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Turbulence and Pulse

by Asher Gamedze

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    Two limited edition "One Drop" color vinyl LPs inside a heavyweight reverse-board gatefold jacket with obi strip and custom IARC/M3H printed inner-sleeves. Lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST and pressed at Pallas in Germany.

    ** Shipping from US, EU, UK, and SA **

    *** SA customers please note, you can also email M3H to order directly from them, for the best possible price :) connect@mushroomhour.com ***

    Vinyl, CD, and digital download editions contain three exclusive bonus tracks

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    edition of 777 
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Two Classic Black vinyl LPs inside a heavyweight reverse-board gatefold jacket with obi strip and custom IARC/M3H printed inner-sleeves. Lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST and pressed at Pallas in Germany.

    ** Shipping from US, EU, UK, and SA **

    *** SA customers please note, you can also email M3H to order directly from them, for the best possible price :) connect@mushroomhour.com ***

    Vinyl, CD, and digital download editions contain three exclusive bonus tracks

    Includes unlimited streaming of Turbulence and Pulse via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $29 USD

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Shiny Compact Disc in bespoke tip-on gatefold CD jacket.

    ** Shipping from US, EU, UK, and SA **

    *** SA customers please note, you can also email M3H to order directly from them, for the best possible price :) connect@mushroomhour.com ***

    Vinyl, CD, and digital download editions contain three exclusive bonus tracks

    Includes unlimited streaming of Turbulence and Pulse via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $15 USD or more 

     

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Locomotion 04:07
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Melancholia 04:37
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Alibama 02:59
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about

Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023.

Gamedze’s critically-acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of that record, with friend and writer Teju Adeleye he organized and participated in a joint online discussion “Poesis,” with historian Robin D.G. Kelley and others. One of the notable comments made in this session was by the poet and scholar Fred Moten, who described Gamedze’s drumming as an “amazing interplay between turbulence and pulse. Pulse is supposed to regulate and also be regular, but the turbulence underneath it and on top of it, it’s just extraordinary.” Moten added that this concept is a fundamental element of the percussive approach in Black music more broadly.

Turbulence and Pulse takes its title from this moment of synchronicities. Inspired by this description, Gamedze developed the metaphor further, expanding the concept of turbulence and pulse through the lens of history. “Time in music is a metaphor for thinking about time in history and how time moves,” he says. “The way we’re taught history is generally in a way that robs people of agency in imagining themselves as part of history and how it unfolds. It is something that happens to us. I think there's a productive metaphor in that because the sense of time in music is created by musicians playing together. If we can use that to think about history and time in history, you can see that, actually, history is created by people in a whole range of ways. At the heart of it, historical motion is created by people organized and acting together, whether for progressive or reactionary ends.”

For Gamedze, the underlying message of Turbulence and Pulse is “to claim a form of historical agency and realize that the future is not a foregone conclusion. As people we can organize, to transform our world in small and big ways.” This concept comes out of Gamedze’s involvement in radical cultural work and political organizing. He adds: “One of the ideas that I've had for a long time is to unsettle the way that people think about culture as something static or as something fixed. There’s this tension in Africa, because of the way that the colonists have constructed visions of African culture, where people speak about this need to conserve culture and document it. I think that's important, but you also have to understand that these things are moving. And we are the people who have to participate in that movement.”

For the album artwork, Gamedze extends the visual aesthetic of his previous release with a hand-drawn illustration. “I feel like my drawings represent the inside of my mind. It’s very free and improvisational,” he says. Friend and designer Naadira Patel worked with Gamedze to design the final cover layout, which includes liner notes penned by his sister, writer and artist Thuli Gamedze.

Turbulence and Pulse comes via the partnership of Chicago-based International Anthem and Johannesburg-based Mushroom Hour Half Hour, as the first collaborative release by the two labels.

- album writeup by Atiyyah Khan

credits

released May 5, 2023

Concepts, compositions and arrangements by Asher Gamedze; except "Alibama" (traditional, arranged by Asher Gamedze and Robin Fassie).

Recorded at Sound and Motion Studios, Cape Town in May 2021; except 'Live in Cairo' sessions recorded on the CILAS rooftop, Cairo in November 2020.

Studio ensemble: Asher Gamedze – drums; Robin Fassie – trumpet; Buddy Wells – tenor saxophone; Thembinkosi Mavimbela – double bass; Julian ‘Deacon’ Otis – voice.

Another Time Ensemble: Asher Gamedze – drums; Maurice Louca – Synthesisers; Adham Zidan – bass; Alan Bishop – alto saxophone; Chérif El-Masri – guitar.

Mixed by Carl Roberts and Dave Vettraino.

Initial mix of the ‘Live in Cairo' session by Adham Zidan.

Mastered by David Allen.

Produced by Asher Gamedze.

Artwork by Asher Gamedze.

Essay and Diagram by Thulile Gamedze.

Design by Naadira Patel.

A&R by Scott McNiece.

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International Anthem Chicago, Illinois

International Anthem is a Chicago-born recording company that produces and promotes progressive media.

The IARC mission is to make positive contributions to the changing state of the music industry, and to vitalize the demand for boundary-defying music by presenting unique sounds in appealing packages to untapped audiences.
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