Jeff Parker - Forfolks (Cool Mint Vinyl) Vinyl LP

On Forfolks, Jeff Parker strips everything down to just himself, his guitar, and the looping ideas that orbit his imagination. A selfless, painterly improviser, Parker has spent three decades shaping the sound of modern creative music—from the fertile, cross-genre scene of 1990s Chicago to collaborations with a vast spectrum of artists—while keeping SOUND itself at the center. Never one to lean on obvious genre tropes, he blends the breadth of Black Music with a deeply personal voice, fitting seamlessly into countless contexts without losing his identity.

Here, Parker places a Great American Songbook standard alongside a Thelonious Monk tune, multi-layered improvisations, and original compositions spanning twenty-five years. Each track is its own complete sonic world, with all layers holding equal weight—no virtuosic grandstanding, only the quiet mastery and restraint that have long defined his work. The result is a rare, intimate portrait of an artist whose quietly iconoclastic path has consistently stayed ahead of its time.