HOME (Papanosh + Roy Nathanson & Napoleon Maddox): STUDIO KONZERT [180g Vinyl LIMITED EDITION]

You are listening to a collective sonic memory—a four-year shared exploration of the meaning of the English word "Home," presented by our conglomerate band from Rouen, Cincinnati, and Brooklyn. Since there isn't enough space here to introduce you to all the characters we've encountered on this journey, I'll just list a few. The rest you'll have to discover through the music itself.

There was the boy from the Parisian suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois who answered "My foot!" to the question of which body part he called his home and then kicked his soccer ball across the entire stage while Jeremy Piazza on drums set the rhythm, Thibault Cellier wrapped his arms around his bass, and we all joined in: Raphael Quenehan and I swung the saxophones, Sebastian Palis danced his fingers across the keys, Quentin Ghomaries' angelic trumpet stirred the crowd, and Napoleon Maddox's velvety voice sang the whole piece. And then there were the stories of taste and smell, of the remnants of houses people left for various painful reasons to immigrate to France.

And of course, there was Haider Omer, who spent years in a Sudanese prison and then miraculously came to Perpignan to perform Mohamad Ward's Migrating Bird Song with us on stage. Another sonic tale of loss.

When you hear these songs from that one night in Ludwigsburg, you also experience these and many other stories that people shared with us over these years. Songs of loss, experience, and gratitude that have given this band a common language, heard in the collective play of songs like "Warm, Warm Waters." A common language that has afforded us the rare opportunity to peer into gentle, open hearts and convey their stories in our own language of music. And for that, we are deeply grateful.

- Roy Nathanson