Ben Lamar Gay - Yowzers (Indies)

Yowzers is the new album from Chicago-based composer, improviser, and musical folklorist Ben LaMar Gay.

In addition to participating in an astonishing number of International Anthem releases (including albums by Makaya McCraven, Jaimie Branch, and Damon Locks), Gay is one of the most prolific collaborators in today’s creative music scene, with active contributions to Mike Reed’s Separatist Party, Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, Bitchin Bajas, Theaster Gates’ Black Monks of Mississippi, among others. A unifying factor in Gay’s deep and multifaceted discography is his constant commitment to sharing stories from the past, filtered through a sense of identity, to keep that information alive and moving. Information flows through Yowzers via Gay’s creative polyrhythmic constructions, as he subtly interprets familiar folk melodies. The album evokes the altruistic freedom of the Liberation Music Orchestra, the electronic webs of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, the wild rhythms of Bukka White, the harmonic and cartoonish glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions, and the often-imitated but rarely distilled patterns of Naná Vasconcelos.

(Purple color indies limited vinyl edition)

 Released on the 6th of June 2025