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Release Date: 26 September 2025
Label: Earshift Music
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 783495643869
Genres: Jazz Electronic
Description
I Hold the Lion's Paw's third studio album Potentially Interesting Jazz Music poses the rhetorical question: what is jazz, or, more pointedly, what might it be? By turn exploratory, playful, and experimental, it is a record that mashes slow-burn trumpet, bass grooves, synths, voice, spoken word, percussion, without ever losing its way or overplaying its hand. From 'Mechanical Ghosts', fashioned from electronics, beats, and eerie trumpet, through to 'When the Earth and Sky Conspired', underscored by Emily Bennett's soaring vocal arrangements, Potentially Interesting Jazz Music represents the futuristic sounds of an improvising ensemble dedicated to continuous reinvention and renewal.
Since its inception in 2016, the music of I Hold the Lion's Paw (IHTLP) has constantly morphed; a psychedelic hubbub of shape-shifting sounds likened to the "feeling of having stumbled into someone else's LSD trip" (John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald). "I want the audience to join us in a genre rebellion when they listen to I Hold the Lion's Paw", says founder and ARIA nominated trumpeter Reuben Lewis. "I started IHTLP to freely collaborate with the places, people and creative contexts that inform my identity as an artist, and my role as bandleader is to keep the door open to possibility when we play. It's about the journey, we've never been interested in adopting any particular style or norm."
If IHTLP was founded upon Reuben Lewis's eclectic musical vision, then this current incarnation adopts a more democratic approach, one foregrounded in the contributions and philosophy of a star-studded quartet featuring Emily Bennett (Great Rack and an Empty Club Reverb), Ronny Ferella (Ish Ish, Michelle Nicolle Quartet) and multi ARIA award winner Adam Halliwell (Mildlife). Capricious and forward-thinking as ever, IHTLP continues to draw nourishment from the radical past, cherry-picking and re-purposing scraps and slivers from a rag bag of forebears: Ornette, Don Cherry, Miles, Sun Ra, Laurie Anderson, Jon Hassell.
Tracklisting
The Vampires
Vazesh
Kristin Berardi
The Vampires
Trichotomy
Matthew Ottignon
Visions of Nar
The Vampires
I Hold The Lion's Paw
I Hold The Lion's Paw
