Matt Ulery’s By A Little Light, now available for preorder.

This late spring and early summer has been busy for us, and we ain’t complaining. What with all this great music we’re putting out into the world. Fresh on the heels of bassist Linda Oh’s second album we released in May, another bassist finds a home for his record on our roster on June 19th.

We’re always really excited about music that begs you not to define it, music that is truly unique and individual, music that is a deeply emotional and reaches people. Lucky for us, Matt Ulery sent us his new 2-disc album By A Little Light late last year. We were wowed by the writing and the scale of the work, so today, we announce the preorder of the CD at the Greenleaf store. The MP3s are available at iTunes.

Ulery hails from Chicago — if you didn’t know, the Greenleaf offices are here, too. He has a couple working bands in town — Loom, Eastern Blok — that have recorded great records that you should check out. He’s also the musical director of vocalist Graznya Auguscik band — Graznya appears as a featured guest vocalist on several tracks on By A Little Light.

Though much of the music is through-composed, there is a strong piano trio core in the midst of all the winds-and-strings accompaniment. That piano trio duty is split between pianists Rob Clearfield and Ben Lewis, and the drummers Jon Deitemyer and Michael Caskey with Ulery as the centerpiece.

The accompaniment core consists of members of the two-time Grammy-winning sextet eighth blackbird, violinist Zach Brock, and a few others. This piece of the compositions is what gives the album it’s almost indefinable sound (I was joking the other day that the start of a song called Processional sounded to me like a Stereolab song). Regardless of what I hear on a tune, you should hear a track for yourself.

The full ensemble will perform two nights at Chicago’s Green Mill on June 29-30. It’s sure to be a great night of music. We hope you’ll join us.