The Great Sun Ra’s Magic Lives On in Debut Album from Old Friends
Michael Sarian, Matthew Putman, Federico Ughi, and Newcomer Ledian Mola

Release Date: January 17, 2024 via 577 Records

Genres: Avant-garde / Experimental / Avant-Funk / Avant-Latin

577 Records’ The Sea, The Space, and Egypt, Vol. 1 is what happened when old friends and a new connection united in the name of music.  A heartfelt tribute to the great Sun Ra, the otherworldly album debuts the collaborative gifts of Michael Sarian (on the trumpet), Matthew Putman (on the keys), Federico Ughi (on the drums), and up-and-coming Cuban bassist Ledian Mola.
Sure, most of these musicians have played together in the past.  Sarian and Putman have made many albums together, while Putman and Ughi have conspired on melodies for fifteen years.  However, we guarantee you have never heard them all in one spot like this.
Alabama’s Sun Ra rose to the top of the Chicago music scene in the 1940s with something unprecedented.  A cosmic pioneer of Afrofuturism, he became known for his diverse and unique avant-garde experimentalism.  Modern artists champion him as a true innovator.
The new band revives the late Sun Ra’s magic in this appropriately named new release.  Matthew Putman even plays the same keyboard model as the experimental music icon (the Rocksichord). Even the cover art is a nod to Sun Ra's ancient Egyptian influences, featuring an upside-down pyramid over a galactic setting created by Robert Mirolo.
Meanwhile, Ledian Mola adds vocals inspired by Cuban folklore to these incredible improvisations.  The album marks Mola’s first time recording with the other artists in the group (and 577 Records), but you would never know it.  Their abstract rhythms sound like they’ve been playing together for a lifetime!  He was hand-chosen for this project from 577 Records’ 2022 SOF music residency in Italy and has performed at several of the New York Forward Festival's live events. 
From the label guided by Daniel Carter, The Sea, The Space, and Egypt will be presented in two parts.  Vol. 1 will be available January 17, 2025 on LP and CD (in limited numbers).  Vol. 2 will drop soon after!

Michael Sarian: trumpet
Matthew Putman: keyboards
Ledian Mola: bass
Federico Ughi: drums

Recorded June 28, 2023 at Sear Sound, New York City
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jeremy Loucas 

Illustration by Robert Mirolo
Graphic design by Mark Smith 

Music by Michael Sarian (Michael Sarian Music, ASCAP), Matthew Putman (Five Seven Seven Records Music, ASCAP), Ledian Mola (Five Seven Seven Records Music, ASCAP), Federico Ughi (Five Seven Seven Records Music, ASCAP)

577 Records is an independent record label 
based in Brooklyn, New York 
operating since 2001

577 Records
Brooklyn, New York
www.577records.com
©+℗ 2025

The Sea, The Space, and Egypt, Vol. 1

Sarian, Putman, Mola, Ughi: 'Aquí Está...' from 'The Sea, The Space, and Egypt, Vol. 1' (577 Recs)

Against the Jazz Police — A Radical New Album of Avant-Garde Rebellion and Afro-Cuban Metaphysics
Emerging artist Leandro Cardenas announces the release of Against the Jazz Police, a bold and genre-defying debut that challenges musical orthodoxy and invokes a fierce metaphysical and cultural critique. More than an album, Against the Jazz Police is a sonic rebellion—part ritual, part philosophical treatise, part avant-garde eruption.
Under the mythic shadow of the ceiba tree, Leandro and his ensemble conjure an Afro-rooted, anarchic sound world built on collective improvisation and ancestral invocation. Using a Dolphy-inspired instrumentation of flute, alto saxophone, and bass clarinet, the group tunnels through the locked corridors of aesthetic convention to reclaim a temporarily autonomous zone in the sonic architecture of the global avant-garde.
Positioned at the crossroads of free jazz, experimental improvisation, and Afro-diasporic ritual, the album unfolds over five sessions of intense, collaborative composition. Each movement serves as a portal into layered cultural and spiritual consciousness, drawing from the symbolic power of Yoruba deities, rural trance practices, and post-colonial resistance.
Highlights include:
	•	“Rito: What Is Endures” – A visceral, textural opening that evokes ritual chaos and Dionysian ecstasy.
	•	“Exu Interlude” – A playful, shape-shifting tribute to the trickster spirit, charged with ludic spontaneity.
	•	“Cagüeiro : In the mangrove” – A trance-driven movement across sonic landscapes, with intensely expressive motifs giving way to deep ancestral resonances.
	•	“He/She Doesn’t Speak” – A haunting solo bass clarinet improvisation invoking the oceanic deity, where language dissolves into the unspeakable.
	•	“Postlude/ Ayágguna” – A baroque, ecstatic finale ascending from earthy textures to celestial climax.
The result is a project that defies genre classification: not jazz as genre, but jazz as force. Through his debut, Cardenas situates himself in dialogue with revolutionary thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, while channeling the raw spiritual currents of Afro-Caribbean cosmology and the ungovernable spirit of avant-garde improvisation.

Against the Jazz Police

'Postlude/Ayágguna' by Leandro Cardenas from album 'Against the Jazz Police' (577 Records)

577 Records is proud to be celebrating its 24 year anniversary.  The legendary music master Daniel Carter was one of the first people 577 cofounder Federico Ughi met soon after arriving in New York from Italy in 2000, after a brief stint in London.  It was a meeting of like minds and shortly thereafter the two started a series of house concerts at 577 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, the apartment where Federico was living at the time. The spontaneous nature of the concerts along with the incredible caliber of the deep downtown underground music they were able to present inspired them to bring the unique nature of what they were doing to a wider audience and they founded the label 577 Records to further that mission. 

577 Records started the New York Forward Festival in 2015 to mark the momentous occasion of Daniel Carter’s 70th birthday, now with festival editions happening in Morocco and Italy as well, and the international residency program Sounds of Freedom, in which active musicians are awarded the opportunity to develop their own sound, skills, and improvisation concept.

100% of profit from the sale of most of these albums goes to the musicians.

 

 “Guided by a mission to capture the ephemeral, to keep jazz relevant, and to foster a collaborative community of artists, the music 577 releases is timeless, masterful, and mystical.” - Bandcamp

“the music of new possibilities, full of spirituality and introspection, an alternative that did not need volume or screaming at the top of your lungs to position itself, and coupled with a deep sense of pulse and the blues.” - Free Jazz Blog

“577 Records, the musical home of the daring and the brave” - All About Jazz


577 Records
Brooklyn, New York
www.577records.com
©+℗ 2025

New tracks tagged #Avant-latin