International Anthem US Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Spoken word artist and saxophonist Alabaster De Plum has been involved with some fantastic album projects in recent years such as his To Cty & Lee solo album and a collab with Danalogue - a producer best-known for his work with Snapped Ankles and the Comet is Coming - on Total Refreshment Centre. Now he lands on Chicago's revered International Anthem with Gold, which here is presented as a deluxe version on heavyweight gatefold. It's a tender album that "celebrates the spirit of being unconventional" and does so well.

Review: Since turning up in the Windy city a few years ago, spiritual jazz singer, clarinetist and composer Angel Bat Dawid has become a stalwart of Chicago's vibrant avant-garde scene. Here he delivers a debut album that should, if there's any justice at least, propel her towards international superstardom. Both her melancholic clarinet lines and distinctive singing feature prominently throughout, alongside sparse percussion, occasional Afro-futurist synthesizer motifs, harp and guitars - all of which Dawid plays herself. It's a virtuoso display that more than confirms her status as one of the spiritual jazz scene's most authentic voices.

Review: International Anthem is one of the most adventurous contemporary jazz labels out there. It doesn't pander to new audnices now water down its unwavering jazz intent and deals only in high quality and timeless projects. Next is this, Requiem For Jazz, a 12-movement suite composed, arranged and inspired by dialogue from Edward O. Bland's 1959 film The Cry of Jazz. this wide ranging long player has been overseen by composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid and is something of a treatise on the African-American story. Archive reels from black neighbourhoods in Chicago are cut up with live footage from Sun Ra and his Arkestra among others to make for a mind blowing work.

Review: On first conceiving her latest album There Is Only Love And Fear, Bex Burch jumped into her car and drove eight hours across Europe to Utrecht in November 2021. While experiencing mostly good things on the trip, Burch admitted, "mostly life isn't like that," but "occasionally things just fall into place." An inspired recording process ensued while living between London and Berlin, producing a new folktronic take on domestic music, getting at the "simplicity of life and sound-making" while basking in the prepared creature comforts of the home; a "messy minimalism" of close-up electro-acoustic honesty and quaintness.

Review: In March 2023, composer, arranger, and alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi debuted her commissioned suite, Gratitude, at London's Southbank Centre. Featuring her flagship ensemble seed. in a unique augmented formation alongside turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), the sold-out event marked a milestone. Known for her work with seed. and Kokoroko, Kinoshi's compositional prowess extends across various mediums. Gratitude now showcases her textured and dynamic sound as it traverses from groove-focused modal melancholia to anthemic brass and string themes. Inspired by her mother and her own mental health journey, Kinoshi's creation resonates deeply, reflecting the soul of contemporary Black London with the craftsmanship of legendary jazz arrangers.

Review: International Anthem very quickly solidified its status as one of jazz and experimental music's most interesting labels. It puts out a pretty high amount of releases and next up is Jeremiah Chiu's In Electric Time, which was made on the Vintage Synth Musems's vast collection of classic, rare and staple synthesizers. He set up with no real aims other than to play and see what came out with help from VSM founder and curator Lance Hill. It is a deep dive into experimental soundscapes and intricate compositions with pulsating rhythms and ethereal melodies that ate you into all new realms. Blending elements of ambient, techno, and avant-garde sound seamlessly, this record pushes the boundaries as it explores all new textures and hypnotic rhythms with cutting-edge sound design.

Review: South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze looks into the relationship between time, music and history on this exceptional new album Turbulence and Pulse. This is a debut on this notable jazz label for this artist but those who follow free music closely will be familiar with his work such as his ZUZU debut album Dialectic Soul or last year's offering on Astral Spirits, Out Side Work. This album sees him again work with his core quartet from Dialectic Soul, namely South African musicians Thembinkosi Mavimbela on bass, Robin Fassie on trumpet, and Buddy Wells on tenor sax. It results in a soulful and accessible yet forward-thinking sound.

Review: Back in the summer of 2022, BBC Radio 3 asked fourth world legend and all-round avant-garde musical hero Ariel Kalma to pick artists he'd never met to collaborate with. He chose Jeremiah Chu and Marta Sofia Honer. Following the radio broadcast in the autumn of '22, the trio continued making music together and this is the result: a brilliant, impossible-to-pigeonhole affair that combines snatches of improvised performances from each musician with elements of recordings Kalma made in the 1970s, speech samples, droning tones, ambient electronics and much more besides. It's not jazz, ambient, fourth world or abstract electronica, but something that sits in the fuzzy gaps in between. More importantly, it's sonically superb - a coherent and inspired piece of work that gets the most out of its principle cast of characters.

Review: Rob Mazurek and the Exploding Star Orchestra's Lightning Dreamers is a new and eclectic mix of vignettes for jazz and beat-tronica, with its instrumental oeuvre ranging from brass and analog synths to strings to sampled electronics. In total, the album amounts to a sonic wonderland of boppy brain-ticklers, but that should only go to serve the already extensive reputation of the project's lead brain Rob Mazurek - trumpeter and 'interdisciplinary abstractivist' extraordinaire. Fashioned after a slew of experiences while the on a 3-year trip to Rio Negro, Brazil, this is a metallic and scrapy jazz opus, full of curiosities and odd twist-turns.

Review: The already cult Chicago jazz label International Anthem is back with another essential long player, this time from Carlos Nino & Friends. NiNo like most artists on this label gigs often and plays live in Chicago to plenty of happy fans. Apparently they often ask if he is a shaman such are his magical musical skills. He calls his sound Energetic Space Music and it finds him getting the best out of his collaborators who whom he improvises without preconceived ideas of what might come out the other side. This superb album (I'm just) Chillin' captures some of the results and mixes up energetic drums equally indebted to jazz and electronic funk.

Review: Chicago jazz label International Anthem is serving up this superb new album from Carlos Nino & Friends on standard back wax but also as presented here on limited etheric pink vinyl. Whichever version you get though the music remains of unquestionably high standard. NiNo is a real musical shaman who calls his sound Energetic Space Music - a mix of star gazing jazz, lush broken beat, fresh funk and electronic goodness. It's the result of limitless improvisation with his friends and peers and is a record that will leave you spellbound,

Review: On Rainbow Revisited, accomplished South African pianist Thandi Ntuli teams up with venerable LA sound mystic Carlos NiNo for a series of variations on one of Ntuli's compositions, Rainbow. The sessions took place when Ntuli travelled to Los Angeles for a performance in 2019 - she took up NiNo's invitation to a studio session where they worked through various iterations of the piece with NiNo acting as a creative director. Sensing the spark, they reconvened for a second session and the project simmered for a time, until NiNo found the calling to tie the project together as the exquisite album you can hear today.

Review: While moving from his long-term home Chicago to Los Angeles a few years back, Tortoise member Jeff Parker rediscovered a swathe of old home recordings - "beat projects" built around samples of dusty old jazz tracks. These became the starting point for New Breed, his most expansive solo album for some time. Full of his usual loose and evocative jazz guitar, the set sits somewhere between lo-fi post-rock/jazz fusion, experimental hip-hop, and softly spun electronica. Regardless of style, it's a hugely evocative and entertaining collection of tracks.

Review: Long-serving Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker has made some magical solo albums in recent times, combining his particular take on jazz guitar with chopped-up instrumentation, dusty samples, post hip-hop beats and a large dollop of experimental intent. On Forfolks, his latest missive on Chicagoan imprint International Anthem, Parker flips the script, delivering an octet of solo guitar works that's as varied as it is jaw-droppingly good. Beginning with a piece of layered, cyclical minimalism reminiscent of Reich and Pat Metheny's 'Electric Counterpoint', Parker flits between jazzy interpretations of classic guitar pieces, droning and effects-laden soundscapes, lilting soundscapes, melancholic masterpieces and meditations on a theme.

Review: American DJ, producer and electronic musician Evan Shornstein, AKA Photay, is perhaps best known for his work on labels like the uber-exalted Ninja Tune, highly respected Astro Nautico, and super-good Mexican Summer. And at times (well, on 2022's On Hold), he's worked with telephone hold music samples. Forget all that, though, because here he teams up with the similarly visionary-minded Carlos NiNo for a masterclass in atmosphere and laidback, slick, immersive tones.

It's hard to really put your finger on what's happening with An Offering. In some ways, it's contemporary classical, or at least it makes you feel like you're listening to an orchestra warming up, possibly playing incidental parts to augment some narrative playing out on an audibly large stage. In other ways, this is highly experimental business that occupies a space in a kind of instrumentally-unique ambient world. Jazzy, strange, ethereal, and utterly mesmerising.

Review: International Anthem presents a new album from Resavoir, a project from Chicago-based producer and composer Will Miller. This second outing for the group takes in a wide range of collaborators including Elton Aura, Whitney, Akenya, Lane Beckstrom, Macie Stewart and many more besides. Gliding between head-nodding bedroom beats and luxurious soul jazz, Miller demonstrates the clarity of his creative vision which is as rooted in relaxed musical interaction as it is accomplished instrumentation. Each track serves as a miniature world within itself, full of surprises and hidden depths, whether it's a dreamy vocal joint or a purely instrumental flight of fancy.

Review: Will Miller returns with the second album from his ensemble project, Resavoir. Mixing a love for beat scene production with a background in jazz conservatory training, Miller draws in a huge cast of collaborators to shape out an album draped in dreamy soul-jazz, which veers from sweetly sentimental vocal pieces to instrumental escapism. Alongside Miller's keys and trumpet, there's Lane Beckstrom on bass, Marie Stewart on violin, Akenya Seymour on vocals amongst so very many other talented cats. Brought to you by the always reliable folk at International Anthem, this limited 'dusk cloud' edition of the album captures the smouldering mood of the record perfectly.

Review: International Anthem has become one of the contemporary jazz scenes most crucial labels. It deals in the most cutting edge sounds in the genre as well as offering up fantastic fusions with sounds from the world's hip-hop, R&B and broken beat. Here they look to Charles Stepney for an album that he recorded back in the 1960s in his Chicago basement. He played all the instruments himself and across four sides of vinyl he serves up his so-called and signature "baroque soul" sound with widescreen arrangements, innocent melodies and curious rhythms.

Review: Panama '77 is the debut album from Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villareal, and it lands on a label he's orbited for a little while, International Anthem. Having participated in projects like Dos Santos and Ida Y Vuelta, he's now flying solo with a project described by the label as "a vibrant and verdant suite of multi-textural, jazz-laced psychedelic instrumental folk-funk." We couldn't have put it better ourselves, as Villareal's incredibly intricate percussion skitters around an incredible panoply of productions. It's as though you're taken into the beating heart of the charismatic musician's world hopping between jams, gigs, sessions and skits, riding in the back of his vintage baby blue Merc on 18th Street.

Review: After making some low-key waves with his Panama 77 LP, Daniel Villarreal is back with a unique document which pulls from the same era and mindset, but offers something very different. When in October 2020 he invited Jeff Parker and Anna Butterss to record in the backyard of Chicly Outpost in LA, it was the first jam the three had experienced post-lockdown. Some results from the session made it onto the last record, but now Villarreal has decided to focus squarely on these poignant sessions and pull out some of the finest material for our listening pleasure, and what a pleasure it surely is. Dusky, scratchy and honest, this is stripped down jamming jazz at its best.

Review: Many of the magnificent albums released by Chicago label International Anthem are by menders of the local Windy City jazz scene. Daniel Villarreal is another one to follow in this trend and is a beloved name on the scene who can be heard DJing on almost any night of the week in the city - when he's not playing drums with Dos Santos, Valebol, The Los Sundowns or Ida y Vuelta, that is. Lados B is his new album and a set of improvised tracks played alongside guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss and recorded back in 2022.