the blacksmiths, the flowers

Reading Group is thrilled to announce a new album from the celebrated trio of Fred Moten (voice), Brandon López (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). Following the release of their 2022 self-titled debut album, also on Reading Group (RG23), the trio has been developing their improvisatory language in concerts across North America and the UK. While growing from their first album’s perpetually restrained simmer, their infamous live shows explore a propulsive, relentless, and massively energetic large-scale developing form. López and Cleaver’s rhythm section maintains a pulsating, animating, and evolving groove, Moten’s improvised lyricism weaves together threads from his radical poetics, critical theory, snatches of song, and more familiar but floating signifiers, all while carrying and/or being carried by the self-perpetuating energy of the trio that is more than the sum of its parts. Their dynamic is summed up best by a phrase of Moten’s in the maelstrom towards the music’s climax: “quantum-mechanical reproduction.”

the blacksmiths, the flowers is a double-LP containing two live performances by the trio at 411 Kent in Brooklyn in the summer of 2023. Incendiary music for a burning world.
Recorded by Ian Douglas-Moore
Mastered by Matt Bachmann
Release date: October 15, 2024
Catalog Number: RG30
Edition of 500 2xLPs
Gatefold jacket with original art by Renee Gladman: “Untitled Score (Playing Warm)” (2023) and "Scores for Elsewhere #7" (2023)

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