Today, Ben LaMar Gay –– the Chicago composer, improviser, instrumentalist, and musical folklorist –– releases his new album Yowzers on LP, CD, and digital download via International Anthem (available on digital streaming platforms June 26). Gay also shares today the record’s third streaming single “there, inside the morning glory,” a standout where Gay is at his most classic, spinning melodies with rhythmic and textural acumen. Listen to “there, inside the morning glory” and purchase Yowzers here.

At 10am PT / 1pm ET today, International Anthem and Ben LaMar Gay are hosting an exclusive virtual Bandcamp listening party for Yowzers with a full album listen-through — RSVP here.

In the growing tradition of Gay’s recorded output –– including his 2018 greatest-hits-meets-debut album Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun and 2021’s critically-acclaimed Open Arms to Open Us, which have both become legendary for enveloping myriad sounds, stories, and dimensions of music into potent bodies of work ––Yowzers is an utterly unique, joyfully irreverent psychedelic fantasia of folklore, free jazz, and avant-garde Blues.

At the heart of the album is Gay’s working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice). The group’s chemistry is palpable, cultivated over years of touring and performing together.

“A big part of the language this quartet has developed is spatial,” says Gay. “It’s seeing and hearing it live. You’re dealing with a thing that is older than the industry that sells it, and if you’ve never experienced those bodies in the room, there can be a disconnect.”

Striving to capture that raw, unfiltered energy on Yowzers, Gay tracked his quartet live at Palisade Studios in Chicago, with all four musicians sitting in a small circle, channeling and documenting their collective vibrations in real-time.

To expand the sonic spectrum of the album, Gay also composed and recorded a series of pieces in-studio at International Anthem HQ in Chicago. Working alongside engineer Dave Vettraino, Gay augmented his studio constructions with contributions from his bandmates, woodwind player Rob Frye, and a mini-choir comprising vocalists Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu.

About the album, Gay says: “Yowzers was a word and a sound that came to mind while observing the intersection of humor and horror in our present reality. On one side of a coin flip, Yowzers is a deep sigh that quietly exits the body after facing the absurd. On the other side, it is a cry of amazement at how many secrets were left behind to help us endure and transcend the absurdity.”

As a whole, Yowzers recalls the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the abstract boom-bap balladry of Georgia Anne Muldrow, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions, or the oft-copped but rarely distilled patterns of Naná Vasconcelos. It’s a fresh thought made up of old ideas, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of stories and secrets embodied.