Chicago drummer, bandleader, composer Mike Reed shares new single and video “Floating With An Intimate Stranger” off of The Separatist Party, his new album out October 27th on Astral Spirits/We Jazz. Highlighting the strengths of the group Reed assembled for the record – cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, and members of Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan) – “Floating With An Intimate Stranger” is a sleek mid-tempo groover that brings an orchestral depth harkening back to Sun Ra Arkestra’s Chicago days of the 1950’s. Reed explains how while the song’s video “is simply scenes from the road, the song is there to help you get outside of your own body. Sometimes you meditate, sometimes you need substances, and sometimes you share the most intimate thoughts and desires with complete strangers . . . they’re different ways to be free.”

Reed is widely recognized as a community-builder, both through making music and presenting it.
He’s led bands (including his old, disbanded quintet, Loose Assembly, and People, Places & Things), serves in the the Artifacts collective alongside Nicole Mitchell and Tomeka Reid, and maintains long-term projects with AACM co-founders Roscoe Mitchell and Wadada Leo Smith. He’s programmed live music for over two decades, co-founding Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival, serving as chair of the Chicago Music Festival, and owning and operating vital live music venues Constellation and The Hungry Brain.
 
In creating The Separating Party, the six musicians collaborated on and recorded material over the span of a week at Chicago’s Constellation. On October 26th, those six musicians will reassemble at Constellation for a record release show. Tickets are on sale now, with a full list of Mike Reed’s Separatist Party tour dates below:

Thu. Oct. 26 – Chicago, IL @ Constellation [RECORD RELEASE SHOW]
Fri. Nov. 3 – Berlin, DE @ Berlin Jazz Festival