PEACE ANTHEMS

Red Hook Records presents Peace Anthems, a multi-artist album gathering thirteen musicians under a single, urgent theme: the pursuit of peace. Set for release on July 31, 2026, to mark the label’s 5th anniversary, the record brings together an exceptional ensemble spanning generations and disciplines, each contributing original works that approach peace as both subject and sonic practice.

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The album features Qasim Naqvi on modular synthesizer, Taylor Deupree on guitar and percussion, Kalia Vandeveron trombone, Thomas Morgan on bass, BlankFor.ms on electronics, tape loops and processing, Moor Mother on voice, Sungjae Son on tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and pump organ, Martha Deribe on voice, Simone Maggio on Fender Rhodes, Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, Amina Claudine Myers on piano, Andrew Cyrille on drums, and Kit Downes on pipe organ. The result is a record of remarkable breadth and cohesion, one that holds together not through uniformity of style but through a shared commitment to its theme.

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The album opens with Naqvi's "Al Badawi," a meditative piece built from lush, droning synthesizer pads that establishes the contemplative register the record sustains throughout. From there, "Wither Light and Airy" finds Deupree, Vandever and Morgan in conversation, their timbres blending through slowly evolving melodic repetition, Morgan's bass and Vandever's trombone weaving through Deupree's carefully crafted sound design. On "Imaginary Lines," Moor Mother's spoken meditations are processed and reshaped in real time by BlankFor.ms, the words themselves triggering shifts in the surrounding electronic textures. It is one of the record's most striking moments, language becoming sound becoming landscape.

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The album's two collaborations between Smith and Myers, "Sonic Requiem X" and "Reflections on Palestine," demonstrate the particular quality of music made between artists with deep mutual history. The silences in their playing carry as much weight as the interventions, and the space between notes feels carefully considered rather than simply empty. Son's "The River of Imjin" moves in a different direction, layering horns and pump organ into a rhapsodic hymn with a singular, enveloping texture. On "War is Over," Deribe and Maggio find great restraint within an intimate ballad framework.

On "Three Years Later" Smith soars above Naqvi's rich electronic palette while Cyrille's Afro-Caribbean-inflected pattern on cowbell and toms grounds the piece in a rhythmic sensibility that feels unexpected within the broader context of the album, adding a distinct pocket to the more abstract electronic and improvisational terrain surrounding it. Downes contributes two solo pipe organ works, "Into the Woods - 3 Weary Calls" and "Closing Meditation for OM," both of which push the instrument into unusual territory, the first dissolving almost entirely into orchestral abstraction.

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Produced by Sun Chung and recorded, mixed and mastered by Rick Kwan and Deupree, the production is fully in service of the album's concept. The sonic qualities of each track are distinct, yet the sequencing and craft create a sense of continuity across very different approaches, as though the same idea is being examined from multiple distances and angles.

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Peace Anthems arrives as Red Hook Records celebrates its fifth anniversary. Founded by producer Sun Chung in 2021, the label has built a genre-crossing catalog, earning widespread critical recognition along the way. The album's release in July is one of several milestones the label is celebrating this year, culminating in a two-night anniversary concert at Roulette in Brooklyn on September 18 and 19, where artists from across the Red Hook catalog, including several contributors to Peace Anthems, will perform.

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In her liner notes, Moor Mother frames the album's purpose plainly: "In the midst of a multitude of wars raging in many countries, we see the confusion and fear on the faces of many and realize that there is no better time for peace than the present." Peace Anthems offers no simple resolution to that observation, but through twelve original works it maps the varied ways artists can sound out that longing and hold it up to the light.

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All profits generated from the sales of this album will be donated to the International Red Cross.

Recorded: 2026, various locations

Engineer: Rick Kwan

Mastering: Taylor Deupree

Photos: IJ Biermann, Macha Rose, Tae Cimarosti, 

Cover Art: Guk Hwa

Design: Matthew Appleton

Produced by Sun Chung