Joshua Abrams guimbri, electronics, dubs
Lisa Alvarado harmonium, electronics 
Mikel Patrick Avery drums
Jason Stein bass clarinet 

recorded Electrical Audio, Chicago 2024-03-11
engineer Greg Norman
all artwork from Lisa Alvarado’s Shape of Artifact Time exhibition, The Kitchen, NYC 2025
producers Michael Ehlers & Joshua Abrams

Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS). After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.

One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.

Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”

The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.

Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —"energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.

“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).

Release date 2025-10-24. 1st eremite edition pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod). 1st 300 direct order copies include eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves hand screen-printed by Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. CD & EU vinyl edition available from our partner Aguirre Records. Digital files available at eremite records bandcamp. Available on streaming platforms via New Soil Music.

Among the defining projects in 21st century underground music, Natural Information Society has released 7 albums on eremite to great critical acclaim, & on Drag City records 2 collaborative albums with Bitchin’ Bajas. Since returning to bandstands in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Natural Information Society has performed at Big Ears, Pitchfork Music, Guelph Jazz, & Jazztopad Festivals (2022), the Vision Festival, Jazz em Agosto, Le Guess Who, & Jazzfest Berlin (2023), FIMAV, Hyde Park Jazz, & Jardin Sonoro Festivals at Instituo Inhotim (2024). The band has performed in conjunction with exhibitions of Lisa Alvarado’s visual work at venues including REDCAT (Disney CalArts), Wadsworth Atheneum, Moody Center, & The Kitchen.