent musicians, all performing at the top of their game, Jeff Parker’s ‘The Way Out of Easy’ might just be the best jazz album of 2024. Another win for the ever-reliable Chicago label International Anthem.

While Small Medium Large, the exploratory kosmische jazz debut from SML (Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum & Gregory Uhlmann) contains unexpected multitudes, even at its most complex moments, it remains bright and airy, reflecting an impressive and sincere unity to their playing.

A concept album about the physical and spiritual aspects of birth and parenthood, Carlos Niño & Friends’ “Placenta” is a work of warmth, humanity, and unruly anarchic joy, with Niño acting as a catalyst through which the swell of creativity can be filtered and condensed.

On ‘The Closest Thing to Silence’, Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer fearlessly connect, creating a remarkably coherent album that offers exciting new narratives.

Listening to ‘gratitude’, the latest album from Cassie Kinoshi’s seed., requires some investment of both mind and spirit. Made from the raw materials of Kinoshi’s life, gratitude overflows with harmony and clarity.

“There is Only Love and Fear” is a wholly distinctive musical language, a jazz-inflected improvisational world music that quotes from minimalism without ever being in thrall to its history. When you consider that this is Bex Burch’s solo debut, that’s quite some feat.

Watch the insightful and fascinating mini-documentary on composer, producer, percussionist, and instrument maker Bex Burch, whose debut solo album, There is only love and fear, is released this month on International Anthem.