{"title":"Natural Information Society","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eJoshua Abrams busked on the streets of Philadelphia as an original member of The Roots, performed in a chamber group conducted by composer Earle Brown, moved to Chicago in 1991, and spent fifteen years as a house bassist at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge and at weekly club dates with Tortoise's Jeff Parker before forming Natural Information Society in 2010. The instrument at the centre of NIS is the guimbri, a three-string bass lute from Morocco's Gnawa people, which Abrams began playing after a late-1990s trip to Morocco. He describes it as the original 808: a percussive skin surface over a sub-bass tone that pulses rather than sustains, fundamentally rhythmic in a way the double bass is not. Around that instrument he has built a rotating ensemble whose core members, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums and Jason Stein on bass clarinet, provide the framework for a practice built on long-form modal improvisation, repeated melodic figures building over extended durations into something that functions less like a jazz performance and more like a collective state. Hamid Drake, Ben Lamar Gay, Nick Mazzarella, Jeff Parker, Evan Parker and Ben Boye have all appeared across the catalogue. Their music has been described as ecstatic minimalism, psychedelic trance music, and a Mali edition of Terry Riley's \"In C.\" All three descriptions get at something the music actually does.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"natural-information-society-bitchin-bajas-totality-2025-drag-city-vinyl-lp","title":"Natural Information Society \u0026 Bitchin Bajas - Totality (2025 Drag City Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNatural Information Society \u0026amp; Bitchin Bajas - \u003cem\u003eTotality\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 2025 Drag City (DC860, embossed cover)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNatural Information Society is the Chicago group led by the bassist and composer Joshua Abrams, whose music is built on the guimbri, the three-stringed bass lute of Moroccan Gnawa music, and on patient repetition: hypnotic, trance-like jazz that turns a single figure over and over until it opens up. Bitchin Bajas are a Chicago trio led by Cooper Crain, dealing in analog synthesisers, flutes and kosmische drone. The two groups first joined forces on \u003cem\u003eAutomaginary\u003c\/em\u003e in 2015, and \u003cem\u003eTotality\u003c\/em\u003e is the reunion. Over four long pieces they lock the guimbri, Lisa Alvarado's harmonium, Jason Stein's bass clarinet and Rob Frye's flute into slow, cyclical grooves, Cooper Crain's synths and organ glowing underneath. It was recorded at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio and mastered by Rashad Becker, and it sounds like it: warm, deep and physical. This is meditative music with real weight, closer to minimalism and Gnawa trance than to any conventional idea of jazz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt arrived to some of the warmest notices of 2025, turning up on plenty of year-end lists, the kind of record people describe as a reason to bother with vinyl at all. It sits in the same broad world as the Chicago experimental scene and the wider revival of hypnotic, spiritual-minded jazz. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Drag City","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44081251680315,"sku":null,"price":70.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/a2364880435_10.jpg?v=1788177867"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/natural-information-society.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}