ATTITUDE! – Photo Credit: Sherri Rubel
“Who Flung Dung” is the first single from ESP-Disk’ artists ATTITUDE!, whose debut album Pause & Effect will be released by ESP on vinyl this fall.
Anti-Asian racism is not new. This track was not written in response to recent events — it was recorded in December 2019, before Covid-19 hit the U.S. and, in an evil domino effect, led to anti-Chinese rhetoric promoted by Donald Trump in an effort to shift the blame for his ineffectual response to the pandemic But, given the current attacks on Asians, it’s a track with unfortunate timeliness.
Rose Tang (voice, electric guitar) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, movement performer, poet, concert curator, visual artist, activist and journalist. In short, she’s a multi-disciplinary, multi-media and multi-lingual artist, event host, and “trouble” maker. She grew up in Guizhou, Sichuan, Fujian, Beijing, and Australia, and is of Mongol and Chinese descent. She was born in Guiyang in southwestern China, where her Mongol ancestors had been exiled. Tang plays in about 30 bands and ensembles in New York and Seattle. Tang, who hates being labeled, calls her music genre “weird shit.” She studied at Sichuan Fine Art Academy in Chongqing, studied English, politics, and history in colleges in Beijing, Sydney, and Perth where she also worked as a print, TV, and radio journalist. A radio reporter and documentary maker in the outbacks of Western Australia, she was one of the first journalists to expose police brutality against Aboriginal Australians, refugees, and immigrants. Tang is the first Chinese-born journalist to win national and international awards in Hong Kong, Australia, and the U.S. She started to play music regularly in 2017, under the mentorship of legendary multi-instrumentalist/improviser/poet Daniel Carter.
Ayumi Ishito (tenor saxophone) was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, where she studied with George Garzone, Hal Crook, and Frank Tiberi. After graduating from Berklee, she moved to New York in 2010 and has performed with Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel, Daniel Carter, and many others. Current bands she is a member of include The Jazz Thieves, GADADU, Eighty-pound Pug, Platypus Revenge, and Big Squid. Ishito has been leading her own group since 2011. She released two albums, View from a Little Cave (2016) and Midnite Cinema (2019), which consist entirely of her original compositions.
Wen-Ting Wu (drums) is a composer and educator from Taiwan with a diverse background ranging from jazz to contemporary music. She moved to New York in 2016 and earned her Master of Jazz Performance Degree in Queens College under Dennis Mackrel. Besides being a member in Frank Lacy’s Concert Jazz Ensemble currently, she has shared the stage with artists such as Joel Frahm, Antoine Drye, Bertha Hope, Akua Dixon, Helen Sung and RightiousGirls. She was also a member of Golden Melody Award-winning band Chang & Lee and Hello Nico in Taiwan before she moved to New York. Besides these collaborations, she leads her own band and plays solo drum shows.
The group came together to play one song at an event. ESP-Disk’, already familiar with the separate work on the NYC scene of all three members, immediately invited them to make an album. After intensive rehearsals, the members recorded the album in a one-day session, then reunited during the pandemic to add words about its effect to an existing instrumental.
