Composer, trumpeter, interdisciplinary abstractivist and modern music mogul Rob Mazurek announces Lightning Dreamers, a new work written for a compacted version of his long-running Exploding Star Orchestra, releasing March 31 2023 on International Anthem. A track from the album, “Future Shaman,” and an accompanying video directed by Rob Mazurek are available today. A follow-up to the acclaimed 2020 Mazurek/ESO release Dimensional Stardust, the album features guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Damon Locks, drummer Gerald Cleaver, percussionist Mauricio Takara, and pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn, among others. It was recorded mostly at the remote Sonic Ranch studios in West Texas, not far from Mazurek’s current home in Marfa, in the days leading up to a debut of the music at Trans Pecos festival in September 2021. Mixing and post-production was headed by Dave Vettraino from IARC studios in Chicago across 2022.
Today’s single and album opener “Future Shaman” (co-produced by Jeff Parker) finds Mazurek and ESO where they left off with Dimensional Stardust – deep in a chromatic funk fantasy of outer-space grooves and Bartok-ian riffs. Vocalist/MC Locks brings the Orson Welles via Deltron 3030 energy while Taborn and Sanchez face-off from behind Wurlitzer pianos and Moog synthesizers. Mazurek describes the track as “a beat and lyrical sojourn into the clouds and then the eye of the storm and finally an ascension to the stars. A snaking counterpoint summoning the spirit world. An attempt at communication, renewal/rebirth through sound and movement.”
Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past thirty years since emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene. He has written more than 400 compositions, is featured on more than seventy recordings from various labels, and has led or co-led many ensembles including Exploding Star Orchestra (his flagship large ensemble), Chicago Underground, Isotope 217, and more.
In the liner notes for Lightning Dreamers, Mazurek writes that the music is “an evocation of a theme from the “Black River Suite,” which I have been revisiting and reimagining over time.”
He elaborates:
I spent 3 years of my life on the great Rio Negro in Manaus, Brazil, where the Black and White Rivers meet. It is custom and a kind of rebirthing to take a boat to the dividing/divining line of these 2 great rivers and dive into and through, as an affirmation of the simple premise (although We All Come from Somewhere Else) that we all come from the same place… the stars. The feeling of moving between and through these great bodies of water is etched in my soul forever. The visual and sonic material (both thematic and imagined) evokes the spirits past, present and future along this mighty river. The undercurrents of time, the movement of storm systems in the sky, the gentle sway of a boat moving upriver, the power and intensity when the wind decides to blow and the torrential rains fall. The sound of the electric eels below, the melodies of the inhabitants along the way, the shattering blasts from lightning in the sky. The river flows on and on and on.
Among the artists present on the expansive B-side track “Black River” is the late jaimie branch, playing synthesizers & electronics behind the guiding trumpet improvisations of Mazurek (whom she long considered a mentor in multiple mediums). She passed away in August 2022, and her earthly absence has since imbued an otherworldly presence into the chaotic riptide of sound. As production wrapped on the album that Fall, Mazurek was moved to present Lightning Dreamers as a dedication to branch’s memory.