A Bleeding in Black Leather

The Red Microphone’s radical poetry and free improvisational music draws on the fervent history of outsider jazz, revolutionary poetry and New York’s raw downtown underground. The band’s latest, A Bleeding in Black Leather, exemplifies its fusion of sound and word in new and daring ways, conjuring not only the Beat Generation, but a century of spoken word and music on the edge, from early Greenwich Village salons to the punk poets of our streets. With this collection, the Red Microphone has secured a a body of work and line-up of musicians that reconstructs its 12-year history. Corresponding with the newly published book by ensemble founder John Pietaro, also entitled A Bleeding in Black Leather (UnCollected Press, 2022), the band’s latest album has been deemed a throbbing roller-coaster ride through latent modernism, sounds, naked improvisation and the city itself. Threading the album together are the three distinct “phases” of the title piece, its powerful theme composed by Rocco John Iacovone and transfigured across the album within various moods and levels of urgency. The rest of the music, envelope-pushing, of the moment, utterly free, by way of tenor saxophonist Ras Moshe Burnett, trumpet player Mac Gollehon (David Bowie, James Chance), alto saxophonist Iacovone, bassist Laurie Towers and the twin electric guitars of Dave Ross and Javier Hernandez Miyares paint a backdrop for tales of steaming asphalt, East Village nightlife, Brooklyn legend, and Cold War myth. 

Please buy downloads here: A Bleeding in Black Leather | The Red Microphone (bandcamp.com)

Track Listing:

1. A Bleeding in Black Leather, phase one

2. The Night Leonard Cohen Died

3. At the Cellar Dog

4. Enduring Neon Moments

5. A Bleeding in Black Leather, phase two

6. Starless

7. The Turning of California Tony

8. Pre-Dawn Morning

9. A Bleeding in Black Leather, phase three

10. Punk Jazz

Credits:

Ras Moshe Burnett, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute; Mac Gollehon, trumpet, flugelhorn; Javier Hernandez-Miyares, electric guitar; Rocco John Iacovone, alto and soprano saxophones; John Pietaro, poetry/prose, voice; hand drums; Dave Ross, electric and acoustic guitars; Laurie Towers, electric basses

“Starless” is a duo for voice and trumpet. “Punk Jazz” is solo voice/percussion by John Pietaro.

Recorded May 21, 2022 at Super Giraffe Studio, Brooklyn by Ivan Julian

Produced by John Pietaro, Laurie Towers and Ivan Julian

Musicians: The Red Microphone