The most exciting jazz label – with punk attitude(!) – of recent years is no doubt Chicago-based International Anthem. Chicago Reader summed it up perfectly: “International Anthem brings punk idealism to progressive jazz.” It so happens that IA shares a lot of similarities with the ground-breaking Impulse! label of the ’60s: top productions, cutting-edge music, and a characteristic classy graphic design. It’s no coincidence that inspiring IA artists like Angel Bat Dawid, Irreversible Entanglements, Jaimie Branch, Makaya McCraven, Ben LaMar Gay AND Alabaster dePlume have all already appeared on stage at AB. With the latter and Anteloper, AB surely presents an exquisite double-bill.

 

Alabaster dePlume (uk)

Fair is fair: it took a while, but once you have poet/saxophonist Alabaster dePlume in your head, he becomes an A B S O L U T E addiction. Just take a listen to his superb and mesmerising album ‘The Corner Of A Sphere’, which is highly regarded by contemporary jazz protagonists. Shabaka Hutchings calls him “One of my definite favourite saxophone players from this country” and Gilles Peterson exclaimed that “He absolutely blew my mind”. Following on from his latest (instrumental) album ‘To Cy & Lee’, this spring a successor will appear. For those in doubt, an extra quote from The Guardian: “One of the most thrilling performances we’ve seen this year; a reminder of how vital and adventurous music can be.”

 

Anteloper (= Jaimie Branch x Jason Nazary) (us)

Anteloper is the rousing collaborative project involving trumpetist Jaimie Branch and drummer Jason Nazary. Branch’ albums - ‘Fly or Die I & II’ – were both critically acclaimed by both The New York Times and The Wire. Live, Branch is definitely an experience: exciting, unruly and 100% punk. There have been two albums released under the name Anteloper: ‘Kudu’ and ‘Tour Beats Vol. 1’. Of the former, Rolling Stone wrote: “the duo convincingly bridges woozy psychedelic abstraction and furiously propulsive free funk... fractured beats and peeling, effects-heavy brass suggests a punk-minded update of Miles Davis’ most thrillingly weird Seventies explorations… This is music for serious immersion.”