After appearing as a leader or co-leader on twenty albums, pianist and vocalist Rachel Eckroth still finds herself wanting to explore that innate sense of musical identity without boundaries.

She felt her live album Humanoid would be the perfect opportunity for that. She assembled a band of like-minded collaborators — guitarist Andrew Renfroe, bassist Billy Mohler and drummer Tina Raymond — and recorded two wonderful nights of live performance at Sam First, using the venue’s state-of-the-art analog recording setup.

“I chose music that’s less about the art of the composition and more about the arc of the improvised sections, allowing the band to communicate with more space and breath,” she says. “Now, I’d like to bring you into the conversation and invite you to become a part of the process as we move this beautifully recorded new album into all its stages of production, and eventually, to your stereos via digital download and 180-gram vinyl LPs.”

Side A:
1. Humanoid
2. Mind
3. Lawns
4. Under A Fig Tree

Putting the vinyl on the record player, and with all the tracks roughly eight minutes or so long, Eckroth’s return to her roots opens on the precociously blustering, titular Humanoid and the exceptionally skilled Mind, and then we get melodious Lawns and the unearthly ruminations sculpted within Under A Fig Tree.

Side B:
5. Fleurette Africaine
6. Evolution
7. Strange Meeting
8. Vines

Flipping the elegantly cultured vinyl LP over, and on a recording that explores four Eckroth originals and four pieces from other composers, we next get the impassioned Duke Ellington composition Fleurette Africaine and the dutifully stalwart Evolution, which are in turn backed seamlessly by the sheer elegance within Strange Meeting, coming to a close on the veritably opulent Vines.

Sam First Records is the in-house label for the Westside Los Angeles jazz club, Sam First. A product of the club owner Paul Solomon and musician/artistic director David Robaire, the label is keeping the spirit of jazz moving forward in the 21st century.

Utilizing state-of-the-art equipment (24 channels of Grace and AEA preamps running through a Lynx Aurora A/D converter), there is a strong effort to bring pristine recording aesthetics to a live club setting. Their setup also includes AEA ribbon mics with DPA, Mojave and Soyuz condenser mics.

The first release in this “live” series was pianist Justin Kauflin, a musical pioneer who is celebrated by jazz royalty including Quincy Jones.

www.racheleckroth.com