Luke Stewart Unknown Rivers Vinyl LP Due Out 10/05/24

Tracklist:

1. Seek Whence
2. Baba Doo Way
3. You See?
4. The Slip
5. Amilcar
6. Dudu
7. Unknown Rivers

'Unknown Rivers' is bassist Luke Stewart's debut for Pi Recordings. An omnipresent and galvanizing force on the music scene, Stewart is a leader or co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements - whose 'Protect Your Light' DownBeat called "a fascinating work of art whose existence is exactly what it's supposed to be, perfectly in place on the great curve of the universe" - along with his Exposure Quintet, Blacks' Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Remembrance Quintet. Also named by DownBeat as one of "Twenty-Five Performers Who Could Shape Jazz for Decades," he is also among the most in-demand collaborators, having performed with the likes of David Murray, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Jaimie Branch, Nate Wooley, William Hooker, Ken Vandermark, Marshall Allen, Gary Bartz, Billy Hart, Shabaka, Hamid Drake, Douglas Ewart, and countless others.

Stewart's new release features his long-running Silt Trio, with Brian Settles on tenor sax, and drummers Warren "Trae" Crudup III on four studio tracks and Chad Taylor on three live ones. The band's name is inspired by Stewart's upbringing along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi and the rivers that flow through it. It's also a metaphor for the indeterminate current of ideas and experiences that settle and filter through the rivers' rich sediment that end up informing the music. In a subtle tilt from their two prior releases (No Treaspassing (with Crudup) and The Bottom (with Taylor)), Unknown Rivers sees the band pushing away from open improvisation towards compositional form with greater emphasis on rhythmic acuity. As Stewart states in the album's liner notes: "It is in the rhythm where the Spirit is defined, where the Mystery is revealed."