{"title":"Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"dimensional-stardust","title":"Dimensional Stardust","description":"\u003cp\u003eMultidisciplinary 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 many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet and Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortoise), Pharoah and the Underground (feat. Pharoah Sanders), and a duo with Jeff Parker. He’s been on the cover of Wire Magazine twice and is well-known as one of the prime 21st century progenitors of “The Chicago Sound.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCommissioned by the Chicago Cultural Center in 2005 to assemble a group representing the diversity of the city’s avant-garde, Mazurek began composing for what became his Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO). Including musicians from the often-segregated North, South, and West sides, ESO debuted in the urban epicenter of Chicago’s Millennium Park and, shortly after, recorded We Are All From Somewhere Else (Thrill Jockey, 2007). By the time of Galactic Parables Vol. 1, ESO’s 2015 triple LP on Cuneiform Records, Mazurek reflected to Pop Matters that “Exploding Star Orchestra is the conceptual, compositional and philosophical center of all my work... a life star of musical and visual and ideas.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2018 Jazz Fest Berlin invited Mazurek to present a new iteration of ESO. Meeting the commission with the boundless ambition characteristic of his approach, he imagined a jubilee of musicians – true to ESO’s essence in their widely diverse backgrounds and voices, but more tightly arranged than ever before. Mazurek’s debut was an ecstatic and wholly original program that marked a pinnacle in his distinction as a composer and conductor of Contemporary Music. When he returned to Chicago, International Anthem took the opportunity to capture these new ESO compositions with a cast of collaborators from their collective constellation of artists. In the studio between August 2019-March 2020, Mazurek channeled his arrangements through 11 musicians – Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Jaimie Branch, Joel Ross, Mikel Patrick Avery, Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Macie Stewart, Angelica Sanchez, and John Herndon – and commissioned his long-time collaborator Damon Locks to do lyrics and vocals. After 3 months of rigorous post-production, editing and assembly, Mazurek completed Dimensional Stardust.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSomehow swirling adventurous elements of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical into the most universal attractors of pop music, the cosmic opera of Dimensional Stardust is a pure spiritual extension of Exploding Star Orchestra’s unifying ethos, and a peak in the prolific creative career of Rob Mazurek.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Blue | LP","offer_id":50458129727819,"sku":"1106504","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50458127728971,"sku":"1103799","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50458130841931,"sku":"1103800","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/502d7a0f-4dd2-4c0a-9d9a-9aafd2c56bb0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727210080"},{"product_id":"live-at-adler-planetarium","title":"Live At Adler Planetarium","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn March 24, 2023 Rob Mazurek assembled his endlessly psychedelic and explorative large ensemble Exploding Star Orchestra under the dome of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium to perform material from their recently released album Lightning Dreamers along with a number of new pieces.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA digital projection flashed an ever-changing stream of vividly colored, abstract shapes derived from Mazurek’s paintings and animations over the audience’s heads, while the Orchestra, which on this night numbered eight musicians besides its leader, transformed the stylistically disparate pieces from Lightning Dreamers into an enveloping maelstrom. Electric pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn pushed layers of plush texture back and forth over the intricate, tripartite grooves of bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and two drummers, Chad Taylor and Gerald Cleaver. Mazurek’s trumpets and wordless cries, Tomeka Reid’s cello and Nicole Mitchell’s flute and voice periodically surfaced out of the flow, issuing sharp, energetic statements, while Damon Locks’ proclamations flickered in and out of the mix like an erratic signal from some interstellar radio announcer. Together, they reimagined the brooding sound of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew as a force for transcendent uplift.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt one point, Mitchell put down her flute, spoke into Mazurek’s ear and pointed up to toward the dome. As he looked up, his own horn came down, and for a moment, the two of them gazed with undisguised awe at the spectacle that the Orchestra had unleashed. In a time when so many forces conspire to bring people down, this concert was an invitation to look up and out past the horizon.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50498713321803,"sku":"2218161","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50498712568139,"sku":"2218160","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Rob_Mazurek_Exploding_Star_Orchestra_-_Live_At_Adler_P_e9438126_thumbnail_40.jpg?v=1727754898"},{"product_id":"lightning-dreamers-2","title":"Lightning Dreamers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLightning Dreamers\u003c\/i\u003e is new work by composer, trumpeter, post-rock and avant-jazz legend Rob Mazurek, a follow-up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release \u003ci\u003eDimensional Stardust\u003c\/i\u003e, which charted an 8.0 in Pitchfork and #5 in The New York Times' Best Jazz Albums of 2020.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe album, dedicated to the late jaimie branch (a protégé of Mazurek's), features a compacted version of his long-running Exploding Star Orchestra including guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Damon Locks, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn.Drop the needle and immediately find this crew deep in a chromatic funk fantasy of outer-space grooves and Bartok-ian riffs. Vocalist\/MC Damon Locks brings the Deltron 3030 energy while pianist Craig Taborn and Angelica Sanchez face-off from behind Wurlitzer pianos and Moog synthesizers. Parker is in absolute space shred mode.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLightning Dreamers\u003c\/i\u003e will connect with the 90s Chicago heads who still ride for Mazurek projects Isotope 217 and Chicago Underground -no doubt- but be sure to play it for your customers on that hip-hop-into-jazz road; the young heads who are now posthumously discovering the long form work of Pharaoh Sanders; the crowd who wandered to the Can section after hearing a Tyler The Creator sample.The curious shopper, genre rebuffers, are Rob Mazurek's crowd: his work with IARC alone ranges from the minimal drone of our very first release, Alternate Moon Cycles, to the decimated electronic downer folk of his cold weather classic Alien Flower Sutra, a collaboration with Emmett Kelly (Cairo Gang, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Ty Segall, Natural Information Society, Angel Olsen).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50511319204171,"sku":"2009005","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50511318647115,"sku":"2009004","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed_94810ba8_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727887175"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/rob-mazurek-exploding-star-orchestra.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}