(A RANDOM SAMPLING OF) the International Anthem Recording Company
I often think about that time on The Trap Set with Joe Wong podcast when guitarist Jeff Parker called Chicago “the creative music capital of the world.” Even though I’ve lived here in Chicago for almost 25 years, and have been a first-and-second-hand witness to a very large amount of creative music happening constantly throughout, this claim sounded a bit hyperbolic. But maybe that’s just my humble Midwestern nature, because every time I actively try to challenge Parker’s statement, I keep thinking . . . maybe he’s right? If Chicago isn’t, what city is? You could say New York City of course, but Chicago gives musicians more space and economic freedom. You could say London, but . . . see NYC. You could probably say a few other cities too, all of them very happening, but are any of them quite as happening as Chicago? And as centrally located? I don’t know for sure, but I have a pretty strong feeling, and when I listen to (almost) every release (so far) on the International Anthem label on tech-giant theft-shuffle, I feel it even more. So many of these artists are from Chicago, or came up in Chicago and then moved elsewhere, and the label is based in Chicago too. And the music is consistently fascinatingly creative, while representing all sorts of great musical traditions, Chicago traditions as well as national and international traditions, and usually several of them at once. Jeff Parker himself has a few killer releases on the label (even though he hasn’t lived in Chicago for over 10 years), and this fourth edition of A RANDOM SAMPLING OF… has been a fun way to think about his assertion, as well as dig even deeper into the music of this eminently deep record label.
Dos Santos “Cages and Palaces” from City of Mirrors (2021). One of the less explicitly “jazz” artists on the label, Dos Santos are a world music rock band whose members come from from Chicago, Texas, Peoria, Panama, and beyond, playing an eclectic and creative style of music with Spanish language lyrics, music that remains something like indie-rock/post-rock (which Chicago also played a big part in developing) as it smoothly combines keyboard orchestration, auxiliary percussion, surf guitar, garage rock organ, and varying Latin American styles like cumbia, chicha, salsa, and huapango huasteco (all mentioned in this 2021 Chicago Reader profile of the band) to perform fairly unclassifiable open-ended uptempo balladry.
“The Knew Untitled” by Makaya McCraven from In These Times (2022). My introduction to the IARC label was in fact the music of Makaya McCraven, when his double LP In the Moment was released almost ten years ago and I listened to it over and over again on Bandcamp for a month straight. “Jazz Thing” by Gang Starr may have been the penultimate track on the Mo’ Better Blues soundtrack way back in 1990, but In the Moment still felt like one of my very first times hearing a crossover concept that wasn’t just jazzy hip-hop, but in fact hip-hop jazz. The inversion is important; while his music is instrumental, and features mostly traditional jazz instruments playing heads and solos, I just don’t think I’ve ever heard McCraven play the traditional swing/shuffle patterns of classic jazz. To me, he’s always building from hip-hop, not jazz swing, which might mean it’s not jazz after all (and I do often wonder what we jazz-loving writers should do with the word “jazz” these days, and if I should be trying to write this entire International Anthem piece without using it at all), even as McCraven has frankly moved more toward jazz, with a series of acclaimed albums like this one In These Times from 2022. Maybe it’s that his music isn’t so much rhythmically jazz, but still very much compositionally jazz. Either way, I still don’t know what to call a piece like “The Knew Untitled”; it does fit in with McCraven’s evolving compositional style, a kind of sustained and mini-orchestrated late-night deep-dark-romantic balladry (and shout out to alto saxophonist Greg Ward, a key contributor to this sound). However, this track with its roiling piano by (I think) Rob Clearfield is more ‘classical’ in its harmony than it is ‘jazz’, and regardless of harmonic classification, “The Knew Untitled” features the usual phalanx of heavy (and oft-Chicagoan) hitters; in addition to McCraven, Ward, and Clearfield, we’ve got Junius Paul, Jeff Parker again, Brandee Younger, Joel Ross, Marquis Hill, Macie Stewart, and Marta Sofia Honer, not to mention a credibly Holdsworthian distorto/legato guitar solo by who I think is Matt Gold. (Jeff Parker is also credited on guitar, and could surely rip like this if he wanted to, but his style strikes me as more clean and less distorto than this, so I’m going with Gold.)
“Theme 002” by jaimie branch from Fly or Die (2017). One of the great tracks from the great first album by one of International Anthem’s absolute greatest artists (RIP). It’s such a memorable track that you wish it had a more memorable title. It might be the greatest single showcase there is for branch’s unique trumpet/cello/bass/drums quartet concept. The titular theme is, I believe, being played by Tomeka Reid’s cello, with groove and melodic support from Jason Ajemian’s bass, and Chicago underground legend Chad Taylor supplying trapkit bounce as only he can (the ongoing snare-rim patter is perhaps the track’s biggest hook). My theory is that branch doesn’t play the titular theme at all, but composed it, and on this recording is simply (and brilliantly, as always) improvising her own brand new hooks and themes over the top of it in real time. Could be wrong about that, but I know I’m right when I say that “Theme 002” is a 21st Century classic at Blastitude HQ and maybe at your house too.
“You Ain’t Never Lied” by Ben Lamar Gay from Certain Reveries (2022). There’s a lot going on with Ben Lamar Gay’s discography and I still don’t understand the full scope of it. He’s a trumpet player, but so much more: vocalist, composer, blues musician, prog-rock musician, and noise musician, just for starters. This track starts out with almost two full minutes of pre-recorded vocals, chopped and looped in early Steve Reichian fashion, eventually joined by wild percussion and live distorted vocal improvisation that extrapolates fearlessly for over six minutes, and indeed sounds like both blues music and noise music at the same time.
“Visitors YT15 - Krupp Steel Condition Pivot” by Alistair DePlume from Gold (2022). Here we’ve got haunting downtown-20th-Century-minimalist-opera femme vox right outta Einstein on the Beach blending with lyrical saxophone (breathy/weepy Lester Young meets loose/raw widest-vibrato Albert Ayler), and that blending further with shifting synth chords and rhythmic African string pulse from double bass and cello, the jaimie branch fly or die trumpet/cello/bass/drums quartet concept once again, but augmented by that synth as well as a choir of vocalists and phalanx of percussionists. It never quite locks completely into the endless cosmic trance of Phil Cohran’s African Skies that it may very consciously aspire to, but that itself gives it a free-floating playful charm. DePlume is from Manchester UK and I don’t know much about him, especially after seeing him described as an actual “poet-performer” in this album’s one-sheet, but I definitely dig this track.
“The Negro transforms America’s image of him into a transport of Joy!” by Angel Bat Dawid from Requiem for Jazz (2023). Experimental post-Dilla beat extrapolation and funky side-steppage with spoken word. That’s what I hear when this shuffles up, and I know it’s Angel Bat Dawid speaking the words, but then see it’s from her 2023 album Requiem for Jazz and the whole thing takes on further and further depth. I was already questioning the word “jazz” earlier in this article, but Dawid is doing more than that. This album is not so much a collection of 24 musical compositions as it is a publicly performed gospel/spiritual hush harbor manifesto with 24 bullet points, some of it clear music criticism as well. But digging deeper, I see that the album/manifesto has a different form than that, where each manifesto item is alternated with a sequence from a Catholic requiem mass (Introit, Kyrie eleison, Dies irae, etc), and like the title says the requiem is for jazz itself, which I wonder if Dawid is framing as a requiem for joy itself. That if we are going to revive and continue using the word jazz, it should be to represent not just a popular category of music, but the sheer joy of the Black American body politic itself. The manifesto sequences (like this track) tend to be trip-hoppy spoken-word pieces, and the requiem mass sequences tend to be extremely deep gospel choir vocalizing with piano and string music. A lot of beauty and challenge to take in here, and I/we are just getting started.
“Off Om” by Jeff Parker from Forfolks (2021). Completely solo and relatively recent guitar album by Jeff Parker. Live playing over live looping and a really nice listen, really the same approach as his Slight Freedom solo LP (2016, Eremite), and that he drops into a quartet context with his Jeff Parker ETA IVTet, best heard on the instant classic Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy double LP (2022, also Eremite). This live-over-loop style fits so well in that group, with each of the three other musicians reacting and supporting and answering in real time (Josh Johnson with an alto sax live/loop style of his own), but there are still rich layers here, even as a solo performance, where only one person is reacting only to himself.
“Amanhã É a Gente” by Ben Lamar Gay from Confetti In The Sky Like Fireworks (This Is Bate Bola OST) (2019). Again, the International Anthem label is extremely expansive in its genre delineation. Those former lines of demarcation are now billowing pink, purple, and gray clouds, and you never have to worry that you’re going to be stuck listening to another mere acoustic jazz quartet or quintet doing the head/solo/solo/solo/head swing thing. Like, ever. For example, this Ben Lamar Gay track is a back-masked electro-vocal whatsit that only runs for a minute or two. Granted, it is an album intro, for Confetti in the Sky Like Fireworks, which is Lamar Gay’s official soundtrack to the documentary short film This is Bate Bola (2018, d. Ben Holman & Neirin Jones). The next track “Nos Reunimos Em Fantasias” is fourteen minutes long, almost as long as the film itself, and there are 11 more tracks after that varying in length from 1 to 5 minutes.
“The Hunt” by Makaya McCraven from Universal Beings E & F Sides (2020). Now we’re back into some experimental hip-hop, possibly played for a live audience, with a saxophone improvising a nice wistful sad-sack hook. This is pretty close to that Makaya McCraven In the Moment hip-hop jazz hybrid I was describing above, and probably is McCraven . . . and indeed it is, from his Universal Beings E & F Sides release, a 2020 sequel to Universal Beings (2018). Addendum: that saxophone is by Nubya Garcia, and the track was indeed recorded live, “October 19th, 2017, at Total Refreshment Studios in Stoke Newington, London, UK.”
“Cantiere Orlando” by Hear in Now (Mazz Swift, Tomeka Reid, Silvia Bolognesi) from Not Living in Fear (2017). Now we’re right into a string quartet playing beautiful and delicate but quirky and insistent and even slightly aggravated music. This is the group Hear in Now, which is in fact a string trio (when they’re deep in it, it sounds like it could be a quartet or quintet or who-knows-what-tet) of Tomeka Reid on cello (also with jaimie branch’s fly or die and lots of other IARC things), Mazz Swift on violin, and Silvia Bolognesi on double bass. Only Reid is from Chicago, but Not Living in Fear was convened and recorded in Chicago, and is the kind of music and album that proves to me that Chicago is indeed the creative music capital of the world, especially considering all the previously and currently Chicago-based artists we’ve already randomly sampled. All of this is deeply considered advancement of musical form that brings classical music into jazz, and vice versa, with indigenous musics, folk, soul, gospel, hip hop, noise, and electronic all along for the ride, and all of it absolutely carrying the Chicago torch set ablaze in by the AACM in 1965. (In fact, an argument could be made that the city where the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was founded should automatically be considered the creative music capital of the world.)
“Visions” by Jeff Parker from The New Breed (2016). More experimental and instrumental hip-hop that might also be described as chilled-out lounge jazz, but this time I don’t think it’s actually McCraven, lemme check (yes, if you couldn’t already tell, these random samplings are also often blindfold tests, because I’m taking extended notes about the music before I even note who the artist is, as I’m doing right now) . . . aha, it’s Jeff Parker, from an album released in 2016, well before he began his ETA IVTet concept. I knew it wasn’t McCraven because Parker’s compositional style is a little less ethereal, late-night, and neon-streaked — something a little more punchy and stabby, recorded more drily, more in-the-room than in-a-dream. But I would still include both in this ‘hip-hop jazz’ subgenre I keep talking about.
“Dadada,” “Universal Beings, Pt. 2,” and “Butterss Fly” by Makaya McCraven from Universal Beings E & F Sides (2020). And now I’m digging deeper into the credits of the aforementioned Universal Beings E & F Sides album by Makaya McCraven, and there are three tracks I haven’t even listened to yet that are “recorded January 30th, 2018, at Jeff Parker's house in Altadena, California,” with a group that has McCraven on drums, Parker on guitar, Josh Johnson on alto sax, and Anna Butterss on double bass. This is literally the Jeff Parker ETA IVTet, but with McCraven subbing on drums for Jay Bellerose, and the quartet augmented here with two more pieces, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson on violin and Carlos Niño on percussion. Damn, I need to break shuffle and listen to these tracks right now . . . and they’re cool, but I gotta say it’s a different thing than the ETA IVTet. For being such a great hip-hop drummer, McCraven is less of a hip-hop drummer here than Jay Bellerose went on to be in the IVTet. McCraven is pushing, quickening, and tightening the beat here, where Bellerose keeps it slow and wide-open and fully Dilla-fied.
“Chicago to Texas” by Irreversible Entanglements from Irreversible Entanglements (2017). The opening track on a landmark album, the self-titled debut by Irreversible Entanglements. Now this may also sound hyperbolic, but I’m being serious when I say this is one of the greatest albums of the 21st Century, and certainly of the 2010s, and by one of the greatest bands of the 21st Century. I don’t mean just jazz either, I mean rock too.
“Love Song” by jaimie branch from Fly or Die Live (2021). Thank you shuffle for including another true jaimie branch & IARC classic. I don’t know what to say about this song, except that it’s one of the few songs that jaimie sings lead vocals on, that “it’s a love song for assholes and clowns,” and that this whole album is a great recorded example of what a rousing live performer she was, for those who never did catch one of her shows. (I did, once!)
“The Body is Electric” by Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble from NOW (2021). Locks has been around Chicago jamming hard for a good 30 years with Trenchmouth, the Eternals, and more, and it’s amazing to see him make yet another artistic leap with his relatively recent Black Monument Ensemble. This is a great and highly representative track from what I believe is their second album, a 10-minute epic with a driving African percussion groove and beautiful/spiritual anthemic chorale vocals (“the body is electric/alive with life” sung by six voices). Not to mention Angel Bat Dawid jamming very hard on clarinet, and Ben Lamar Gay plays cornet and melodica on here too.
“Melo Deez From Heab’N” by Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood from Live (2020). Speaking of Angel Bat Dawid, this time as a bandleader just killing it, and in the same intense and joyful live spirit as the jaimie branch “love song” we just listened to (Dawid also singing super-fun sassy sardonic lead vocals).
“borealis dancing” by jaimie branch from Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)) (2023) Another one by jaimie branch, from the posthumous 2023 album Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)). Another very intentional branch composition, an instrumental with clear heads and solos, but once again it isn’t traditional swing jazz, and almost in a pop style, almost like one of her vocal tracks like “prayer for amerikkka” and of course “love song” but with the trumpet doing the singing. Hell of a funky deep-pocket groove too via Chad Taylor on drums, and once again, I really think the International Anthem aesthetic might always completely eschew traditional swing, and that there might not be a single traditional swing backbeat on this entire random sampling. I thought it was just Makaya McCraven, but it’s all of the drummers on International Anthem, it’s Taylor, it’s Tcheser Holmes, it’s Carlos Niño, Daniel Villarreal, Asher Gamedze, Tom Skinner, on and on.
“Search Bar Hi Hat” by SML from Small Medium Large (2024). One of the newest releases to come up so far in this random sampling, and I have a feeling I might be digesting this debut SML album for awhile. I was initially excited that this might sound like another continuation of the ur-text that is the Jeff Parker ETA IVTet, even if it only includes half of that trio (bassist Anna Butterrs and saxophonist Josh Johnson). But the other three members of SML who are not from the IVTet (Jeremiah Chiu on synth, Booker Stardrum on percussion, and Gregory Uhlmann on guitar) make it a completely different concept, and all the fresher for it. So fresh that, like I said, I’m still digesting it, because this is not traditional music, even as it draws on multiple traditions like ancient indigenous African music, Bush of Ghosts post-punk trance-funk, and hip-hop-always-hip-hop. If you heard Butterss’s sparklingly eclectic 2022 solo album Activities, you’ll know a little more what to expect, but that was even its own third unique concept, also not pop, rock, nor R&B, but barely jazz at all either. (I think I’m sensing a theme.)
“Step on Step” by Charles Stepney from Step on Step (2022). Aww, very glad this beautiful archival release from 2022 made the sampling. Charles Stepney was one of the great Chicago music figures of the 20th Century until his untimely death in 1976, and even if he had a relatively anonymous impact as a behind-the-scenes producer/arranger rather than as an out-front performer, he was a great pianist/instrumentalist and writer of themes, changes, and hooks, as this album of never-before-released 1970s home-recorded demos proves. It’s also a sweet early drum machine album, the rather more stately Chicago version of that extremely funky solo-recorded stuff Sly Stone was doing out on the West Coast. As for this song, the album’s title track, if it doesn’t hit your Sunday-afternoon sweet-spot, well, I don’t know what will . . .
“Visit Croatia” by Alabaster DePlume from To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. One (2020). Another track from DePlume, this one from a different album than our previous sampling of DePlume’s Gold, the 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. One. I immediately recognize his pronounced exaggero-Lester/Ayler saxophone tone, and I really like it, especially on an extremely slow and exquisitely drawn out jazz dirge such as this one “Visit Croatia.” There’s a million people credited on the album, but this sounds like a pretty stripped-down trio or quartet to me, though with no drums, I think a guitar, and maybe another stringed instrument in addition to the arco double bass.
“The Bioluminescence of Nakedness” by Ben Lamar Gay from Certain Reveries (2022). Killer post-Ra solo-synth space loneliness, joined by free jazz drumming (trad kit but still no trad swing!) and those wordless vocals that I think I’m hearing a lot from Gay as we proceed throughout this random sampling. Come to think of it, I heard those vocals on another track from this same album, Certain Reveries. Maybe this record, which I haven’t listened to in full, is a wordless-vocal noise/blues manifesto of sorts? I’m still not a whole lot closer to a full understanding of the compositional and performance aesthetics of Ben Lamar Gay, but the legend grows regardless.
“This Woman’s Work” from Force Majeure by Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger (2020). Oh man, this is sounding like a straight-up spiritual jazz cover of “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. The original was a semi-secret late-night lights-out fave of mine circa 1990, and this cover version, played as a duet by Brandee Younger on harp and Dezron Douglas on double bass, fits that same bill, as does this whole album of harp/bass duets, Force Majeure from 2020. Thing is, it would make a great Sunday morning album too, because it’s cozy hearth-and-home music, probably because it grew out of duo concerts by this married couple that they livestreamed from their New York home during pandemic lockdown.
“Sole Party” by Dos Santos from Logos (2018). Have we gone full circle, back to another track by Dos Santos, whom we started with? This is a different release though, from three years before the City of Mirrors LP, and maybe just a little more electric guitar forward. It also ends with a pretty intense poetry recitation over its loping groove. They really are kind of the only “rock” band on the label, aren’t they? Even though they’re not exactly rock, just as the rest of the label is not exactly jazz.
“Aunt Lola and the Quail” by Ben Lamar Gay from Open Arms to Open Us (2021). Okay one more, because it’s amazing. Crazy groove here, drums and bass doing a new concept for sure (drums sound live, bass may not be), with wild electronics splattering and sputtering over the groove, and then a wild ensemble horn line starts winding through as windingly as the super-stretched-out head from Ra’s “Saturn” did lo those many years ago . . . and also in Chicago, the (ahem) creative music capital of the world.
Thanks for sampling along with me, and please check out the International Anthem website and Bandcamp. I now bid you adieu with this killer live performance of “The Body is Electric” by Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble, the track we sampled above: