*Yowzers* by Ben LaMar Gay out on LP/CD/DD this Friday June 6th
Ben LaMar Gay
Yowzers
LP, CD, DD out this Friday June 6th, 2025
(+ out in full on streaming platforms June 26th)
Yowzers – a new album by the Chicago-born composer, improviser, instrumentalist and musical folklorist – is out in record stores worldwide June 6th, 2025.
"A gift of an album, Yowzers is Gay's most cohesive work to date, while losing none of its predecessors' spirit of adventure." - Stewart Smith, The Wire
“...achingly beautiful…” - Ammar Kalia, The Guardian
(( photo AND LP artwork Alyssa Martinez ))
!!! Buy it IRL !!!
Yowzers is available in record stores worldwide this Friday June 6th, weeks before the full album hits streaming platforms.
To hopefully encourage the timelessly rewarding, communally generative experience of buying records from your friendly neighborhood record store... we've compiled below (and here on our website) a list of record shops that have confirmed to be stocking the album this weekend. Support local business, support the essential historical, archival, cultural industrial work being done at your favorite record stores!
Akron, OH - Square Records
Amsterdam, NL - Concerto Recordstore
Asheville, TN - Harvest Records
Athens, GA - Wuxtry Records
Austin, TX - Waterloo Records
Baltimore, MD - Sound Garden
Birmingham, AL - Seasick Records
Bloomington, IN - Landlocked Music
Boise, ID - Record Exchange
Brighton, UK - Resident
Calgary, AB - Blackbyrd Myoozik
Calgary, AB - Melodiya Records
Canada - Listen Records
Charlotte, NC - Lunchbox Records
Chicago, IL - 606 Records
Chicago, IL - Beverly Phono Mart
Chicago, IL - Dusty Groove
Chicago, IL - Gramaphone
Chicago, IL - Rattleback Records
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Belmont)
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Loop)
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Wicker Park)
Chicago, IL - Tone Deaf Records
Cincinnati, OH - Shake It
Coventry, UK - Just Dropped In
Davenport, IA - Ragged Records
Dayton, OH - Omega Music
Denver, CO - Twist & Shout
Denver, CO - Wax Trax
Dublin, IE - Freebird
Dublin, IE - Spindizzy
Dublin, IE - Tower Records
Edinburgh, UK - Good Vibes
Edinburgh, UK - Thorne Records
Edmonton, AB - Blackbyrd Myoozik
Edmonton, AB - EROC Records
Ferndale, MI - Found Sound
Glasgow, UK - Second Line Records
Glasgow, UK - Some Great Reward
Golden Valley, MN - Down in the Valley
Grand Rapids, MI - Vertigo Music
Guadalajara, JAL - Tea Recs
Indianapolis, IN - Luna Music
Iowa City, IA - Record Collector
Kansas City, MO - Mills Record Company
Lawrence, KS - Love Garden Sounds
Leeds, UK - Jumbo
Liverpool, UK - Jacaranda
London, UK - Dreamhouse Records
London, UK - HMV
London, UK - Phonica
London, UK - Rough Trade
London, UK - Sounds of the Universe
London, UK - Stranger Than Paradise
London, UK - World of Echo
Los Angeles, CA - Amoeba Music
Loveland, OH - Plaid Room Records
Madison, WI - B-Side Records
Manchester, UK - Limited Action
Manchester, UK - Piccadilly
Miami, FL - Sweat Records
Milwaukee, WI - Acme Records
Minneapolis, MN - Electric Fetus
Montreal, QC - Atom Heart
Montreal, QC - Le Vacarme
Montréal, QC - Sonorama Disques
Nashville, TN - Grimey's
New Orleans, LA - Domino Sound
New Orleans, LA - Euclid Records NOLA
Norfolk, UK - Venus Vinyl
Norridge, IL - Rolling Stones Record Store
Opelika, AL - 10,000 Hz Records
Orlando, FL - Park Ave
Ossining, NY - Den of Wax
Ottawa, ON - Birdman Sound
Oxford, MS - The End of All Music
Oxford, UK - Truck
Peterborough, ON - Bluestreak Records
Phoenix, AZ - Stinkweeds
Pittsburgh, PA - The Government Center
Portland, OR - Everyday Music
Portland, OR - Mississippi Records
Portland, OR - Music Millennium
Princeton, NJ - Princeton Record Exchange
Richmond, VA - Plan 9 HQ
Saint John, NB - Backstreet Records
Saint Paul, MN - Cheapo Discs
Saint-Hyacinthe, QC - Frequences Le Disquaire
Salt Lake City, UT - Fountain Records
San Francisco, CA - Amoeba Music
San Luis Obispo, CA - Boo Boo Records
Seattle, WA - Hex Enduction Records & Books
Seattle, WA - Royal Records
Seattle, WA - Silver Platters
Seattle, WA - Sonic Boom Records
Sheffield, UK - Bear Tree
Somerville, MA - Vinyl Index
St. Louis, MO - Euclid Records
St. Louis, MO - Vintage Vinyl St. Louis
Tacoma, WA - Hi-Voltage Records
Taylorsville, UT - Graywhale
Toronto, ON - Rotate This
Toronto, ON - Sonic Boom
Totnes, UK - Drift
Vancouver, BC - Audiopile Records
Venlo, NL - Sounds Venlo
Wallingford, CT - Redscroll Records
West Palm Beach, FL - Rust & Wax
Whitstable, UK - Gatefield Sounds
Winchester, UK - Elephant Records
Winnipeg, MB - McNally Robinson
Yowzers (Virtual) Bandcamp Listening Party
Join us for an exclusive listening party for 𝐘𝐨𝐰𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐬 !! Enjoy a full album listen-through with 𝗕𝗲𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝗠𝗮𝗿 𝗚𝗮𝘆 himself and the 𝗜𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘄 in the chat!
Friday June 6th, 2025
10am PST / 12pm CST / 1pm EST
(( photo by Joe Jones ))
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.
One of the highlights from this batch is the album’s titular opener “yowzers." It’s a simple, soulful, three-chord piano and vocal repetition nestled in the hypnotic, swelling effect of the Woods/Parker/Nwaogwugwu choir. The song’s undecorated lyrics cut deep, echoing the climate of our times with a universal Blues we can all feel in our bones:
Ain’t gon snow no more x4
Rain gon pour and pour x4
Fire don’t stop no more x4
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.
BLG Live
(with Quartet)
September 11th-14th - Sonic Transmissions - Austin, TX - tickets
(( photo by Alejandro Ayala ))
...about Ben LaMar Gay…
Ben LaMar Gay is a genuine original. An imbued composer, conjurer, and channeler of cosmopolitan Blues, a patently eclectic artist who Jeff Parker calls "hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today," Gay is a Southside Chicago native who was raised in the tutelage of the legendary AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians).
With his first instrument, the cornet, and an intuitive sense of self-production, in youth he traversed the diversity of the city's music scenes (jazz, hip hop, house, electronic, rock, avant garde, salsa, latin jazz, et al) before embarking on a several-year residential relocation to Brazil. Beloved by listeners and collaborators alike for his ability to absorb and poetically refract the sound of any context he's immersed in, Gay's return home to Chicago in the early 2010s marked the beginning of a compositional output that has since been referred to by WIRE Magazine as "Pan-Americana."
As elusive as he is prolific, across seven under-the-radar years of work Gay diligently composed, produced and recorded seven collections of original music before compiling and issuing his unreleased 'greatest hits' as a debut album – Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun – for International Anthem in 2018. Also in 2018 Gay composed an original score for the Tribeca award-winning short doc The Good Fight. In 2019, he composed an original score for the Brazilian underground carnival profile This Is Bate Bola, and debuted new music commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Also in 2019, he composed and performed a duet with the DuSable Bridge while it was raised over the Chicago River.
For Time:Spans Festival 2021, at DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City, Gay debuted a new composition – "Known Better. Still Lit" – that was commissioned and performed by Wet Ink Ensemble. Later in 2021, Gay released the critically-acclaimed album Open Arms to Open Us via International Anthem & Nonesuch Records. In 2022 he released Certain Reveries, an album of duo compositions on International Anthem, and an accompanying film – “Balogun,” in tribute to the late Eddie Harris - which he staged, directed, filmed, and scored entirely himself.
In 2023, Gay was a Mellon Foundation Archives Innovation Fellow with Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation in Chicago. As composer in residence with The National Theater of France in 2024, Gay wrote original music for Dorothee Muyaneza’s “Inconditionelles.”
In June 2025, Gay releases Yowzers via International Anthem.
Deluxe Vinyl Package
Yowzers comes on a 140g color LP in heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with insert sheet, IARC 2025 obi strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K @ SST.
Available on Limited Edition *Ipomoea Jalapa* color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on Classic Black vinyl for $24 USD.
The SPRING ‘𝟮𝟱 𝗕𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗟𝗘 is now available !!
The Spring ‘25 Bundle collects three new IARC LPs announced this Spring (IARC0096 Resavoir & Matt Gold - Horizon, IARC0097 Ben LaMar Gay - Yowzers, plus one more TBA soon) and ships them as a single parcel.
Purchase gets you a bundle-exclusive discount of 10% off the LP prices as well as a discounted shipping cost.
The bundle will ship from our warehouses in the US, EU, and UK, but don’t wait too long, the quantity available in each warehouse is limited! Early purchase is recommended to ensure the lowest possible shipping, tax, and VAT costs.
All items will ship together in one package around June 13th. Bandcamp downloads will be sent via email for all the releases by, or before, the ship date.
Order the bundle on Limited Edition Color Vinyl
Order the bundle on Classic Black Vinyl
