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Front cover of the album IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND

Single CD - ROG-0150

16,00 €

October 2026

LUKE STEWART EXPOSURE QUINTET

IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND

Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet
Ed Wilkerson, Jr
Ken Vandermark
Jim Baker
Luke Stewart
Avreeayl Ra

Grande image IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND LUKE STEWART EXPOSURE QUINTET

Ed Wilkerson, Jr.: tenor saxophone, alto clarinet & Bb clarinets, oud, digeridoo
Ken Vandermark: tenor & baritone saxophone, bass & Bb clarinets
Jim Baker: piano, ARP synthesizer, viola
Luke Stewart: double bass, samples
Avreeayl Ra: drums, percussion

Side A

Play

In the Air (Last Improv)

9:58

Get There (Brooklyn)

5:57

Going Through (London)

7:51

Side B

Sky Shift (Saalfelden/South Belden)

8:00

Return of the Empire (Red Hook)

7:01

Side C

Foreign Landing (Brussels)

10:17

On the Ground (Big Bang)

5:54

All compositions by Luke Stewart

Recorded by Dave Vettraino on September 24, 2023, at Palisade Studios, Chicago, IL, USA
Mixing: Dave Vettraino
Master: Jean-Pierre Bouquet, L'Autre Studio
Liner notes: Alexandre Pierrepont
Cover design: Max Schoendorff
Cover realization: David Bourguignon
Producer: Luke Stewart
Executive producer: Michel Dorbon

One can observe the existence of a sort of venous network between Ken Vandermark’s saxophones and clarinets, more like butterflies of day and lava flows, and Ed Wilkerson Jr.’s clarinets and saxophone, more like moths and gravitational waves, which are incredibly resistant to the flow of the music; a brief solar flare, complete with plumes, is sometimes enough... The fireflies, of course, are Jim Baker’s doing. The beetles are Avreeayl Ra. The rhythm section is obviously not just a “section”, it’s a whole: Baker and his coded messages, Ra and her tables of rhythmic conjugations, heavy or light but always intense. Luke Stewart upstream and downstream, in a Thoth-Hermes style. There’s quite a commotion around that double bass with its snakes coiled around the neck, when a didgeridoo and a viola get in its way, a wheel within a wheel within a wheel.