History Dog

booking: historydognyc@gmail.com

“Buried” video art by Zekkereya El-magharbel

“Bees” at Pulp Arts

About

History Dog is Chris Williams, Lesley Mok, Luke Stewart, and Shara Lunon.

Root Systems
Otherly Love Records

Root Systems, History Dog's debut album, transmutes the pulse of New York's improvised music community, where raw expression and collaboration thrive. Rooted in the community's spirit of exploration, this album invites listeners to confront humanity's fractures and connections, creating realms that feel both intimate and powerful.

Press

“Stewart’s cluster-funk electric bass gives the music a fidgety free improv quality, combined with the zonked psychadelia of Williams’s heavily effected trumpet and Mok’s in-the-red drums. While Lunon gets in on the improv action with giddy vocalese, her poetic interventions bring things into focus.”
— The Wire, issue 495 May 2025

“The effortless hurtling from dreamy electronics-fueled spatterings, sheer punk-jazz fury, spoken-word stream of consciousness and skronky no wave-esque noisescapes… reveals a band whose interplay is off the psychic scale.”
— Treble Zine, May 2025

“Although their name History Dog emphasizes an excavation of the past, the collective formed by four of today’s most exciting improvisers—Lesley Mok (drums), Chris Williams (trumpet), Luke Stewart (bass) and Shara Lunon (vocals)—is very much a response to the here and now, embodying the present moment in all its complexity.”
— The New York City Jazz Record, June 2025

Images

Downloads

Root Systems EPK
Liner notes by Darius Jones
Press Release by Piotr Orlov
Photos by Abigail Clark