Marc Ribot Returns With Instrumental Quartet Album Hurry Red Telephone

Guitarist Marc Ribot has released Hurry Red Telephone on Pi Recordings, his first all-instrumental album since 2014's Live at the Village Vanguard. The label lists the release date as Oct. 30, 2026 (catalog PI116). The set reunites Ribot with drummer Chad Taylor, his partner from the Village Vanguard trio with the late bassist Henry Grimes, in what Pi describes as an eponymously named band documented across two sessions.

One New York studio session pairs Taylor and bassist Hilliard Greene with tenor saxophonists James Brandon Lewis and Brian Settles on separate tracks; bagpiper David Watson appears on the opening piece "New Monster." A second configuration, recorded in Berlin between tour dates, features Taylor with alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss and bassist Sebastian Steinberg, a longtime Ribot collaborator from the early 1990s Shrek projects. Pi's album page lists six tracks: "New Monster," "Faucets of Terrible," "Gnat," "Ghost of Sleeping," "Nan Guinan" and "Rara."

Four pieces are Ribot originals; two are by Haitian guitarist and composer Frantz Casséus, Ribot's guitar teacher and a lasting influence. In the label notes, Ribot says the project grew from a desire to continue the trajectory begun with Grimes and Taylor before Grimes's retirement and death. He calls Taylor "one of the deepest listeners I've ever worked with," a rapport that began in the Spiritual Unity group with Roy Campbell.

The album and band take their name from a verse in Richard Siken's poem "Several Tremendous," about rebuilding language after a stroke. Ribot links that image to starting again after Grimes's death: groping for a musical language in the dark and building something after a collapse. Pi's August preview also noted a live date for the quartet at Roulette in Brooklyn on Oct. 19. Hurry Red Telephone arrives as Ribot continues work with Ceramic Dog, solo projects and recent collaborations across jazz, rock and song.