Earth to EZRA

by EZRA

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releases September 6, 2024

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Full color eco-wallet and booklet insert designed by Ben Tousley. Cover pattern based on the microtonal Moog-Rothenburg keyboard, from a prototype designed by theorist David Rothenberg and built by renowned synth pioneer Robert Moog.

Includes digital pre-order of Earth to EZRA. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around September 6, 2024

Purchasable with gift card

$20 USD or more
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1.	Improv 1
2.	Kinesin
3.	Hexal
4.	Red Haired Laser Boy
5.	Nostalgique
6.	Mask 04:18 video	buy track
7.	Improv 2
8.	Don't Wait Up
9.	Impromptu
10.	Improv 3
11.	Awaiting
12.	Fauxmenco

about

Ever wondered where the worlds of progressive bluegrass music and microtonal synthesis might intersect? The EZRA ensemble is game to answer the question on their adventurous second album, Earth to EZRA. Convening in an intimate studio in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, the core quartet — composer and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Jones (guitars and vocals), Jacob Jolliff (mandolin), Max Allard (banjo) and Craig Butterfield (double bass) — teamed up with musical polymath Mark Stewart and keyboardist Xak Bjerken to craft a complex recording that is by turns whimsical, uplifting, haunting and otherworldly. And you can dance to it.

More succinctly, Elizabeth Ogonek describes the project, in her liner notes for the CD package, as “a wild, surreal, and totally joyful album — a ‘cycle’ to be listened to from beginning to end.” The sonic beast at the center of Earth to EZRA is a microtonal organ designed by David Rothenberg and built by synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog in the mid 1960s. The 478-key instrument divides the octave into 31 equal parts, but was never actually functional until 2023, when electronic music scholar and instrument builder Travis Johns began the meticulous process of making the organ playable.

“Mask” is the album’s first single — a striking acoustic ballad, sung by Jones, that channels influences as far afield as Bert Jansch, Fairport Convention and the Monroe Brothers. With lyrics drawn from the classic Paul Laurence Dunbar poem “We Wear the Mask,” the song portrays the everyday push-and-pull struggle between selves, interior and exterior, that in the end makes us truly human. It’s a key sentiment in the context of Earth to EZRA, where the exploration of unpredictable sonic territory is a totally collaborative undertaking. We can’t get there from here without doing it together, the group seems to be saying, and what better time to say it than right now?

credits

releases September 6, 2024

Produced by Xak Bjerken and Elizabeth Ogonek
Recorded by Dave Dennison at Studio 9 in North Adams, MA on October 21-22, 2023
Mixed by Dave Sinko
Edited and mastered by Jeff Francis

Jesse Jones - steel string, fretless, microtonal and classical guitars, vocals
Mark Stewart - xaphoon, chaladoo, daxophone, guitar, mandocello, percussion, vocals
Jacob Jolliff - mandolin and 13-tet guitar
Max Allard - 5-string banjo
Craig Butterfield - bass
Xak Bjerken - piano, toy piano and 31-tet Rothenberg Moog organ

This recording was made possible by Cornell University’s New Frontier Grant.

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about

EZRA Oberlin, Ohio

EZRA is a collective of classical, jazz, rock, and bluegrass musicians focussed on the creation of genre-crossing and style- inclusive new music. Though the instrumentation and personnel of the group fluctuates, EZRA's core ensemble consists of mandolinist Jacob Jolliff, banjoist Max Allard, and bassist Craig Butterfield, with Jones on guitar and keyboard-related instruments. ... more

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