RIP Warren Benbow

Two new releases from our label, and 20 from Leo Records, for this month's Bandcamp Friday

Warren Benbow: 1954-2024

First things first: RIP to the brilliant drummer Warren Benbow, who anchored James “Blood” Ulmer’s Odyssey band for many years and was 1/3 of the uncategorizable (“psychedelic Black string band” comes close) improvising trio Breath Of Air, whose debut was released on Burning Ambulance Music in 2022. The group featured Brandon Ross on guitar, Charles Burnham on violin, and Warren Benbow on drums.

Peter Margasak reviewed the album for the Quietus, writing:

This exciting new trio exists because of an album made almost four decades ago. Drummer Warren Benbow and violinist Charles Burnham played behind guitarist and singer James Blood Ulmer on his 1983 classic Odyssey, where the lean instrumentation brought out the country and soul in the leader more effectively than at any other time in his long career. Breath Of Air clearly references that music, with guitarist Brandon Ross (of Harriet Tubman fame) conjuring some kind of improvised, stylistically elusive hybrid with Benbow and Burnham. Bypassing the structure of compositions, the trio ebbs and flows as one, as rhythms slacken and coalesce, density thickens and thins, and sonic landmarks shuffle, always remaining seductively amorphous. These five extended jams dance around the timbre of Odyssey, but there’s no danger of getting them mixed up. Ross has a smoother, more explicitly psychedelic attack that Blood, and with Burnham’s amplification there’s an almost silken middle range bubbling atop Benbow’s springy pulsations. Even when they all play rhythmic patterns at once, as on the beginning of ‘Pucker Up’, the feeling is more wave-like than taut. I’d love to hear this trio with tunes down the road; this opening exchange is both satisfying and promising.

Now, let’s talk about Bandcamp Friday, which is coming up in three days. On that day, Bandcamp forgoes its usual cut of sales and passes all revenue on to artists and labels directly. And we’ve got some records we’d like to sell you, so get ready.

First up, two brand-new releases on Burning Ambulance Music.

Tungu - Irrational Thinking of the Subject

Tungu is Sergey Senchuk, a bassist, electronic musician, and producer from Ukraine. He collaborates (remotely) with avant-garde artists and improvisers from around the world. Irrational Thinking of the Subject is his latest release, and it features contributions from a broad range of musicians: Noël Akchoté, John Bisset, Lawrence Casserley, Jacek Chmiel, Phil Durrant, Wayne Grim, Ayumi Ishito, Pak Yan Lau, Luciano Margorani, Phil Minton, Lara Suss, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Gebhard Ullmann, Sabine Vogel, and Emilia Wysocka.

It’s a fascinating and unique record, a combination of jazz, musique concrète, electroacoustic music and more. Despite all the disparate contributors, it flows like a cohesive suite. Get it here.

Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley - Polarity 3

Tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley have been collaborating for several years in various contexts. Their first duo album, Polarity, was one of the first releases on Burning Ambulance Music in 2021, and it got excellent reviews from DownBeat, Jazziz, and The Wire. In 2023, they released Polarity 2, and now they’re back with Polarity 3. Each is entirely different from the others, but their shared musical language continues to evolve and you can tell it’s the two of them in seconds.

Buy it here, and if you’re a newcomer to the Polarity series, good news! I’m offering them as a package deal — you can get all three CDs for $35 plus shipping.

I really recommend buying the physical versions of every Burning Ambulance Music release, by the way. We wrap them in beautiful heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeves, printed on textured paper, with cover art and package design by I.A. Freeman (here’s her website). She’s available if you need an album cover designed, by the way.

These are our ninth and tenth releases, and to celebrate, I’m also offering a deal on our entire catalog: 10 CDs for $100 plus shipping.

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I’m also helping bring the catalog of legendary avant-garde jazz label Leo Records to Bandcamp. We’re putting up 20 titles each month, and the latest batch includes some truly incredible records.

To start, we’re releasing 10 titles by Anthony Braxton:

19 Standards (Quartet) 2003; 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003; and 23 Standards (Quartet) 2003, all recorded on tour in February and November 2003 by a band that included Kevin O’Neil on guitar, Andy Eulau on bass, and Kevin Norton on drums. Each of these was originally a 4CD set, so we’re talking about more than 12 hours of music if you buy all three.

Knitting Factory (Piano/Quartet) 1994, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2: two 2CD sets featuring Marty Ehrlich on reeds, Joe Fonda on bass, and Pheeroan AkLaff on drums, and Braxton on piano.

Ninetet (Yoshi’s) 1997 Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3; and Vol. 4: four more 2CD sets containing a total of eight hour-long compositions performed by Braxton, Brandon Evans, James Fei, Jackson Moore, Andre Vida, and J.D. Parran on various reeds and flutes, Kevin O’Neil on electric guitar, Joe Fonda on bass, and Kevin Norton on drums, marimba, and percussion.

Trio (London) 1993, a one-off live encounter featuring Braxton, fellow saxophonist Evan Parker, and trombonist Paul Rutherford.

We’ve also got three releases under Parker’s name:

2 x 3 = 5, a collaboration between the Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton trio and the Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio (with drummer Paul Lovens).

Natives and Aliens and After Appleby, two Parker/Guy/Lytton albums recorded with pianist Marilyn Crispell guesting. After Appleby is a 2CD set, one-half studio, one-half live.

We’re releasing two albums by legendary bassist Reggie Workman:

Synthesis, a 1986 live performance with Marilyn Crispell, saxophonist Oliver Lake, and drummer Gerry Hemingway;

and Altered Spaces, a 1992 live set featuring Crispell, Hemingway, violinist Jason Kao Hwang, clarinetist Don Byron, and vocalist Jeanne Lee.

We’re also putting out two Cecil Taylor titles:

Chinampas, an album of Taylor reading his poetry and accompanying himself on percussion and “little instruments”;

and Tzotzil/Mummers/Tzotzil, which combines more studio recordings of poetry with a volcanic live performance by his 1987 Unit with Carlos Ward on reeds, Leroy Jenkins on violin, William Parker on bass, and Thurman Barker on marimba and drums.

We’re also releasing the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s 1980 live album Live in Milano.

And finally, we’ve got two titles by Hartmut Geerken, John Tchicai, and AEOC bassist Famoudou Don Moye: Cassava Balls and The African Tapes.

All of these albums and more are available now on the Leo Records Bandcamp page. Explore, listen, and dive in!

That’s it for now. See you on Thursday!