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LP
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WJLP 065LP
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LP version. Amirtha Kidambi has long affirmed that the role of music in the act of protest is pivotal. For an artist and activist who once cultivated community at defunct Brooklyn spaces such as Death By Audio and the Silent Barn, the 2020 protests became a place to publicly amplify the underground. That subversive spirit of collective dismantlement and reassemblage serves as the catalyst for the longform cuts that comprise New Monuments, Kidambi's third full-length recording with her band Elder Ones. As their leader writes in its accompanying liner notes, the title summons the "tearing down of old colonial and racist monuments and vestiges of power, in order to build new ones to the martyrs of struggle." Tracked at Figure 8 Studios above Prospect Park, the album is the work of an artist concerned with numerous interconnected sites of global conflict: among them, the farmers' protests over agricultural reforms in India, the evolution of the Iranian women's rights movement following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the continuous crescendoing call for Palestinian liberation. This time, the Elder Ones collective consists of saxophonist Matt Nelson, cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Eva Lawitts, and drummer Jason Nazary -- all four of whom contribute their share of electronic textures and electroacoustic treatments. As a document of dissent, these four compositions give proof that improvisation is instrumental in the realm of resistance. Kidambi's voice hovers over a scorched sonic landscape equally informed by Black American liberation music, the devotional fervor of Indian Carnatic, and the unleashing of an inner scream listeners might associate with hardcore punk and harsh noise. The quintet then locks into a polyrhythmic pulse that conjures up the ghosts of free jazz past and present; throughout its runtime, there are flashes of Albert Ayler's love cry, Don Cherry's eternal rhythms, Alice Coltrane's ecstatic spirituality, and the fortissimo fearlessness of Kidambi's late friend and collaborator Jaimie Branch, to whom the album is partly dedicated. Above all, New Monuments is a call to action with nothing left unsaid: it demands that the drive towards change should not only be seen, but heard.
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LP
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WJLP 065X-LP
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LP version. Red color vinyl. Amirtha Kidambi has long affirmed that the role of music in the act of protest is pivotal. For an artist and activist who once cultivated community at defunct Brooklyn spaces such as Death By Audio and the Silent Barn, the 2020 protests became a place to publicly amplify the underground. That subversive spirit of collective dismantlement and reassemblage serves as the catalyst for the longform cuts that comprise New Monuments, Kidambi's third full-length recording with her band Elder Ones. As their leader writes in its accompanying liner notes, the title summons the "tearing down of old colonial and racist monuments and vestiges of power, in order to build new ones to the martyrs of struggle." Tracked at Figure 8 Studios above Prospect Park, the album is the work of an artist concerned with numerous interconnected sites of global conflict: among them, the farmers' protests over agricultural reforms in India, the evolution of the Iranian women's rights movement following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the continuous crescendoing call for Palestinian liberation. This time, the Elder Ones collective consists of saxophonist Matt Nelson, cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Eva Lawitts, and drummer Jason Nazary -- all four of whom contribute their share of electronic textures and electroacoustic treatments. As a document of dissent, these four compositions give proof that improvisation is instrumental in the realm of resistance. Kidambi's voice hovers over a scorched sonic landscape equally informed by Black American liberation music, the devotional fervor of Indian Carnatic, and the unleashing of an inner scream listeners might associate with hardcore punk and harsh noise. The quintet then locks into a polyrhythmic pulse that conjures up the ghosts of free jazz past and present; throughout its runtime, there are flashes of Albert Ayler's love cry, Don Cherry's eternal rhythms, Alice Coltrane's ecstatic spirituality, and the fortissimo fearlessness of Kidambi's late friend and collaborator Jaimie Branch, to whom the album is partly dedicated. Above all, New Monuments is a call to action with nothing left unsaid: it demands that the drive towards change should not only be seen, but heard.
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CD
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WJCD 065CD
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Amirtha Kidambi has long affirmed that the role of music in the act of protest is pivotal. For an artist and activist who once cultivated community at defunct Brooklyn spaces such as Death By Audio and the Silent Barn, the 2020 protests became a place to publicly amplify the underground. That subversive spirit of collective dismantlement and reassemblage serves as the catalyst for the longform cuts that comprise New Monuments, Kidambi's third full-length recording with her band Elder Ones. As their leader writes in its accompanying liner notes, the title summons the "tearing down of old colonial and racist monuments and vestiges of power, in order to build new ones to the martyrs of struggle." Tracked at Figure 8 Studios above Prospect Park, the album is the work of an artist concerned with numerous interconnected sites of global conflict: among them, the farmers' protests over agricultural reforms in India, the evolution of the Iranian women's rights movement following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the continuous crescendoing call for Palestinian liberation. This time, the Elder Ones collective consists of saxophonist Matt Nelson, cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Eva Lawitts, and drummer Jason Nazary -- all four of whom contribute their share of electronic textures and electroacoustic treatments. As a document of dissent, these four compositions give proof that improvisation is instrumental in the realm of resistance. Kidambi's voice hovers over a scorched sonic landscape equally informed by Black American liberation music, the devotional fervor of Indian Carnatic, and the unleashing of an inner scream listeners might associate with hardcore punk and harsh noise. The quintet then locks into a polyrhythmic pulse that conjures up the ghosts of free jazz past and present; throughout its runtime, there are flashes of Albert Ayler's love cry, Don Cherry's eternal rhythms, Alice Coltrane's ecstatic spirituality, and the fortissimo fearlessness of Kidambi's late friend and collaborator Jaimie Branch, to whom the album is partly dedicated. Above all, New Monuments is a call to action with nothing left unsaid: it demands that the drive towards change should not only be seen, but heard.
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LP
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JMAN 118LP
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First released on digital formats back in 2016, and here now given a richly deserved full vinyl release, Holy Science, the debut outing from Amirtha Kidambi and her New York based quartet The Elder Ones, is a work of dazzling singularity. Delicately yet unashamedly divulging its complex network of influences at every turn, Holy Science simultaneously disperses of boundary and limitation, emerging as an album steeped in tradition yet located firmly in the futuristic present. Amirtha Kidambi, the Elder Ones' leader, composer and vocalist, was a child of South Indian heritage, and she grew up immersed in the tradition of devotional singing, joining in with free-form, improvised Bhajans on regular Sundays. She began simultaneously accompanying her voice with the harmonium from the age of three. These formative experiences continued to instruct and merge with her ongoing musical explorations as she went on to study classical music, all the while ingesting the punk, R&B and rap that surrounded her. A particularly significant discovery was that of free and avant jazz, and in particular the music of Alice and John Coltrane, in whom Kidambi found clear echoes and parallels with those Bhajans and Ragas of her earliest musical awakenings. All these influences collide on Holy Science, at times as explosive blasts of sky-opening thunder, at others as moments of soothing, meditative bliss. These holy bursts are enacted by Kidambi's assembled musicians and are given permission to explore the science of spiritual alchemy, plundering their individual and collective soul for the sake of musical expression, and all of the unpredictable and profound revelations such an approach might yield. Holy Science is a work underpinned by traditions, be they the Bhajan spirituals, or the jazz and classical avant gardes, that are in their own manner, archetypal. But perhaps most importantly, all of these forms contain an inbuilt capacity for discovery and progression. Amirtha Kidambi's musical pathway has been defined by a studied determination to occupy this specific space, the unbounded realm of improvisation and exploration, summoning the acquired instruments of experience, knowledge, culture, and tradition to unlock secrets of the past, present and future. The most cherished music is often remarked upon as having a timeless quality -- ancient, modern and futuristic, all at once. And so it is with Holy Science. Liner notes by DJ Cherrystones.
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