Ben Lamar Gay Yowsers Vinyl LP Purple Colour 2025

Purple Colour

Tracklist:

1. yowzers
2. the glorification of small victories
3. there, inside the morning glory
4. roller skates
5. for Breezy
6. I am (bells)
7. promontory
8. John, John Henry
9. damn you cute
10. cumulus
11. touch
12. leave some for you

Yowzers features Gay's working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice), as well as guest instrumentalist Rob Frye and a mini-choir comprising vocalists Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu. The album recalls the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the glitched-out electronic webs of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, and the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions. It’s all there, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of secrets embodied. For a man who has inhabited and traveled these continents so extensively, it’s safe to call this work true “Americana,” despite what that word might mean to the average person in the United States.