Antero Sievert - Bob_James - VINYL LP

During many late nights in 2018, we broadcast many hours of Instagram live shows. These shows, complete with guests, coalesced a network which grew out of the Suga Steve nickname bestowed on our co-founder on account of his role on the popular Questlove Supreme podcast. During one such Instagram live show, we interviewed and heard a bit of piano playing from a Seattle-based student at Evergreen College. His name is Antero Sievert and he had a delicate, deliberate and abstractly beautiful tone on the piano. We brought him to NYC in the Summer of 2018 to record a solo piano album but he arranged a few of the songs with strings, led by the great violinist Yoo-Jin Park, and trombone, ably played by Jeffery Miller. The cover photo is of a statue which has been in New York's Central Park for decades. It's a long story. Album Tracks 1. Zarathustra 2. Spring Flower 3. Improv 4. Lima 5. Spanish Lullaby 6. Theme from the Underscore 7. Clouds 8. Improv 9. New York 10. Bob James

As his debut The _Underscore continues to mature into what we believe is a landmark LP, we were excited to hear Mr. Sievert's ideas for a follow-up. He had a fully-formed vision of a pan-Latin musical journey with a dream lineup of players he wanted Cuban percussion master Pedrito Martinez; obscure Colombian harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda; and Bay Area flute prodigy Elena Pinderhughes. All three willingly signed up to support Antero, and we added heavy bassist Corcoran Holt and engineer Ben Kane, leaving his own studio to reunite with Steve Mandel at Electric Lady. Another of Steve and Ben's coworkers from the late-90s-early 2000s days at Electric Lady, Rod Hohl, showed up at the sessions and turned the dials on an analog Rhythm King drum machine on album closer Pajaro. The session morphed into a party-like atmosphere, fueled by the danceable rhythms and trays of Peruvian food brought in for attendees. Finally, soul music impresario, Dala Records chief and all-around good guy Billy Aukstik showed up on the last day of recording and added trumpet on 2 songs. The cover is a battered Underwood typewriter fished out of the garbage by J. Cohn a decade ago. The cover photo was shot by Lloyd Bishop. Album Tracks 1. Dear Bossa 2. Sin Rumbo 3. Esperanzado 4. Vagabundo 5. Disfruta 6. Por Supuesto 7. Todo Libre 8. Pajaro

By the beginning of 2021, we'd been stiflingly suppressed from recording new music, to which our first five records had addicted us. We still tried to keep up on who was out there emerging on the NYC scene, several of whom were interviewed by co-founder J. Cohn on his legendary pandemic series on Instagram called The Jazz Inquisitions. One such subject was Seattle-born trumpeter Noah Halpern. Noah had retreated home from his NYC base where we put him with Mr. Sievert in Avast Studio in Seattle (the first JMI record tracked outside NYC) to record a Beatles cover and an Antero original. Album Tracks 1. Happiness Is a Warm Gun 2. P.O.E. (Peace on Earth)