Petit Oiseau

Deluxe vinyl version of the new William Parket Quartet album. (CD version released on AUM Fidelity) Just like the Exploding Star Orchestra album Shortwave has pressed this on two 180gram LPs and housed it in a chipboard gatefold jacket hand-silkscreened with three panels of art and William Parker liner notes on the fourth panel. This has been released in a strict edition of 500 numbered copies.

“Bassist-composer William Parker’s quartet may be the best working band in jazz today ... No one in the band ever simply marks time; there’s a stream of invention from reed player Rob Brown, trumpeter Lewis Barnes, drummer Hamid Drake, and the leader that never lets up. Their notes seem to have a gravitational attraction to one another; they fairly slam together and fuse into one joyful sound. Every track [here] contains examples of their unexcelled collective and individual brilliance. On songs (Parker’s term) such as the “Groove Sweet” medley and “Four for Tommy,” the music undergoes continuous, beautifully synchronized transformation, the foursome’s elaborations on the melodic and rhythm elements of the tunes growing ever more urgent and celebratory ... There’s something singing at the center of Parker’s deep woody sound, something that animates his bass lines with an intense warmth and humanity, and it radiates outward through the group. The quartet embraces every possibility in the music with equal enthusiasm—pure sound, melody, groove, pulse, are all treated as viable modes of expression. Their liberated and disciplined use of the music’s possibilities makes this a deeply hopeful and uplifting album.”
–Ed Hazell, POINT OF DEPARTURE