rogueart jazz
Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Swell, Rob Mazurek, Matana Roberts, Chad Taylor, Matt Bauder, Jason Adasiewicz, Kevin Drumm, Matthew Lux, Mauricio Takara, Guilherme Granado, John Herndon, Mike Reed, Damon Locks.
CD 1 – Exploding Star Orchestra featuring Roscoe Mitchell. Matter: Sixty-Three Moons of Jupiter | CD 2 – Rob Mazurek – Solo Electronic Works
Rob Mazurek: direction, cornet (CD 1), electronics (CD 2), compositions | Roscoe Mitchell: alto & soprano saxophones | Nicole Mitchell: flutes & voice | Matana Roberts: alto saxophone | Matt Bauder: tenor saxophone | Steve Swell: trombone | Jason Adasiewicz: vibraphone & tubular bells | Kevin Dumm: electronics | Matthew Lux: bass guitar | Mauricio Takara: cavaquino & percussions | Guilherme Granado: samplers & marimba | John Herndon: drums | Mike Reed: drums | Chad Taylor: drums | Damon Locks: voice
All compositions by Rob Mazurek
Exploding Star Orchestra (CD-1) recorded live on May 9th 2009 by Egidio Conde at SESC Vila Marina, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Additional recording by Greg Norman on January 11th 2011 in Chicago, USA. Mixing (CD-1): Helder Velasquez Smith. Mastering (CD-1 & 2): Jean-Pierre Bouquet, L’Autre Studio, Vaires-sur-Marne, France. Lithographs: Rob Mazurek. Liner notes: Alexandre Pierrepont. Photographs: Paulo Borgia. Cover design: Max Schoendorff. Cover realisation: David Bourguignon. Producer: Michel Dorbon
the two litographs: MATTER ANTI-MATTER 1 and MATTER ANTI-MATTER 2 have been done by Rob Mazurek on March 2013 (20 ex. on velin de Rives) at URDLA, Villeurbanne, France. Both lithographs are 3D; reproductions are included in the albums. When orderd on our website, 3D glasses will be send as well.
Tracklist: 1. Lo and Volcanic (CD 1) (3:31) 2. Europa (CD 1) (7:18) 3. Ganymede and the Ice Parade (CD 1) (5:25) 4. Callisto the Bear (CD 1) (8:29) 5. Himalia a Metaphor for Joe Frazier (CD 1) (5:15) 6. Almathea is Red (CD 1) (8:14) 7. Elara Beneath the Underground (CD 1) (6:43) 8. Pasiphae Gives Birth to the Minotaur (CD 1) (4:24) 9. Cryogenics After the Land of Spirals (CD2) (17:55) 10. Pondering the Hidden Light (CD2) (3:24) 11. Stalking the Spectrum of Inevitable (CD2) (17:04) 12. Last Breath on the Forgotten Planet (CD2) (1:07) 13. Ascension Dream Phoenix (CD2) (8:48)
EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA SAO PAULO, May 2009. From left to right: R. MITCHELL, G. GRANADO, M. BAUDER, M. ROBERTS, S. SWELL, C. TAYLOR, R. MAZUREK, M. Lux, N. MITCHELL, D. LOCKS, J. ADASIEWICZ. Hidden: K. DRUMM, M. TAKARA, J. HERNDON, M. REED | Photo by Paulo Borgia
Moons are Seeds
Let me say that again. It’s all a question of scale. Matter that hammers and is hammered, motion created. Matter, the large motions, motions forcing spaces like bolts, star, planet and satellite motions like shoulder motions, like the tides’ orchestral motion, of flux and reflux of an orchestra with its head in the clouds, with the chopping down of its three or sixty-three drummers. A feast. An orchestral mass with the density of a telluric planet, a cohesive motion at almost every turn. Antimatter, on the other side, on the other disc, the other sphere, and there, the tiniest contact, the tiniest palpation, the tiniest wag, from a lone man at the heart of a gaseous planet, a jack-of-all-trades, penetrating all, examining the influence of light on sounds, their refractive index, their transition to vapor. Matter or antimatter, everything is out of proportion with Rob Mazurek’s music; it is larger than nature, it has no other choice but to be so, to tell the truth. Must everything really be colossal and euphoric? The answer is yes: everything must be colossal, and euphoric.
Rob Mazurek: “Information is only information unless you experience it. When you experience it, it turns into a kind of knowledge, right?”
Rob Mazurek and Damon Locks | Sao Paulo, May 2009 | Photo by Paulo Borgia
Can you imagine life, or lack of life, which of course is a form of life, on any of Jupiter’s sixty-three satellites (actually sixty-seven according to latest findings)? The demographic growth of celestial bodies has no boundaries. One day, we will notice there is a satellite for every man and woman, maybe more, and that these satellites gravitate around our heads like souls or pets, or not. Never leave your home without your satellites. As far as I know, you may be one of the four Galilean moons discovered during the seventeenth century by the famed astronomer, by you, yourself, long before the satellite Themisto was discovered in 1975, then lost from sight, than rediscovered in the year 2000. How can we lose a celestial body, then find it again? Can you lose yourself and find yourself again when you listen to this music?
First noticed in December 2010, a colossal and euphoric storm appeared at a latitude of 33 degrees north on the gaseous giant, and began moving westward, leaving in its trail a whirling vortex. Thus it rotated around the planet, completely enveloping it, until the head of the storm met with its tail, in June 2011. That is when it began to disintegrate. On August 28th, after 267 days of being active, the storm finally died down. In a way, the storm self-destructed by turning on itself, against itself, but scientists still don’t quite understand the phenomenon.
What does this have to do with you and the music? With the life you are leading, whirling around yourself and others, sometimes through them, sometimes enveloping them completely, by entering and exiting your home, their home, your body, their body, which is a celestial body in its own way, a hand to hand celestial body. Wasn’t the Exploding Star Orchestra created in 2005 in order to gather shattered pieces of a single celestial and musical body, Chicago, its satellites here present, the inhabitants of multi-layered formations successively assembled by Rob Mazurek, the inhabitants of the Chicago Underground, of Isotope 217, of Mandarin Movie, of Sound Is Quintet, of Starlicker, of the Pulsar Quartet, of the Skull Sessions? To gather them again on May 8th and 9th 2009 at Sao Paulo’s Vila Mariana, on the satellite and with the inhabitants of the Sao Paulo Underground, and with a distant inhabitant of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a grandmaster of gravitational fields.
Roscoe Mitchell: “I enjoy music where no one is responsible for keeping it going… where things can shift. Anybody can be the root. Ensembles building orchestral textures inside of an improvisation…”
Roscoe Mitchell | Sao Paulo, May 2009 | Photo by Paulo Borgia
Antimatter once more, embark on a round-trip to the other side, the other disc, or the other sphere, where suddenly everything takes and loses form, trapped in the life-harboring sound motes. A dusty water sprays the body of the manipulating man who stands at the heart of the gaseous planet, streaming electronically. There is much more to be discovered about the states of matter.
Out of the 63 or 67 satellites around Jupiter, fifty or more of them were discovered since the year 2000 (since the “elections” of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, since the busting of the Internet bubble and the market launch of the first USB key: it’s all a question of scale, right?). We are told their orbits are far apart, eccentric, inclined and retrograde. That they do as they please, heads in the clouds, that they dance. It’s your turn to dance. You understand you are a moon in all its phases simultaneously. Let me say that again. Anybody can be the root, says Roscoe Mitchell. Everything is seed, says Novalis. Ascension Dream Phoenix, says Rob Mazurek. A feast. — Alexandre Pierrepont (translation Romain Tesler)
Double CD version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)
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When he was under contract with Arista in the 1970s, reedman Anthony Braxton discovered that he was able to slip under the rug the release of some of his less commercially viable works, such as the mammoth For Four Orchestras (1978), by alternating them with more traditional quartet material. While electro-acoustic composer and cornetist Rob Mazurek won’t be pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes at the Paris-based Rogue Art imprint, he has achieved a similar outcome by coupling two opposite ends of the sonic spectrum on the double CD set Matter Anti-Matter.
For the disc likely to garner the most interest, Mazurek offers Sixty-three Moons of Jupiter, the fifth outing by his Exploding Star Orchestra featuring AACM stalwart Roscoe Mitchell as part of a 15-piece aggregation of talent from Chicago and Brazil. Recorded live in 2009 in Sao Paolo, this edition of the band forges a dense, percussion heavy sound, leavened by intersecting riffs, muttering electronics, choppy electric guitar and sporadic vocal interludes. Groove-based structures establish a good time celebratory feel, at times recalling antecedents such as Chicago-era Sun Ra.
Mazurek fashions primarily an ensemble music from which occasional solos reach escape velocity during the suite like series of continuous performances. The leader’s cornet takes pride of place above an airy groove on steroids on “Europa” while an uncredited bass clarinet (probably Matt Bauder) holds forth in sinewy splendor amid a juddering tribal shuffle on “Callisto the Bear.” With such an extensive horn arsenal on hand, special guest Mitchell can be hard to pick out and doesn’t appear more prominent than some of the other reeds, although his angular intervals pierce the exchange which emanates from drifting atmospherics on “Almathea is Red.” Although the titles are inspired by the moons of Jupiter, the lyrics by Damon Locks don’t supply a matching shared theme, as they range so wide as to even include an account of boxer Muhammad Ali’s clash with the titular fighter on the lilting “Himalia a Metaphor for Joe Frazier.”
The second disc couldn’t be more different, comprising as it does solo electronic works by Mazurek, which contain neither meter or melody. Rather each of the five cuts in the 48-minute program features slow moving ambient soundscapes. “Cryogenics After the Land of Spirals” revolves around a shimmering white noise with metallic overtones out of which washes of other textures emerge, invoking analogies such insect like hums, radio signals from another galaxy, and digital raindrops. Abrupt shifts between modes characterize several of the pieces, although “Pondering the Hidden Light” remains in the territory of a wafting organ chug decorated by what might be synthetic birdsong. “Ascension Dream Phoenix” builds up to a crescendo of white noise evoking a massive waterfall, before fading to silence. Common ground between the discs proves hard to find, but that likely misses the point in this Janus-like portrait of Mazurek’s concerns.