Chicago Underground Trio
Sun Eaters
"Chicago-based composer, improviser, multi-media artist and underground legend, Rob Mazurek, joins forces with modular-synth maestro and light magician, Alberto Novello for a blacklight invocation that hurls us out into new and uncharted sound-dimensions.
Born of a chance encounter, Alberto Novello and Rob Mazurek's improvised collaboration, Sun Eaters, was recorded in a single afternoon at Dobialab, an experimental artist run space in Northern Italy. Alberto provided a loose rythmic and timbral…
Alternate Moon Cycles
Rob Mazurek’s 'Alternate Moon Cycles' was International Anthem's first release. The incredibly spare single-note-centered cornet, bass and organ chant was recorded to tape at pint-sized Chicago bar Curio as part of a performance series that predates any notion of our label’s existence. Documenting this performance – highly unique even within the depths of Mazurek’s vast catalog – stirred those notions, and soon talks began of releasing the recording on a fresh imprint. Performed by Mazurek with …
Color Systems
Rob Mazurek’s creations, dedicated to these six artists offered to Tomeka Reid, Angelica Sanchez, and Chad Taylor, to interpret freely. A foundation laid for these improvisations in the foursome’s forays into Mazurek’s music with the larger ensemble. Here something becomes distilled. Interaction is direct. The unit is unitary, the dynamics are gently modulated, the sounds are tendered with deliberation love and inter-ensemble generosity.
Nestor's Nest
Rob Mazurek graces the Keroxen Records waves with a genre defying album of field recordings, modular electronics, trumpet harmonies and spirit call chants.
An unstoppable force his first recordings in the early 90’s Rob Mazurek has been at the forefront of experimentation and adventurous improvised music for most of the last 4 decades. The American composer, cornetist, and visual artist has been developing his own style of improvisational music with a myriad of collaborators, too many to list bu…
C6Fe2RN6
*300 copies limited edition* Excited to unveil the self-titled debut record from a new duo of Rob Mazurek & Nick Terry - C6Fe2RN6! The Marfa-based duo's music sprouted from a mutual admiration for each other's visual art (Nick Terry primarily being known for his visual art, but get ready to hear more of his musical work) and eventually turned into regular get togethers to chat and play music. What you hear in C6Fe2RN6 is what happened in Mazurek's Marfa Experimental Studio, haunting and ephemera…
The Recursive Tree
"The Recursive Tree features a rather remarkable trio consisting of John Blum on piano, tenor-saxophonist David Murray, and Chad Taylor on drums. Although the three musicians had never before recorded together, they sound very much like a working trio. The title is inspired by a concept in mathematics that explains the architecture in nature arising from systematic growth over time. This algorithmic expression also illustrates the growth of Jazz through the art form’s incremental expansion of id…
Medea
Duo in the mirror that, in a continuous game of doubling and multiplication, ventures into another world, dense with unexpectedness and vital thrills. Sun Ra and post-rock, as well as Chicago experimentation and echoes of the world of Suzanne Ciani and minimal music, are the hints one can sense while listening to Medea, a journey to the edge and beyond. Star Splitter's new album comes five years after the debut album, a period in which the two artists experimented with the infinite possibilities…
Spectral Fiction
For the first time, a compact version of Rob Mazurek's magisterial Exploding Star Orchestra – Exploding Star Orchestra/Small Unit – commits its music to CD.
Recorded live at Corbett vs. Dempsey's Chicago gallery space in March, 2023, the six-piece band featured Mazurek on trumpet, Tomeka Reid on cello, Damon Locks on voice and electronics, Angélica Sánchez on Wurlitzer, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums. Spectral Fiction consists of two tracks, the deeply exploratory "Equ…
Music for Piano and Modular Synthesizer
Music for Piano and Modular Synthesizer is a suite of compositions utilizing piano, modular synthesizer, piccolo trumpet, launeddas and various other sound devices in order to express certain emotions clear and bright. Resonant Stacks of Energy in shattered Time sent through a specific modular synth patch, emitting sound… corresponding to my own innate qualities of hearing, seeing and feeling. A kind of time Travel Device towards a more Utopian future. I approach the piano and composition in …
New Future City Radio
New Future City Radio is the first duo collaboration of longtime creative partners Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek. In a hyperactive 40-minute, 18-track suite that runs like a boombox mixtape, the two prolific multi-media artists contemplate community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people. These two artists have worked together from the peak days of the late 90s / early 00s Chicago music scene up through the present day, which has seen…
Lightning Dreamers
Lightning Dreamers is new work by composer, trumpeter, interdisciplinary abstractivist and modern music mogul Rob Mazurek, who wrote the music for a compacted version of his long-running Exploding Star Orchestra. A follow-up to the acclaimed 2020 Mazurek/ESO release Dimensional Stardust, the album features guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Damon Locks, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn, among others. It was recorded mostly at the remote Sonic Ranch studios in W…
Instant Opaque Evening (2LP)
An epic second installment from the trio of Mats Gustafsson, David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, nearly 90 minutes of intense live performances from January 2020. They converge here on a wide swath of sounds: expansive free improvs, full-tilt electronics, alt-universe chamber music and spontaneous arrangements of three previously released Grubbs’ songs.
Mind Maintenance (LP)
Meditative moods from the Chicago duo of bassist Josh Abrams and percussionist Chad Taylor. With Taylor on mbira and Abrams on guimbri, instruments from diverse African states, finding a new pairing that moves past world music and jazz into something new, to do with dance, meditation, listening and convergence. Natural Information Society's Abrams has been using the guimbri, a lute-style bass, for years, but it's rarely sounded better than it does here, alongside Taylor's resonant mbira. Taylor …
In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility
Artist and musician Rosa Barba paired up with drummer Chad Taylor for their first duo record, In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility. Documenting a September 2019 performance and installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory, part of an invitation by pianist Jason Moran, the CD's two mesmerizing tracks clock in at over 30-minutes each. Patiently built as collaborative soundscapes, they feature Barba's unorthodox conjoining of cello and film projector in which she uses the celluloid as an…
Some Jellyfish Live Forever
** 2021 Repress ** A great reunion of the Jeff Parker/Rob Mazurek duo – a pair who've only continued to grow strongly in the years since their Chicago Underground classics – and who bring all that sense of energy to play in their music! The sounds here represent the deeper, more mature styles that both musicians have hit – a way of almost being more powerful by being less aggressive – especially from Mazurek, who's got this wonderfully gentle touch on his horn at times – wrapped up in these wave…
Dimensional Stardust
Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortois…
The Underflow
An übertrio drawn from distinct parts of the creative music spectrum, The Underflow was recorded during a sizzling two-night stand in May 2019. In a series of duets and trios, guitarist David Grubbs, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and trumpeter Rob Mazurek met headlong for the first time, converging not only their acoustic and electric instruments, but at times submerging themselves in a tangle of electronics, then emerging into shamanic bell-shaking chant or chest-rattling howl. Ranging from extr…
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1, is a two-part suite based on observations from the desert in and around Marfa, TX. It also explores Rob Mazurek's ongoing fascination with social, psychological, and physiological structures, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The composition includes written music and graphic scores for improvisation.For Desert Encrypts Vol. 1 Mazurek has put together an awe-inspiring new ensemble featuring Kris Davis on piano, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass and Chad Taylor on drums…
Psychotropic Electric Eel Dreams IV
In Spring of 2017, Experimental Sound Studio (ess.org) presented Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV, a four-channel sound composition for the ESS Florasonic sound installation series at Lincoln Park Conservatory, Chicago. The installation was in conjunction with Rob Mazurek's solo exhibition The Shaping Light at ESS's Audible Gallery.What you hear in the Fern Room is Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV by composer, musician, and visual artist, Rob Mazurek. The sounds in this composition were gene…
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge uses visual material to construct sonic architecture. The visuals are one hundred and six still images taken from an experimental video which was initially shot when Rob Mazurek was in residency at Abbaye Royal de Fontevraud, France, 2005. Upon his return from the residency he discovered the camera broken and barely operational other than the fact of being able to extract frame by frame 106 distorted still images and fragmented skipping sound that would on occasion bur…