ABOUT THE ALBUM

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) spoke the truth (and the truth under his tongue was sometimes a hammer, sometimes an anvil, sometimes a sickle, sometimes just a breath or a blast). Baraka had no tongue in cheek. Sometimes he drew his language (his thought) and in the barrel of his language (his thought), there was the cartridge of criticism, the cartridge of ranting, the cartridge of analysis, the cartridge of sedition, the cartridge of poetry, the cartridge of music. Heroes Are Gang Leaders have the same outspokenness that goes in all directions, that makes absolutely everything a target and that liberates what it touches, it is a gathering of the tribes, an assembly, and an assemblage of poets and musicians who use the same miraculous weapons, as Aimé Césaire, a close relative of Baraka / Jones, said. In Paris, HAGL did this. They found the asylum, the outpost. They fired all their tongues. Like Charlie Parker's Back Home Blues or Jayne Cortez's Taking the Blues Back Home. And your eyelids are heavy. A great heat invades you, a torpor takes possession of your body. All voices, all languages are viruses, the stories they tell are virulent. A musical instrument, like a poetic instrument, is used to pick up and scramble signals. Don't wake up. Not yet. All that's left is to try and swarm. It is done now. Now you will open your eyes. You breathe deeply. Count silently to three, and at three open your eyes. Come back to yourself. Do not resist. Resist. It is 2021. Everything remains to be done. You know what to do. One, two, three...Open your ears.

Alexandre Pierrepont, 2021

Heroes Are Gang Leaders
LeAutoRoiOgraphy

Thomas Sayers Ellis, bandleader poet
James Brandon Lewis, tenor sax
Luke Stewart, bass
Melanie Dyer, viola, vocals
Nettie Chickering, voice
Jenna Camille, piano, vocals
Randall Horton, poet
Devin Brahja Waldman, alto sax, synthesizer
Bonita Lee Penn, poet
Heru Shabaka-ra, trumpet
Brandon Moses, guitar
Warren "Trae" Crudup, III, drums

Recorded Live in Paris
Release June 2022
Total time: 63 mins
Catalog number 5887

Photographs by Thomas Sayers Ellis (2020)
Graphic design by Sergio Vezzali

Limited Edition Yellow vinyl with printed inner sleeve
Black Vinyl with printed inner sleeve - First pressing of 500
CD: Exclusive Digipak - First pressing of 500


TRACKS:

1. Amina (The Dutchman's Three Buttoned Suit / Poetry Iz Labor / Forensic Report) 11:42
2. The Shrimpy Grits 7:48
3. LeAutoRoiOgraphy 12:05
4. Mista Sippy 17:07
5. Sad Dictator (I Wanna Make Freedom) 13:42

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