JJJJJerome Ellis bends time and sound on Vesper Sparrow
Black disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist JJJJJerome Ellis returns with Vesper Sparrow, a profound and experimental new album arriving November 14 via Shelter Press.
Produced by: JJJJJerome Ellis with additional production by Graham Duncan on ‘Vesper Sparrow.’
Rooted in improvisation and spirituality, Vesper Sparrow explores the intersections of Blackness, stuttering, divinity, nature, and sound. Ellis uses a multidisciplinary lens as he crafts immersive sonic environments with saxophone, organ, hammered dulcimer, electronics, and voice. They dissolve the boundaries between composition, performance, and meditation, offering work that is groundbreaking and contemplative.
Vesper Sparrow unfolds as an exploration of suspension—a study in how time can stretch, pause, and reassemble through sound. The album comprises two complete thoughts. Its centerpiece is the four-part composition ‘Evensong.’ The structure hinges on a recorded stutter, which Ellis uses as both a sonic and philosophical pivot. “The stutter becomes a structuring moment,” they explain. Fading the stutter in part two allows space for the tracks ‘Vesper Sparrow’ and ‘Savannah Sparrow’ to fill the gap. These transitions illuminate Ellis’s concept of time as nonlinear and porous, emphasizing the beauty in pauses, imperfections, and repetition.
The record’s soundscape weaves together electronic manipulation, granular synthesis, and traces of Caribbean and Black American musical traditions. Across its compositions, Ellis balances the sacred and the digital — organ drones and field recordings coexist with flickers of distortion and vocal fragments that ripple into abstraction. The result feels at once ancient and futuristic, recalling the meditative qualities of gospel hymns while incorporating textures from pop and indie-rock production. The reinterpretation of the traditional hymn ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow’ stands as one of the album’s most striking moments — a shimmering longform piece that reframes the familiar into a space of reverent uncertainty.
Ellis notes:
“Both stuttering and granular synthesis can suspend moments in time, and “invite multiple ways of inhabiting, traversing, and connecting with others in those moments.”
With Vesper Sparrow, Ellis redefines the relationship between speech and sound but offering a radical act of listening itself. The album invites us to hear silence as music, disfluency as rhythm, and stillness as resistance.
Vesper Sparrow by JJJJJerome Ellis is out November 14 via Shelter Press. Stream the album now on all major platforms.
Standout Songs: ‘Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer),’ ‘Evensong, Part 2 (for and after James Harrison Monaco),’ ‘Savannah Sparrow (for and after Kenita Miller).’
Release Date: November 14, 2025
8.6
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