Macie Stewart announces new album, When The Distance Is Blue

Photo: Shannon Marks

Fluid in a variety of genres, Macie Stewart is as prolific as she is inventive, counting among her accomplishments a multitude of projects and collaborations with artists like Makaya McCraven, Damon Locks, Alabaster DePlume, Bex Burch, Japanese Breakfast, Resavoir, Tweedy, or SZA, to name but a few. The Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter, and improviser announced this week the release of her new album, When the Distance is Blue, which she describes as “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between.”

The album arrives on March 21st through International Anthem, and ahead of it Stewart has shared the lead single ‘Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New’, a beautiful, beguiling and cinematic track. “This piece reminds me of a cross country train ride through different sceneries and landscapes,” says Stewart. “It’s the feeling when you’re witnessing everything pass outside your window, knowing you may never set foot there.”

‘Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New’ comes with an accompanying video filmed and directed by Mikel Patrick Avery and you can watch it below.

Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson & Sam Wilkes team up for collaborative album

Photo: Roman Koval

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is the debut collaborative album from three highly-skilled and established musicians, guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and bassist Sam Wilkes. A match made in heaven, through their various projects the three serve as major forces of the LA new jazz scene. Comprised of 11 instrumental songs, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is the trio exploring “a spacious lyrical curiosity, a jazz-informed take on progressive electro-acoustic chamber music”, as the press release describes. Sprouted from two live shows at ETA, and another session at Uhlmann’s house, the upcoming album’s “compositional restraint feels daring and alluring”.

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes arrives on March 14th through International Anthem and ahead of it they have shared ‘Frica’, an immersive and enthralling track showing off the breadth of the trio’s debut album. Take a listen below.

The Young Mothers unveil video for second single ‘Song for a Poet’

Last November The Young Mothers, the project led by Norwegian born bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, announced the release of their third album, Better If You Let It. Slated for release on February 21st through Sonic Trasmissions, it’s a monumental and majestic effort bound to be one of our favourite records of the year. Following ‘Better If You Let It’, they have unleashed a second powerful and gripping new single called ‘Song for a Poet’. The track is dedicated by the band’s Stefan González to his father, trumpeter Dennis González, who in the early 90’s had travelled to Norway to collaborate with jazz musicians on an album. González comments:

“When The Young Mothers recorded our third studio album in Oslo, Norway during late October and early November of 2022, my Father, world renowned Texan jazz trumpeter Dennis González, had just passed away a little over half a year earlier. In 1993, 29 years prior, he had traveled to Oslo from Warsaw to record an album with some of Norway’s finest musicians of the era: Nils Petter Molvaer, Sidsel Endressen, Pal Thowsen, and Bugge Wesseltoft, the recorded result came out on cd and cassette as an album entitled “Welcome to Us”.

I vividly remember him mapping out this music at home, prior to him traveling to Europe to meet up and record with said musicians. I was 8 years old. I decided on a whim that it would be beautiful if we could pull off some sort of tribute to my Father’s music from his time spent in Oslo.

Me and my gracious bandmates in The Young Mothers (plus haunting spoken word from Klara Weiss and Malwina Witkowska) settled on covering the ever mournful sounding composition “Song for a Poet”. As you can hear, it turned out beautifully, really capturing the melancholic and spiritual qualities that my Father loved about Scandinavian jazz. Fittingly enough this particular track was recorded on Día de Los Muertos, fueled by a surreal feeling of connection and synchronicity to the music and to my Father on his prior Scandinavian musical journeys.”

Accompanying the single release, The Young Mothers have unveiled a video made by Erik Johannessen, and you can watch it below.

Emergence Collective to release new album, Chapel, in February

Photo: Jam Burrito

There’s wonderful news from Emergence Collective, the supergroup comprising a vibrant cast of some of the most masterful improvisers from Sheffield and the North of England. The collective are ready to release the follow up to Fly Tower, which was one of our Album Picks of 2023. Entitled Chapel, the album was captured live at the Samuel Worth Chapel, an intimate venue in the heart of Sheffield General Cemetery. As usual, their music is entirely improvised and informed by the place they play in. The chapel setting steered the collective towards a more ambient and contemplative atmosphere. Emergence Collective also cite various influences, including Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Max Richter and Pharoah Sanders, with the ten members’ shared background in folk, jazz, experimental, early and contemporary classical music tying it all together. Unlike their previous record, which featured two percussionists, the rhythmic parts on Chapel come only from melodic instruments.

Chapel will see the light of day on February 5th through Redundant Span and ahead of it they have share ‘SWC-1’, an utterly beautiful and beguiling track clocking in at over 20 minutes. The single is offered with a live accompanying video and you can watch it below.

ECHT! drop second single ‘Wacky Wave’

Following the heady and intoxicating ‘Highed’, Brussels based futuristic quartet ECHT! have dropped another stomper from their upcoming third full-lengh album Boilerism. Titled ‘Wacky Wave’, the new single is an outlandish, menacing and propulsive track “built on irresistible grooves, fat, deep sounds, and playful melodies that inject the track with a dose of fun”, as the press release describes. Listen to it below and watch out for the release of Boilerism on March 7th through Sdban Ultra.

Alabaster DePlume announces new LP, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, and shares lead single ‘Oh My Actual Days’

We’re as happy as a clam about the freshly announced new album from ingenious and thought-provoking spoken word artist, bandleader, composer, saxophonist and activist Alabaster DePlume. Entitled A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, it follows last year’s EP Cremisan: Prologue To A Blade, which he recorded in Palestine, and his poetry book Looking for my value: Prologue to a blade. Arriving on March 7th through the ever wonderful International Anthem, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole is described as an album of “songs of agency and survival and presence; of confronting life’s pains rather than trying to avoid them; of banishing escapism.”

Speaking about the album’s title, DePlume comments:

“A blade, because a blade is whole, it has forgiven itself, and because it will take a small piece of our opposite, for us to be complete. A blade has marked out these former selves on my hand, a blade made the lines that divine us and the blade is whole. A blade. While I forgive myself, and heal, and lead us in healing. We can only forgive each other once we forgive ourselves. We can only heal each other while we heal ourselves.”

Alongside the album announcement, DePlume has shared the utterly beautiful and delicate lead track ‘Oh My Actual Days’, and an accompanying video directed by artist Rebecca Salvadori. The title refers to a London colloquialism usually used to express surprise or excitement. DePlume adds:

“We can, if we choose, read this phrase as a call to the divinity of the moment we are in. Wherever we are, whatever is happening, it is our own life – a life that is made up of the time (the days – the actual days) that we spend. And we call to this – the only real thing that we have. Our time. Whatever we are experiencing it belongs to us, it is the ‘actual’ moment we are in. And it is divine. This is the introduction to the album.”

Now wrap your ears around ‘Oh My Actual Days’.