On May 30th, Seattle-based Monktail Records will be releasing the second full length CD by the reptilian jazz sextet Reptet. The CD, entitled Do This! features the first jazz album cover by the late illustrator Jim Flora in over 45 years. Crafted on old style letterpress, the total package is a stunning amalgam of traditional and progressive jazz--both sight and sound.
James (Jim) Flora fashioned dozens of diabolic and hallucinatory album cover illustrations, many for Columbia and RCA Victor jazz artists, in the 1940s and '50s. Along with David Stone Martin, Flora (1914-1998) is now considered to be the artist that best captured the pulse of the classic jazz era. His album covers are now collector's items that regularly fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay, and his stylistic imprint has influenced an entire generation of illustrators.
Reptet is a sextet consisting of six multi-instrumentalists all of whom are members of the internationally acclaimed Monktail Creative Music Concern based out of Seattle, WA. They have established themselves as a group of considerable excitement, flair and vision while simultaneously debunking preconceived notions of what a jazz group ought to be. Their music has been aired on radio stations across the United States and Europe, and their members have toured internationally. The arts organization Earshot Jazz has described them as, “A hot progressive combo of Seattle's best young players. Their music is intense, taut, and fresh." With the release of Do This!, Reptet has established themselves as an irrepressible force in modern jazz.
Do This! features the first “new" Flora image to grace an album cover since 1961. Two independent CD releases in the past five years have adapted old Flora LP cover designs, but the Reptet CD is the first to use something by Flora never before seen. Irwin Chusid, author of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (published by Fantagraphics), believes the cover image (which he affectionately named “Flora Triclops") dates from 1952, but he can't confirm an exact year. It appeared on a postcard Flora had printed to solicit illustration assignments. The image will first see official book publication in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora slated for publication by Fantagraphics in February 2007.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
