*announcing* Irreversible Entanglements - OPEN THE GATES // new double LP album out November 12th
*announcing*
IARC0049
Irreversible Entanglements
Open The Gates
2xLP / CD / Digital album out November 12th
We are honored, elated, inspired, determined, blessed to share news today of a new offering from the legendary, unstoppable Philadelphia/NY/DC free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements!
As with their previous two albums, this new work is a co-release of International Anthem & Don Giovanni Records. It will be out as a gatefold double LP, a CD, and a digital album on November 12th, 2021.
The album is called:
Open The Gates
preview & pre-order
via our Bandcamp page TODAY
((( all photos of IE by Bob Sweeney )))
Energy Time.
Open The Gates was recorded in a single day at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, on January 5th, 2021. It is Irreversible Entanglements’ third full length album, but their first double LP length album.
Across 73 minutes of music the band – featuring poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), trumpeter Aquiles Navarro & drummer Tcheser Holmes (who released their duo debut Heritage of the Invisible II on International Anthem last year), saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart – stretch out more than ever, supplementing their raw, organic punk-jazz sound with first-time experiments with electronics and synthesizers.
As described in the liner notes written by Alex Smith, the album "is ethereal shards of jagged onyx, a melancholic exploration of the post-colonial debris that surrounds us. Let’s watch and listen, as this platter snakes through the sandy ashes of possible histories, dialogs with a nervous present, and asks to be birthed into a holographic new future. “Together in holy sound!”, the band stitches patient anthems out of atmosphere. Pulling from a wider sonic vocabulary than on previous excursions, the agit-jazz found here is simultaneously pre- and post-apocalypse, as bass lurches in a tranced-out loop, horns are up in the track grooves like poltergeists playing in the streets, poetry cascades like a warrior call at a satsang, the drums both wild and refined pulse with uhuru-heart cadence. This is Irreversible Entanglements on new ground; same as the old ground."
Listen.
"Open The Gates" single & video
Along with today's announcement, the album's title track is available as a lead single, streaming on all digital music platforms, and is accompanied by a video directed by Cyrus Moussavi.
IE's lead poet Ayewa sets off the titular lead single (and top track of the album) with a righteous rallying cry: “It’s energy time!” Driven by percussionist Holmes’ polyrhythmic groove and Stewart’s trunk-rattling bass line, this compact track, coupled with Moussavi's video capturing the heroic Judah Son of Pharoh taking over the streets of New York City, is probably the closest thing to a summer blockbuster that we’ve ever heard/seen from the band.
Watch the "Open The Gates" video.
Irreversible Entanglements are a band who cultivate the liberation technologies of jazz and associated Black music — root, stem, and branch — into the future. The band emerged organically, out of deep friendships, mutual admiration, ad hoc formations, and a shared activist concern for the beloved legacy of all Black life and culture. International in scope yet indebted to, influenced by, and committed to their specific communities, the band pulls zero punches and reserves no energy in intrepid live sets that proclaim revolutionary love for the people.
The Philadelphia, New York, and DC-based band is made up of five individuals whose uncompromising artistic visions have received wide acclaim. Poet Camae Ayewa, a/k/a Moor Mother, is a legendarily prolific, globally leading light of Afrofuturist music, art, and community activism. Bassist Luke Stewart is deservedly his generation’s most in-demand musician on that instrument, who from his work as a radio and concert presenter boasts an encyclopedic knowledge of the music from which he draws with focused and thunderous intensity. Saxophonist Keir Neuringer’s prodigious avantgarde technique is matched by an urgency in his tone and fierce socio-political determination. Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes joined the band as an already long-standing duo, bringing with them uncontainable energy and inventiveness grounded in classic jazz and Latin and Afro-Carribbean streams.
Their 2017 self-titled debut Irreversible Entanglements – which was recorded in a single session, the first time the five musicians all played together – arrived to wide critical acclaim, hailed by many as one of the Best Albums of 2017 including NPR, Wire Magazine, and Stereogum. In 2020, their follow-up album Who Sent You? was released amidst the early weeks of the pandemic but was nevertheless met again with wide critical praise and an appearance near the top of the Billboard Contemporary Jazz charts.
Their third album, the double LP Open The Gates, arrives in the fall of 2021 with an expanded sonic palette and increased emotional breadth. All three albums are co-releases on the International Anthem and Don Giovanni labels, highlighting Irreversible Entanglements’ ability to make adventurous music beyond genre, both honoring and defying tradition, speaking to the present while insisting on the future.
*Deluxe Vinyl Package*
Neptune Blue color vinyl
Open The Gates comes on two 160-gram vinyl LPs (pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago) inside a heavyweight reverse board gatefold jacket, with flooded black pockets, IARC/DG obi strip, and dome-patterned inner-sleeve.
And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 777 copies of *Neptune Blue* color vinyl.
Order a copy via our Bandcamp page today!
Distribution via RedEye for
US, Canada, North & South America
This album will also be available on Compact Disc (in a deluxe 4-panel digipack), on Classic Black Vinyl (same specs as above), and for independent retailers only, worldwide, an indie exclusive limited edition color vinyl variant.
Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 for
Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, and ROW
On all the same formats mentioned above, this album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, Asia, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS LIVE DATES
Sept 2 – Sonic Transmissions – (Twitch Stream)
Sept 6 – Atlanta GA – Atlanta Jazz Fest
Nov 6th – Rotterdam NL – BIRD Fest
Nov 7th – Wels AT – Music Unlimited
Nov 8th – Heidelberg DE – Enjoy Jazz Festival
Nov 9th – Berlin DE – Silent Green
Nov 11th – Utrecht NL – Le Guess Who?
Nov 13th – London UK – London Jazz Festival
