Links 'n' Such: February 21, 2025

Plus, an announcement about two new CDs from our label

L-R: Ava Mendoza, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, Carolina Pérez

Burning Ambulance Music, the record label arm of this small but mighty media empire, will be releasing four albums in 2025. The first two are marching inexorably toward availability. They are:

• An as-yet-untitled album by the trio of guitarist Ava Mendoza, violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul, and drummer Carolina Pérez. They recorded it in November 2024 at Martin Bisi’s Brooklyn studio, and it was mixed by him and will be mastered by Kurt Glück of Ohm Resistance, who made the Graham Haynes vs Submerged album Echolocation for us in 2022. I’ve heard the final mixes and it’s amazing — it sounds like what might result if Dave Lombardo joined Earth. It’ll be out by summer, and it’s gonna kick your ass.

• Flashing Spirits, a previously unreleased live recording by Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley, from a festival in Crawley, UK, in September 1988. I don’t know what else I can say about that, except that it’s a fantastic piece of art and I’m absolutely thrilled to be releasing it. It, too, will be out by summertime, on the same day as the album above.

More details to come. Paying subscribers to this newsletter will be entitled to free downloads of both records from Bandcamp, as soon as they’re for sale.

In other news, the Strata-East label has partnered up with Mack Avenue Music Group to reissue some of their catalog. In the first batch are Pharoah Sanders’ astonishing 1973 album (recorded in 1969) Izipho Zam; pianist Stanley Cowell’s solo album Musa: Ancestral Streams; Charles Tolliver’s Live at Slugs’ Vol. I & II (with three never-before-released bonus tracks, adding 41 minutes of music); and saxophonist Charlie Rouse’s Two Is One. Those will all be released on April 25, and on the same day, 32 albums from the Strata-East catalog will be available digitally for the first time. (I’m really hoping the two Piano Choir albums are among them, though a list hasn’t been announced.) In the meantime, they’ve put a digital-only compilation/playlist, Strata-East: The Legacy Begins, up on streaming services. It includes tracks from all the albums listed above, and many others — 33 tracks in all, running nearly 4 1/2 hours. Here’s a link to find it on your streaming service of choice. (I subscribe to Tidal; fuck Spotify.)

Finally, here’s another awesome video unearthed by Jay Korber. This one is a short (about five minutes) clip of the Art Ensemble of Chicago performing in a studio in 1970. This is very early footage; percussionist Famoudou Don Moye hadn’t yet joined the group.

Below the paywall, links and discussion of a half dozen things that have captured my attention recently.