RH1010
1. Al Badawi – Qasim Naqvi
2. Wither Light and Airy – Taylor Deupree,
Kalia Vandever, Thomas Morgan
3. Imaginary Lines – Moor Mother, BlankForms
4. Sonic Requiem X – Wadada Leo Smith,
Amina Claudine Myers
5. The River of Imjin – Sungjae Son
6. War is Over – Martha Deribe, Simone Maggio
7. Three Years Later – Qasim Naqvi,
Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille
8. Into the Woods - 3 Weary Calls – Kit Downes
9. Reflections on Palestine – Wadada Leo Smith, Amina Claudine Myers
10. Closing Meditation for OM – Kit Downes
5:17
3:35
3:52
2:43
2:15
2:13
4:31
3:07
4:32
2:03
Moor Mother: voice
Qasim Navqi: modular synthesizer
Taylor Deupree: guitar, percussion
Kalia Vandever: trombone
Thomas Morgan: bassBlankFor.ms: electronics, tape loops, processing
Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet
Amina Claudine Myers: piano
Sungjae Son: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, pump organ
Martha Deribe: voice
Simone Maggio: Fender Rhodes
Andrew Cyrille: drums
Kit Downes: pipe organ
Red Hook Records presents Peace Anthems, a multi-artist album gathering thirteen musicians under a single, urgent theme: the pursuit of peace. Released 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"This ten track compilation's unifying theme the
pursuit of peace - is both urgent and timely."
The Wire - Daniel Spicer
"A fascinating genreless exploration of sonic space."
Stereogum - Phil Freeman
"What’s most striking about this jazz and jazz-adjacent release—besides the track-by-track excellence and the impressive roster of Red Hook Records recording artists—is the way the varied pieces hang together so well."
Qobuz - Fred Cisterna (Album of the Week)
"The music is often melancholy, soulful, introspective, as if it recognizes how distant society has grown from that state."
Bandcamp - Dave Sumner (The Best Albums of July 2026)
"These are little tone poems whose delicacy is their strength."
The Blue Moment - Richard Williams
"The set is, start to finish, a warm embrace."
The New York City Jazz Record - Kurt Gottschalk
"This music does not retreat into an untouched sanctuary. It works for armistice while wars rage, binding breath to breath and carrying hope beyond abstraction."
Between Sound and Space - Tyran Grillo
"Whether music can move the needle on peace is a fair question. What’s not in question is the seriousness these thirteen musicians brought to it, each one working the idea over slowly, deliberately, until it became something you could actually hear."
Jazz Views - Tim Larsen
"In a chaotic zeitgeist, this album can be a momentary respite from the madness, a soothing balm, healing, meditative, peaceful."
Downbeat - Gary Fukushima
"The album’s sonics move in many different directions even as they magically somehow find an inexplicable cohesion throughout. In earlier generations, one could imagine artists such as Alice Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders thinking similarly."
Postgenre - Jim Hynes
“The consistency is what lets the album read as one project rather than a compilation.”
UK Vibe - Steve Williams
"一つのテーマに対する多角的な考察として見事な統一感を持って響く、極めて意義深い作品です。
An extremely meaningful work that resonates with a wonderful sense of unity as a multi-angled consideration of a single theme."
Disk Union
"The record feels astonishingly unified. That coherence owes as much to sequencing and production as to composition. Every transition appears carefully considered. No piece attempts to overshadow the next. Silence becomes connective tissue. Resonance becomes narrative. Even contrast begins to feel like continuity."
Paris Move - Thierry De Clemensat (INDISPENSABLE)
"Mit Peace Anthems präsentiert Label-Gründer und Produzent Sun Chung zum fünften Jahrestag nicht nur ein klares soziales und politisches Statement, sondern es gelingt ihm auch, die musikalische Vision von Red Hook Records auf den Punkt zu bringen."
Jazz'n'more - Rudolf Amstutz
"Mooi hoor, deze 34 minuten durende, ingehouden wanhoop op Peace Anthems."
Volkskrant - Gijsbert Kamer