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Isaiah Collier

Live In The Listening Room (LP)

Label: The Vinyl Factory

Format: LP

Genre: Jazz

In process of stocking

€31.50
VAT exempt
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Limited edition of 500 copies. Recorded direct-to-tape in Devon Turnbull's Listening Room at 180 Studios, London. Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight black vinyl with colour sleeve featuring exclusive session photography. Engineered by Jamie Harley.  On January 30, 2025, saxophonist Isaiah Collier and drummer Tim Regis walked into Devon Turnbull's Hi-Fi Listening Room at 180 Studios in London - the same OJAS space that has become a pilgrimage site for anyone serious about how music should actually sound - and played a completely improvised set, captured direct-to-tape across 26 blazing minutes. No charts, no rehearsal, no safety net. Just two musicians locked into each other's frequency, tearing through three pieces that move from scorching intensity to contemplative silence and back again with the kind of telepathic inevitability that only happens when the chemistry is real.

Side A opens with Pacing (Devon's Room), a fiery, almost confrontational statement of intent - Collier's tenor surging with a physicality that recalls the most visceral moments of late Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, while Regis (the only drummer in the game using a double pedal across free, experimental, and straight-ahead contexts - and making it work in all three) drives underneath with a relentless, polyrhythmic force. Side B shifts terrain with 2nd Genesis, opening on a Regis drum solo that unfolds with patient textural intelligence before Collier re-enters and the two build toward a controlled, soaring intensity. The closing Den of Iniquity (Orange Satan) (Beelzebub) is something else entirely - layered, hypnotic, built on looped saxophone and effects that pull the music into a deeper, more psychedelic space, like dub filtered through the free jazz continuum.

The production deserves its own mention. Engineer Jamie Harley captured everything reel-to-reel, and producer Sonny Daze - the same ear who first connected Collier with Turnbull back in 2021, over a shared copy of Kahil El'Zabar's A Time for Healing - added live space echo throughout the session, a deliberate nod to the studio techniques of Lee "Scratch" Perry and Curtis Mayfield. The result is a recording that breathes with the warmth and presence of analog at its best, the echo creating ghostly trails around Collier's horn that add an entirely new spatial dimension to the improvisations.

Collier has been hailed by DownBeat as "The Next Sax Giant" - a title that might sound like hyperbole until you hear what he does here. A Chicago South Side native, composer, arranger, educator and self-described "Sonic Scientist," he has worked alongside Kahil El'Zabar, Marshall Allen, Denardo Coleman and Makaya McCraven, and leads his own ensemble The Chosen Few. Regis, a rising force on the New York scene, first connected with Collier during pandemic practice sessions in 2020, and has since become a regular presence on The Chosen Few's final touring cycle.

Details
Cat. number: VF445
Year: 2026
Notes:
Limited Edition of 500