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sinceileftyoublog · 5 years

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Bill MacKay & Katinka Kleijn: Stir and Shatter

Bill MacKay (left) and Katinka Kleijn (right); Photo by Ricardo E. Adame

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Throughout their seven years of collaboration, guitarist Bill MacKay and cellist Katinka Kleijn have toed the line between composition and improvisation. “I felt like we had this strong chemistry right away,” MacKay told me a couple months ago. “Sometimes you go along for a while and you don’t know how it’s gonna build, but it seems like it has splintered into a few things.” Indeed, the duo have played together as part of countless bills, and Kleijn contributed to SpiderBeetleBee, the most recent Ryley Walker-MacKay duo record, back in 2017. What they do continues to be informed by their classical backgrounds and explorations into experimental mediums. “There’s been such a range,” said MacKay. “We’ll play a few songs, some will be compositions, some will be sketches for graphics. It’s fair to say that a lot of them have been free-form, but it feels so song-y to play with her. It feels like we’re drawing out long melodies and a lot of chaos, too, and all kinds of elements of things that are part of ourselves. It all feels like composition to me, but it’s not.” This dichotomy has formalized in STIR, the duo’s first record that came out last month on MacKay’s home, Drag City.

On paper, the album’s story is straightforward: MacKay wrote some themes, and the two played off of them. STIR was recorded at Experimental Sound Studio by Alex Inglizian, with just MacKay and his guitar and amplifier and Kelijn’s cello, with only four microphones, a couple in the room and a couple up high about 10-15 above them, in one pass through. They went through a few complete mixes with Nick Broste at Shape Shoppe to adjust to the album’s loud-quiet-loud dynamic, and then the album went on for mastering by Carl Saff. But like its labyrinthine cover, STIR is a record that rewards beneath the surface. Inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf, it shares characteristics of great novels, from its subtle foreshadowing to its callbacks that avoid wink-and-nod obviousness. Of course, the playing is as expert as you’d expect from these two, but it’s the album’s informal, yet strong narrative structure that impresses most, buoyed by MacKay’s writing.

Tonight, MacKay and Kleijn play a release show for STIR at Elastic Arts with visuals by Timothy Breen, and tomorrow at the Old Capitol Museum in Iowa City. (Brett Naucke opens tonight.) Read my conversation with MacKay, edited for length and clarity, below, where he touches on the making of the record, the history of his relationship to Hesse, and the gems in his current musical rotation.

Since I Left You: Was STIR at all informed by your and Katinka’s prior performances? Or were the songs totally new?

Bill MacKay: It was new in the sense that we had the framework and themes that I wrote for the pieces, and we had that going into it, but we also knew there would be a lot of jumping off points and we would glide around and shatter in a lot of different areas. But it was definitely our vocabulary together that was informed by prior performances. I listen to it, and even if it’s not specific thematic parts in the improvisation, it’s the colors of what we do together and this mixture that’s intriguing, of the classical elements and jazz and noise. It transcends the genres to me--it feels like a hybrid of some sorts.

SILY: You definitely have those different worlds in your contexts. Katinka’s in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra but also does noisy, experimental stuff, and you're in the folk and the experimental and jazz worlds.

BM: I [also] studied classical guitar as a kid. It was really brief, but certain things about it were so influential and stayed with me. The way things moved around, and keeping two melodies going. It made me appreciate classical music more. So we come from all these similar worlds, yet quite different at the same time. It feels unique to me. You don’t see electric guitar and cello all the time, either.

SILY: So you had the bases for the themes you had written. Beyond that, was what ended up as the final product mostly improvised?

BM: There’s a lot of improvisation on it. I suppose it would be like a lot of jazz records. You have the themes, some of them are more extended than others, and some are quite brief, but it’s the theme that informs or colorizes what follows. Sometimes we return to the themes, and sometimes we don’t. What sometimes bothered me about playing jazz is I would have a theme or melody I liked that was the head tune, but sometimes, the middle would have no connection to it. People would go off but not return to it or play threads of it. Sometimes, it was this weird sandwich, and everything was separate. On this one, we were cognizant of the melodic parts and the written material, so we came back to it. It threads its way in. Sometimes really subtly. I was listening to the other day and heard some stuff Katinka was playing that was related to the theme that was threaded in. I was happy about how it came out.

SILY: How did you go about deciding where one track ends and another begins?

BM: What we tried to do was follow what the plan of the composition was. I thought of it as the themes being separate ideas or entities that we would run together as much as possible, maybe with brief pauses. Most of it follows that: This is where the idea ends. Maybe we’d recap the idea. A couple times, the choices were definitely multi-variable.

SILY: There are groupings of track names that go together, and groupings of tracks sonically that go together, and they’re a bit different. “Hermine” and “The Hermetic Circle” and “No One Here is a Stranger”. Linguistically, the first two go together, and the idea of the third has to do with the first two. At the same time, “The Hermetic Circle” is where the record gets quieter and more playful.

BM: I was thinking about that: If people only hear the first couple tracks, they’ll think, “Oh, this is gonna be of this tenor. And it’s gonna be dark and crazy and I’m gonna be scared and all this stuff.” The phase and the dimension changes a lot with that third one. I don’t think our choices would have been drastically different, but there were parts where we said that the feeling of one went a little further or shorter because there were silences and pauses. That said, we were following a script. There was probably a moment where we would look at each other and think, “Are we plunging into this now, or playing a little more of something?”

SILY: Also, “Door to the Magic Theatre” and “A Series of Doors” go together linguistically.

BM: For something that’s as clear as that, I barely noticed it. Or I did and it went out of my mind or something. To some degree, the titles relate to Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf.

SILY: When were you first aware of that book in your life?

BM: I think it was probably as a teenager. I really got into his work so much as a teenager, Beneath the Wheel and Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game and Steppenwolf and Demian. There was this range of books that I was reading.

SILY: At what point did you decide to make music inspired by Steppenwolf?

BM: I think it was only a little before it, but it had been on my mind for a long time. I wanted to return to Hesse more. It always seemed like his themes resonated with me. There was some kinship with his work. In that way, there was an aesthetic thing I was trying to reach for. I also felt I had already done it with others I felt the same way about. I think it was in the last couple years it really occurred to me and started writing these themes that worked.

SILY: Do you think the record follows a story or narrative?

BM: You know, I like to think that those things do in one sense, but maybe to people it would seem superficial. People often return to words and say, “A story must have words and is told in this way.” But then again, on the other hand, stories of ascension or spiritual discovery have been told so many times, like a story like Steppenwolf, but it’s his particular way of doing it that’s his identity. I hope or think that people get a similar story from what we’re doing. The beginning is like a prologue feel of setting a scene, there are feelings of chaos and struggle to some degree that enter into it, and some elegiac lyrical moments that imply certain states of mind. And there’s a feeling of a conclusion to me, and a drawn out part before that with a return of some of the themes. It feels symphonic to me in that way.

SILY: One cliche that this record avoids is the introduction as an overture. “Here’s my palate, here are all of the colors I’m going to be using throughout this album.”

BM: [laughs] I’m glad you said that. I kind of agree about those things. “Wow, this is weird, I’m getting a taste of these 4-6 themes that will be part of this long thing after.”

SILY: It’s like a rock opera.

BM: Is there a particular reason for that for you? Do you feel like they’re giving away the movie before you’ve seen it?

SILY: Somewhat. I feel like it’s just overdone and it has to be done really well. There are plenty of classic rock albums that do it that are fun and great.

BM: And plenty of symphonic works.

SILY: More than anything, I don’t inherently dislike it, but I like when things defy my expectations, especially in the context of it being a prelude or an intro. If it’s given that name or identity but then ends up not being what I think it’s gonna be, it’s a more fun experience, especially on repeat listens.

BM: That’s true. It’s something that can’t be valued enough. I got turned on to this book of stories by Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son. It’s only 100 pages, but I got through the whole thing in like a day because I’m just so gripped. There are constant twists and turns and expectations being upended, and not in a blatant way or trying to hard or trying to shock you. It’s these completely natural occurrences. I love that, it’s so great.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album title?

BM: I can’t really figure out why we came to this word, but there was a lot of searching through different things. Sometimes finding titles for records is the most torturous thing. A song can be hard, too, but it’s only a chip. This is a more public, visible, longer-lasting thing. The pressure to get something that feels right is on you more. I’ll just have reams of pages of titles and things, in different combinations, on and on. Katinka and I liked [“stir”] when we thought about it because it had more meanings than we had thought of. When you think of many words, you do so only in the context of where you need it at the moment. With this, there were lots: stirring up trouble, things that stir in the night, stir your imagination, and really pragmatic things like stirring your coffee. It seemed like a good one that way.

SILY: What about the cover art?

BM: The cover art is by this fellow Marko Markovic. He’s an artist who is friends with folks at Drag City. We were looking around at a few different things, and his work was presented to us as an idea. We were looking around at different parts of it, and three felt possible, but we kept coming back to that piece. It feels in one way like it’s simple and very primal and has this square, but there’s so much going on in that woodwork and crazy labyrinth of lattice work. Katinka had a beautiful phrase: It was something that on the surface seemed really simple but as you looked closer had this intensely woven textured narrative. She said it more gracefully than me.

SILY: Is there anything that you’ve been listening to or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

BM: I just picked up this album in Burlington, Vermont at a record store by Syrinx, an band from the early 70′s. Prog rock, lots of Mellotron, a bit of Zombies and King Crimson, but kind of their own things. I’ve been grooving on that; I’m not even through it all, it’s a three-record box set. I’ve also been grooving on the last few Mary Lattimore records. And then Dead Rider. A good chunk of artists on Drag City. Whenever I go there, I often come back with a stack of records.

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m3t4ln3rd · 5 years

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Varaha to release debut effort, A Passage For Lost Years later this month;

Official press release:

Chicago’s atmospheric dark metal ensemble, Varaha will present their stunning debut album, A Passage for Lost Years on April 26th via Prosthetic Records.

The first single is the album title track, streaming right now exclusively with Kerrang! The video was created by Chariot Of Black Moth:

Varaha vocalist Fabio Brienza stated:

“‘A Passage for Lost Years’is…

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#A Passage For Lost Years #Adam Stilson #Chariot Of Black Moth #Decade Music Studios #Mike Lust #Nick Broste #Prosthetic Records #Travis Smith #Varaha

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jazzatleftofcenter · 4 years

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HEAR HERE :: QUIN KIRCHNER 'THE SHADOWS & THE LIGHT' 2LP [ASTRAL SPIRITS - 2020] ▪︎ Chicago's own Quin Kirchner delivers multiple sounds and styles with his latest gift... 'The Shadows and the Light. . The 15-Track Double Album of originals + a few select covers features varying line-ups, from solo to septet reveals a love of life, music and sound that will catch the open ear, mind and heart of the true listener by ear. . Latin, Spiritual, Modern Trad and a few shoots of the latter. This . Is . That . Get intuit, get in to it and get it in - In Like Quin! ▪︎ Quin Kirchner Drums, Synths Percussion, Kalimba Nate Lepine: Tenor Sax, Flute Greg Ward: Alto Sax Nick Mazzarella: Alto+Soprano Saxophones Nick Broste: Trombone Jason Stein: Bass Clarinet Rob Clearfield: Piano, Wurlitzer; Matt Ulery: Basses . #Jazz #NotJazz #ModernJazz #SpiritualJazz #PostJazz #JazzInChicago #ChicagoJazz #QuinKirchner (at Chicago, Illinois) https://www.instagram.com/p/CC2l775gcPN/?igshid=1fvcofxzg727d

#jazz #notjazz #modernjazz #spiritualjazz #postjazz #jazzinchicago #chicagojazz #quinkirchner

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whistlerchicago · 13 years

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(video: Giant System)

Nick Broste and Tyson Torstensen—both from the cosmic dub group Magical Beautiful—are headlining tonight's Glad Cloud Ambient Music Series at The Whistler. The duo will be exploring ambient grooves using an array organs, synthesizers, and an MPC sampler. It should get trippy. Bill Satek (Mines) and Brian Sulpizio (Health & Beauty) open.

—Billy

#Giant System video #Glad Cloud Ambient Music Series #MPC #Magical Beautiful #Nick Broste #The Whistler #The Whistler Chicago #Tyson Torstensen #Brian Sulpizio #Health & Beauty #Bill Satek #Mines

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ihanw · 14 years

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SOME STUFF I DID IN THE LAST YEAR

Prepare yourselves for a massive post, the likes of which this page will almost surely never see again.

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Last year for Halloween, I was a hastily-put-together, poor imitation of Schmillson-era Harry Nilsson:

(In need of a Harry-cut)

Why mention this? Because later that night I walked into Automatic Space as Chicago's horror/blackened prog/fusion/Zeuhl band GA'AN were playing sans bass player. (I later found out he walked off stage mid-set, only to come back and tackle their drummer.) I took note of this conspicuous absence and tried to enjoy my night.

(GA'AN before your narrator joined. Photo: Tim Lundmark)

A couple days later I wrote to a Ga'an address and asked if they needed a bass player. Along with several other people in attendance that fateful night, I tried out, and was awarded the post. Instead of only playing bass, I was also told to bring along a couple of synths. Lindsay Powell, whom previously only handled vocals, also added a couple keyboards and Ga'an became a three-piece.

Thus ensued several months of nearly all-day-long jam/writing/rehearsing sessions, which culminated in two Chicago shows (with Cacaw; White Car; Positive Shadow; and Stress Ape) and a recording session with Nick Broste at The Shape Shoppe.

(GA'AN tracking at the Shape Shoppe. Photo: Nick Broste)

Somewhere in there I also hosted the first recital for my piano and guitar students at the University Club of Chicago:

(Max and I jammin' on Jovi/Sambora's immortal "Livin' On A Prayer". Photo: Leslie D.)

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Then I went on an awesome and much needed vacation to Park City, Utah with my awesome girlfiend, Leslie, where, among other activities, we visited the incredible LDS temple and I checked out the rad organ in the tabernacle:

(Your narrator in the acoustically-perfect Mormon Tabernacle. Photo by Leslie D. This organ has 11,623 pipes, 147 voices (tone colors) and 206 ranks (rows of pipes).) The nearby LDS conference center also has a gnarly organ:

(Schoenstein organ at the Conference Center. Photo by me. This one has 7667 pipes, and the building itself seats 22,000 Latter Day Saints.)

We drove around the mountains with Bryan LeSueur, my spiritual and musical brother, recently married:

(Bryan and I chillin' (literally!!!) in front of some lake in Utah, chewin' mad Cacao nibs. Photo by Leslie.)

Bryan and I have known each other since our hardcore days (1994-2002) at Koos Arts Cafe, the all-ages DIY venue in Santa Ana, California. We later hooked up to form, with Dallas Gaines, a psychedelic improv band called Sutherland (aka Don Sutherland aka Karl Malone: A Tribute To Weird "Al" Yankovic), which lasted from 2004 until I moved to Chicago in May of 2005. Sutherland still exists when we're all in the same location, and it should be known that Magical Beautiful most certainly would not exist in nearly as interesting a form as it does now were it not for my musical explorations with Bryan. (If you're one of the few that owns "Summers Are Better Than Others" then you've heard a little bit of Sutherland.)

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As soon as we got back from Utah, I resumed rehearsals for Magical Beautiful and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's spring tour. Magical Beautiful had only toured once before (in a much different, 3-piece lineup); I had completed three previous tours with Casiotone (two 6-weekers in Europe and one 1-weeker around South By Southwest), and I had done months of touring with Head Of Femur, but, this trip was by far the most grueling. The previous Casiotone tours on which I played had been mostly Owen Ashworth playing solo sets with just 7-10 full-band songs tacked on at the end. These shows would feature Magical Beautiful (along with Nick Tamburro of the brilliant Dead Science) backing CFTPA on his full set of 15-16 songs, in addition to opening the shows with our own 30-minute set.

(Maybe the best director of all time - Andrei Tarkovsky - reps for MB and CFTPA. Drawing by Owen Ashworth)

MB was touring in support of Not Building A Wall But Making A Brick", a full-length cassette of studio-improvised electronic improvisations that we released in December, 2009. CFTPA was touring in support of his fifth and final album, Vs Children

We'd load in all our gear, soundcheck with Casiotone, break that gear down, soundcheck with Magical Beautiful, break that gear down so the openers could play, do an MB set for 30 minutes, break down that gear, set up for Casiotone, then immediately play with CFTPA for an hour. The tour was only three weeks, but the dual band thing, coupled with unexpectedly-low turnouts in the South made it exhausting. While a good time was had and much was accomplished, I won't be touring in both bands at the same time again unless there is a break between the two sets.

One great thing that happened, playing night after night, is Magical Beautiful got real good as a band.

(Alance tunes his drums at the attic "venue" in which we played in Syracuse, NY. Hottest/smelliest show of tour.)

(Charlie and I enjoy the rare (for the United States) artist hospitality at The Bottletree in Birmingham, AL. Two decked-out Airstream trailers all to ourselves.

(Charlie takes a load off in New York.)

(Your narrator creep-chillin' at Niagara Falls, NY.)

(My best friend Brigid provides the post-show snacks in Durham, North Carolina.)

(We stayed on a farm in Amherst, Massachussets. Here's Nick and Alance takin' in that fresh Northeastern air.)

(Owen and I take out our poorly-promoted-show aggression on a cinder block in Athens, Georgia.)

(Your narrator shredding at sound-check in Memphis, Tennessee as Broste looks on. Photo by Charlie.)

(Gettin' some crab cakes and beers in Portland, Maine. From back-to-front: Owen, Broste, Alance, Tyson. Photo: Charlie.)

(Casiotone For The Painfully Alone live in Syracuse. Nick Tamburro, Nick Broste and Owen Ashworth. Photo: Charlie.)

(Nick T and I celebrating after a good merch night in Syracuse. Ganja supplied by locals, photo by Charlie.)

(Magical Beautiful live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo: Nate Borek).

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GA'AN was on a bit of a break after I got back as Seth and Lindsay toured and recorded with their respective solo projects Psychic Steel and Fielded, so Magical Beautiful began the long process of finishing our first full-band album, "Here Come The Wild Waves". This was a project I started back in 2007. The first time I realized it would take longer than I hoped, I released an EP called

(Nick and Alance at the Shape Shoppe. February, 2009-ish?)

I had always wanted to mix programmed drums with live drums, so back in 2007 I took the plunge and purchased an MPC1000. 2562-indebted album. I made a dub-solo black metal version of Mount Eerie's "Flaming Home". I abused the shit out of the MIDI protocol.

Thankfully, it got warm again, and with the musical help and encouragement of my band-mates and peers, we finished the album, and it came out far grander than I could have ever conceived. Hear how we finally made "Flaming Home" our own:

Magical Beautiful - flaming home (mount eerie) by ihearanewworld

Here's a song called "Purest Place" that must have gone through 6 or 7 different versions before we ended up with this:

Magical Beautiful - purest place by ihearanewworld

(Note, Here Come The Wild Waves is nearly seamless, which means that when listening to individual tracks, they will cut off in unexpected ways. Guess you'll have to get the full album to hear it as intended. Also, these streams are at a near-unacceptable 128kbps... go to the soundcloud site to hear them at a better quality.)

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Oh yeah, back in May, I turned 30, which has been both wonderful and terrifying. Leslie put together a wonderful celebration for me, which included a pinata stuffed with personalized yo-yo's and whatnots.

(Your narrator with his slaughtered pinata on 05.30.10)

(Stumblin' through the Mummy Smoke. Chris Schreck of the mighty Icy Demons photographs)

Also: it was Mike Elsener's birthday, and he was in town from Omaha! Mike is one of my best friends ever and a very talented musician with whom I played many shows in the once-hyped, ambitious orchestral pop band Head Of Femur. Mike was also a very early member of Magical Beautiful (on drums, guitar and voc als) and now has his own lightly-psychedellic soft-rock project called Shipbuilding Co. Also, we briefly formed a light-prog band tentatively called Pangaea, a metal band called Texas Holocaust and collaborated on a record for Zeek Sheck. When I was debating whether or not to move from California to Chicago, I answered a Musician Wanted ad on Craigslist (for the first and only time in my life) - Head Of Femur, a band of whom I had heard, were looking for a touring keyboard player. Mike and I began speaking on the phone; I'm not sure of what we spoke, but our conversations would go into the hour-long range. I tried to send Mike and the other two lead Femurs (Matt Focht and Ben Armstrong) several mp3's of my piano playing to prove I was worthy of the post, but they couldn't figure out how to make them play. However, when Mike found out that we shared a birthday, he said, "It's official - you're in the band." Soon thereafter, on May 28, 2005, I arrived at Midway Airport on the south side of Chicago. Matt Focht was there with his father, Gary, and two days later, in the backyard of the house in which I still live, Mike and I shared a birthday party (me: 25, Mike: 29). Before my plane landed two days earlier, I didn't know a soul, but here I was at a party full of friendly, talented, accomplished musicians and artists celebrating my birth. Thank you, Chicago.

(Mike takes a swing.)

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And with that, readers, I'm done. The past 12 months have certainly yielded more than I could ever write about here, and though I'm tempted, I'll never finish this post if its attempted.

#Koos Cafe #Magical Beautiful #Casiotone For The Painfully Alone #Nick Tamburro #Nick Broste #Charlie Vinz #Owen Ashworth #Leslie Deckard #Bryan Lesueur #Dallas Gaines #Sutherland #Ga'an #Temple Square

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sinceileftyoublog · 6 years

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Live Picks: 9/26

Shakey Graves; Photo by Danny Clinch

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Trance blues, trance, and more.

Butch Walker, House of Blues

Talk about quietly versatile. Butch Walker is a pop rock, country-esque singer-songwriter who has quietly produced for Katie Perry, P!nk, and Taylor Swift and pop punk bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco more than he has for alt-country staples like Rayland Baxter. He has a knack for studio sheen and melody in his own songs, too, as evidenced by albums like 2008′s Sycamore Meadows. Live, he’ll do mostly his own songs, the only covers being classic rock staples.

Nashville-via-Jackson, MS rock band Indianola opens.

Gaz Coombes, Schubas

The former Supergrass singer has released three solo albums of varying quality. The most recent, May’s hooky, over-the-top, Frank Ocean-inspired World’s Strongest Man, didn’t live up to his solo apex, 2015′s underrated Matador. Of course, one goes to a Gaz Coombes set hoping to hear a couple Supergrass gems, and it’s likely he’ll gift you with something from their 90′s catalog if you attend.

Local glam pop singer-songwriter Cameron Cowles opens.

Otis Taylor Band, SPACE

Trance blues master Otis Taylor brings his band to Evanston tonight, still touring off of last year’s very good Fantasizing About Being Black. The album’s had a year and a half more to grow since we last caught Taylor. If he came out that night a little apprehensive, he should enter tonight with the confidence and enthusiasm needed to sing from the point of view of the disenfranchised--predominantly, slaves and Civil Rights marchers.

Bill MacKay, Cooper Crain, & Nick Broste, California Clipper

Tonight at the California Clipper, SILY favorite Bill MacKay, Cooper Crain of CAVE and Bitchin Bajas, and trombonist/sound engineer Nick Broste play two heady trio sets.

Shakey Graves, Riviera

If you first heard Shakey Graves through his overblown single “Dearly Departed”, you were probably as skeptical as I was to hear that his new album Can’t Wake Up was supposed to be a revelation. Well, it’s not album of the year, but it’s a very impressive transformation from earnest folk singer to indie rock curator for Alejandro Rose-Garcia. Using a choir of voices on many songs to convey his mental monologues, Garcia creates a world where he’s 17, and then 27, having existential crises and feeling invincible at the same time. Tracks are breezy (“Kids These Days”, “Backseat Driver”) and dreamy (“Counting Sheep”, “Dining Alone”), and the wide array of instruments on the record, including lo-fi synthesizers, like on the drum-machine-addled “My Neighbor” and “Big Bad Wolf” and buzzing “Foot Of Your Bed”, add to the chaos that makes the record so ultimately effective.

L.A. indie folk band The Wild Reeds open.

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sinceileftyoublog · 7 years

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Bitchin Bajas Album Review: Bajas Fresh

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For their first non-collaborative effort in three years, Chicago experimental trio Bitchin Bajas (Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, Dan Quinlivan) have changed things up a bit. Added to their usual lineup of synthesizer, guitar, saxophone, and flute are, more concretely, percussion and more horns, and, more broadly, a newfound willingness to explore. Bajas Fresh is the band’s best record yet for this very reason: It’s varied enough to stand out, similar enough to form a logical progression from past work.

These are certainly still the Bitchin Bajas you’re used to. “Circles on Circles” combines washy, choppy, woozy synths with arpeggios to create a sense of forward urgency. The synths on “2303″ (the title refers to its 23-minute, 3-second length), meanwhile, are at first zooming and warbled, but settle down to create a heavy drone. There are live drums at the end, and Nick Broste adds trombone and Ben Lamar Gay some cornet. It’s enough to prevent the track from being a total drone but not enough to wake you out of your pleasant lull or borderline hypnosis, maintaining an effectively somber mood throughout.

Perhaps the favorite point of Bitchin Bajas detractors is that, like many ambient, experimental, and instrumental artists today, they’re just Terry Riley enthusiasts, worshipers, and copiers. Opener “Jammu”, though Riley-esque, puts that to rest. Blips and circular, layered arpeggio rhythms flourish over a background drone, bass, woodwind, and snare. It’s the percussion that then establishes itself as a great difference maker, as live drums are a further highlight on the two album tracks recorded in Japan, “Yonaguni” and “Chokayo”. The former combines field recording with rattling percussion and free jazz drums from former Chicagoan Nori Tanaka. Tape manipulation, flutes, and shredding guitar from Ghost’s Masaki Batoh give the track a sense of place, an urban chaos that’s a perfect intersection between the two cities represented, crashing and beautiful at the same time. “Chokayo” is calmer, Rob Frye’s flute and bass clarinet blending with slowly pulsating synthesizer lines, quelling the live drums. Frye, of all three core band members, is most impressive on Bajas Fresh, especially on closer “Be Going”, as his saxophone clashes and swirls around organ to create a hopeful, yet eerie sound.

The track that will be most discussed on Bajas Fresh, though, is one that certainly deserves the attention: the band’s excellent cover of Sun Ra’s “Angels And Demons At Play”. The rhythm is the same, but the original’s limber bass and drums are ditched in favor of something more smoothed out, slowed, and spacious; yet, the Sun Ra version is still recognizable. Throughout their existence, Bitchin Bajas have proved their ability to create great minimalist music and collaborate seamlessly. Bajas Fresh is the first one where they really push themselves, and they succeed wildly.

8.3/10

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#bitchin bajas #album review #bajas fresh #drag city #nick broste #ben lamar gay #terry riley #nori tanaka #ghost #masaki batoh #rob frye #sun ra #cooper crain #dan quinlivan

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