SIMULATED PROGRESS

DEMIAN AS A POSTHUMAN

YOUR LIFE FLASHES

Various Artists compilation from Pi Recordings, an independent record label dedicated to the work of the innovative.

CODEBOOK

AND NOW

MEETING

IN WHAT LANGUAGE

TACTILES

MOTHER TONGUE

SONG FOR MY SISTER

SATURN CONJUNCT THE GRAND CANYON

ORGANIC RESONANCE

CRISIS

UP POPPED THE 2 LIPS

ALLOY

2018 release. Starebaby is the upshot of drummer Dan Weiss's long-running dream to bring together some of the most accomplished players on the jazz scene to play music that combines jazz with the power of heavy metal and electronic new music. As with his two critically-acclaimed previous releases - "Fourteen," which was named one of the best releases of 2014 by The New York Times, and "Sixteen: Drummers Suite," - Starebaby is a decidedly original work that is largely without precedence, reflecting the power of conviction coming from a single, brimming wellspring. One of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, Weiss performs with such disparate artists as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Chris Potter, John Zorn and Jen Shyu, evidence of the breadth of his artistry. The music on Starebaby, which features Craig Taborn and Matt Mitchell on keyboards, piano, and electronics, Ben Monder on guitar, and Trevor Dunn on bass, ebbs and flows, surging to thundering swells of foreboding doom before tempering to quiet reflection, finding a deep space where brutal aggression meets ghostly vulnerability.

Xaybu: The Unseen is the sophomore release from Selebeyone, the international avant-rap collective led by saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman, who has been hailed by The New York Times for his "sure-footed futurism" in the realms of modern jazz and contemporary classical music. Comprised of MCs HPrizm and Gaston Bandimic, saxophonists Lehman and Maciek Lasserre, and drummer Damion Reid, their eponymous 2016 debut was hailed as a game-changing synthesis of underground hip-hop, modern jazz and live electronic music that was described by Pitchfork as "legitimately new" and a "revelation." On Xaybu, Selebeyone - which means "intersection" in Wolof - continues to build on it's groundbreaking work with shifting rhythms and state-of-the art sound design, now with a newfound sense of effortless fluidity. The word "xaybu" in Wolof refers to the concept in Islamic mysticism of al-Ghaib - that which is unknowable and unseeable. HPrizm (a.k.a. High Priest, legend of New York's underground hip-hop

Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. Who has collaborated with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Mark Turner, Paul Motian, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Frisell, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Tom Harrell, Hermeto Pascoal, Milford Graves, and Ravi Coltrane. His 2012 release Continuum was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times and Igbo Alakorin: The Singers Grove was voted top Latin Jazz album in the 2017 NPR Jazz Critics Poll. The compositions on Nuna are inspired by the various tributaries of African-diasporic music: jazz, Cuban music, African keyboard traditions, and European piano practices, all filtered through a modernist harmonic lens. Virelles's goal is to explore the full dynamic range of the piano, both technically and sonically with particular emphasis on connecting the sound of folkloric keyboard instruments such as thumb pianos, harps and drums with the concert grand piano, which he achieves purely through touch and pedaling. The album is also a tribute to three of Virelles's most prominent piano mentors who have passed away in recent years: Muhal Richard Abrams, Stanley Cowell, and Barry Harris. As with all of Virelles's projects, Nuna bridges the ancient with the modern, enveloping the listener in a meditative aura of mystery.

Xaybu: The Unseen is the sophomore release from Selebeyone, the international avant-rap collective led by saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman, who has been hailed by The New York Times for his "sure-footed futurism" in the realms of modern jazz and contemporary classical music. Comprised of MCs HPrizm and Gaston Bandimic, saxophonists Lehman and Maciek Lasserre, and drummer Damion Reid, their eponymous 2016 debut was hailed as a game-changing synthesis of underground hip-hop, modern jazz and live electronic music that was described by Pitchfork as "legitimately new" and a "revelation." On Xaybu, Selebeyone - which means "intersection" in Wolof - continues to build on it's groundbreaking work with shifting rhythms and state-of-the art sound design, now with a newfound sense of effortless fluidity. The word "xaybu" in Wolof refers to the concept in Islamic mysticism of al-Ghaib - that which is unknowable and unseeable. HPrizm (a.k.a. High Priest, legend of New York's underground hip-hop

To celebrate saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill's career retrospective at the 2024 Big Ears Festival, Pi Recordings is proud to release both Volumes I & II of This Brings Us To together in a limited-edition double vinyl set. Featuring his long-running band, Zooid, the two volumes were originally released in 2009 and 2010 even though the music was all recorded at a single session. They were his first releases in eight years, longer than any hiatus in his career, a time that allowed for the gestation of what was to become Threadgill's signature intervallic system of composition and group improvisation that ultimately won him a Pulitzer Prize for his work In for a Penny, In for a Pound. The original albums were voted the #2 and #5 best releases of the year by The Village Voice Jazz Critics' Poll, about which NPR said "The jazz world is coming to realize that Threadgill is a true idiosyncratic great... This Brings Us To staggers and lurches and creates dissonances, and it still brings the mad-scientist funk." Remastered for vinyl by Threadgill's long-time guitarist and producer Liberty Ellman and housed in a gatefold sleeve with archival photos of the band, the release focuses attention on an important turning point in the career of one of music's great iconoclastic masters.

Thisness is guitarist Miles Okazaki's third album for Pi Recordings with his band Trickster. It is a sequel to The Sky Below, which was described by Allmusic as "an umbrella of labyrinthine lyricism, full of mischief and delight as a harmonic foundation," and by Point of Departure as "overflowing with energy, and elegant despite it's complexity." The critical success of that album and WORK, an ambitious recording of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, helped land Okazaki atop the Rising Star Jazz Guitarist category in the Downbeat Critics Poll. For the new album, Okazaki has created a platform to improvise that emphasizes non-linear flow between musical ideas. Rather than a fixed book of compositions, the music is comprised of various themes connected by hubs that Okazaki describes as akin to traffic circles. Through hidden musical cues, the leader signals when the music is approaching the transition point and which exit path to take. Trickster features the rhythm section of bassist Anthony Tidd, and drummer Sean Rickman, who provide an elastic foundation, hurtling and tugging on the ever-present groove. Keyboardist Matt Mitchell and Okazaki together are a marvel of cohesion: Their constant weaving of contrapuntal, labyrinthine lines astound with their nimble precision. Despite all the obvious complexity, the playing feels effortlessly in service of the music rather than pointlessly dazzling. The wonder lies in their journey, with beautiful new vistas opening with each turn in the road.

CRIES FROM THA GHETTO

PolyTropoi / Of Many Turns is the highly-anticipated new release from influential saxophonist / composer Steve Coleman. Comprised of two live sets recorded during a tour in France, it features his band Five Elements, with long-running partners Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sean Rickman on drums, with new addition Rich Brown on bass. Popmatters said of his 2021 release Live at the Village Vanguard, Volume II (Mdw Ntr) "The tides of his creativity continue to swell, change, surge... It is, actually, a refraction of culture and tradition that includes James Brown and Public Enemy, Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Kanye West. It's art infused with all that information, and it challenges us simultaneously." Recorded in concert in Paris and Voiron, the performances are raw, relying on spontaneous conversions of rhythmic and tonal shapes that weave musical figures into continuous movements. A highly visual composer and improvisor, Coleman has recently drawn inspiration from following the logical chains of amino acids, inventively imbuing them with musical information. Acting on their collective, mysterious whim, the band takes the audience through exhilarating pivots and swerves based on some secret, enigmatic internal logic. It is collective improvisation of the highest order.

Mesmerism is drummer and MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey's critically-acclaimed program of jazz standards featuring his swinging trio with pianist Aaron Diehl (Cecile McLorin Salvant) and bassist Matt Brewer (SF Jazz Collective). Originally self-released in 2022 by Sorey in a small pressing, the album nonetheless gained wide critical acclaim, with rave reviews in Pitchfork, NPR, Downbeat, JazzTimes and The Wall Street Journal, who called it "far more than an exercise in nostalgia; it advances contemporary trends." The release was voted #4 album of the year in the influential Francis Davis Jazz Poll of over 150 critics. Quite unlike Sorey's other works, which tend towards the cutting-edge, Mesmerism is a happy return to his musical roots: the joy of improvising over songs from the Great American Songbook as well as by some of his other favorite composers and practitioners of the art, including Bill Evans, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Paul Motian.