photo credit matias corral 

10 V orlando  timucua white house  4tet

11 V montreal  casa del popolo  4tet

13 V louisville  dreamland  4tet

14 V austin  private event  4tet

15 V austin  the north door  4tet

16 V los angeles the echoplex  4tet

17 V ojai  oyes theater  4tet

18 V san francisco  the chapel  4tet (with patrick wolff 6tet)

19 V portland  mississippi studios  4tet

21 V chicago  art institute of chicago  4tet & duo 

22 V detroit  trinosophes  duo

23 V cleveland  beachland ballroom  duo

24 V cincinnati  urban artifact  duo

25 V philadelphia  fringe arts  duo

27 V toronto  velvet underground  duo

"At the Amoeba Music flagship store in Berkeley, Calif., the 'jazz cigarette' was more popular than jazz itself, with news that the record store would soon replace its jazz room with a marijuana dispensary. Despite such news, 2015 saw jazz reassert itself as the ambitious and protean American music par excellence, its greatest practitioners reaching stunning new heights. Pianists Brad Mehldau and Vijay Iyer, alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams, the unslottable reed player Matana Roberts and the aforementioned Washington released some of the year’s most dynamic music, jazz or not." -- Andy Beta

magnetoception is pitchfork's number two experimental record of 2015! marc masters writes "As Joshua Abrams explained to us earlier this year, Magnetoception was the result of a challenge he took upon himself: to see what his ensemble Natural Information Society could do with longer, more gradually developing songs. The concept may seem like overkill—Abrams already made very patient music—but in execution it turned out to be glorious. Stretching out his elemental loops, Abrams discovers new levels of mood and tone; his pieces seem to escape time completely. His comrades lock directly into that meditative mindset, wrapping wiry guitar, rotating percussion, and other accenting elements around the hypnotic cycles of Abrams’ moroccan lute known as the guimbri. The result is a perfection of Abrams’ sound, a magnification of his bandmates’ talents, and an inflation of his ideas into a realm beyond musical space-time. That may sound lofty, but Magnetoception deserves all the superlatives it inspires."

congratulations to joshua abrams & his natural information society! the wire magazine rated magnetoception number three among the fifty best releases of 2015, all genres. magnet magazine rated magnetoception number one jazz/improv recording of 2015.
 
digital downloads of the album are available through i-tunes & e music. inventory is low on vinyl copies & our distributor's vinyl is sold out. due to the need to recoup the project's high production costs, the remaining vinyl is only available direct from eremite.
 
forthcoming releases on eremite...
 
mte-59/60 TEST always coming from the love side two CD set. the finished edition is resting in our cave until january 2016.
 
quality issues & long turn-around times at pressing plants in 2015 inflicted preposterously lengthy delays upon eremite's next vinyl releases, mte-65 jeff parker, slight freedom, & mte-66 byron morris & gerald wise, unity. for instance: lacquers for the parker album have been re-cut three times & we now await a fourth test pressing. but i promise to hit you, in fact brutalize you with these musics just as soon as eremite's high standards for quality-freak vinyl productions are achieved for these projects.
 
"any / who live / stand / alone in / one / place together" (kenneth patchen).
 
best wishes to all for 2016.

pitchfork reviews joshua abrams music for life itself & the interrupters.