- LP
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Macie Stewart
When the Distance is Blue
International Anthem
- Cat No: IARC0093LP
- updated:2025-06-01
Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Macie Stewart makes her debut on 〈International Anthem〉, the hub of today's cutting-edge jazz. Collaging prepared piano, field recordings, and string quartet, it's a fragile, nostalgic, cinematic sound world that turns its affection toward the "time in between" one thing and another.
Track List

A versatile musician who has collaborated repeatedly with Makaya McCraven and Alabaster DePlume, both of whom have also released on this label. Here she makes a deliberate return to the piano, the first instrument she ever touched and the origin of her creativity: prepared piano, violin drones, and a collection of field recordings gathered while on tour scattered throughout—a diary-like collage of sound and memory. "Tsukiji" uses field sounds recorded while walking through Tokyo's Tsukiji Market. Eight richly textured tracks that make you want to share what she calls "the feeling of watching things pass by outside the window, knowing you may never set foot there." The way "Disintegration" (sample 3) gradually drifts off into slumber at the end is irresistible. (Original Japanese text by Adachi)