Whit Dickey / William Parker / Matthew Shipp – Village Mothership LP TAO Forms

LP version. Includes insert and download card. “Drummer Whit Dickey, bassist William Parker, and pianist Matthew Shipp present a wondrous collective creation, their first new studio recording since Shipp’s classic 1992 trio debut, Circular Temple. This is also their first assembly since their work together in the revered David S. Ware Quartet. ‘Everything is melody.’ –Whit Dickey on the mantra of the music. In the late 1980s/early ’90s, pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Whit Dickey were young musicians taking part in the cultural ferment happening on New York City’s Lower East Side, a place where free jazz, avant-rock and all manner of creative arts and political causes were colliding and combining to further the area’s legacy of progressive action. William Parker — although just two years older than Dickey — had been part of that progressive action since the mid-70s, and was already a world traveler. As Shipp has noted on numerous occasions, a key aim in his moving to NYC was to make music with Parker. The sound and sensibility of that vintage East Village milieu informed Shipp’s very first trio album, the striking Circular Temple. Although the three have worked together in important configurations in the decades since (vitally, in the revered David S. Ware Quartet), they are now releasing their first trio studio album together since that original classic: Village Mothership, its title in homage to the rich environment that fed the artistic development of these artists. This brand new work together re-ignites this trio’s profound creative pulse, with 30 years of devotion to the music since then clearly evident. ‘We created this album in the moment as a trio,’ Dickey explains. ‘The atmosphere of this session was warm and fun, and it was a deep, wondrous experience with the three of us. To me, everything is melody. And the melodies manifest out of the mantra of our playing, the rhythms radiating multi-directionally out of those melodic vibrations. Mystical stuff was happening.’ Both formats feature extensive liner notes by Steven Joerg & vintage photographs by Sylvia Plachy, then staff photographer at the Village Voice.”