News

• NATURAL INFORMATION SOCIETY -PERSEVERANCE FLOW-

  Posted: 9/4/2025

  Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS). After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside. 2025-10-24 release date. Pre-order premium audiophile vinyl edition here, digital files at eremite records bandcamp. CD edition & Europe LP edition available from our partner Aguirre records.

• ONILU

  Posted: 3/26/2025

  "Summit meeting" is a term that has all but fallen out of use in music commentary, but it is applicable to the eponymous debut of Onilu, the trio of Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, & Chad Taylor. (Onilu is Yoruba for drummer). For over a half-century, Chambers has brought an incisive compositional sensibility to percussion-centric music; & while most of the eight compositions are credited to Sonic Liberation Front leader Diehl &/or the nearly ubiquitous Taylor, Chambers' gravity centers the proceedings. While there is abundant energy & exhilaration throughout the album, there is a current of palpable solemnity that, arguably, can best be mustered in tandem with an esteemed elder like Chambers. There is a gentle seesawing between pieces rooted in traditional materials like "Nyamaropa," a piece that first appeared on the Nonesuch Explorer classic now title Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira - Traditions of the Shona People, & recently composed works like Taylor's "Mainz," a piece which Jeff Parker has recorded two notable contrasting versions. Even when the intensity of the material approaches a boil, as on "A Meta Onilu" when all three man a drum kit, each stroke seems prescribed by ancient protocol. With each listening, not only do the layers in every piece vibrate more vividly, but each piece becomes more entwined with the others. Onilu is unassumingly profound. It does not shout from the ramparts, nor does it shake its fist at the oppressors. It relays a message that has been passed down through the centuries, despite it being waylaid by the middle passage & repressed through enslavement & its aftermath. It is a message of determination & ultimate conviviality. It is a recording that meets the current moment.
  —Bill Shoemaker, pointofdeparture.org.

  order Onilu on vinyl here