Rob Mazurek, Exploding Star Orchestra Lightning Dreamers

Lightning Dreamers is new work by composer, trumpeter, post-rock and avant-jazz legend Rob Mazurek, a follow-up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release Dimensional Stardust, which charted an 8.0 in Pitchfork and #5 in The New York Times' Best Jazz Albums of 2020.

The 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.

Lightning Dreamers 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).