#bitchin bajas

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Tacoma Park

Carrboro, NC’s Tacoma Park is the duo of John Harrison (Jphono1, Lacy Jags, North Elementary) and Ben Felton (Pegasus, Blood Revenge, Jett Rink). They’ve been working together since 2016, releasing one full-length record in 2020 and the odd track here and there since on their Bandcamp. Using guitars (looped and not) and synthesizers in ways that sometimes bleed into one another, the duo’s work touches on everything from folk to ambient to motoric. Their self-titled double album came out this April; Dusted’s Ian Mathers describes it as “even more fresh and alive than their fine past work.” Here Ben Felton shares a list of sources where they’ve found inspiration and common ground.

Mountains — Mountains, Mountains, Mountains

Before I started using synthesizers, I turned to a lot of synth-based music for clues about what to do with my guitar. I love guitars but had become bored with my playing. I saw Mountains at Union Pool in Brooklyn having never heard of them before, and it was this magical moment where I thought, here’s the exact sound I’ve been searching for but didn’t know existed. Something special about the beginning of Tacoma Park was that it was partially born out of mutual urges for John and me to step out of our respective comfort zones. For me, it was about sharing my solo practice with someone else, and for John it was about leaning into a more improvisational approach. Naturally, we shared a lot of music with each other, and Mountains was the first thing I turned him onto. Mountains, Mountains, Mountains became an early reference point for us. The blending of guitars and synths, the composed-improv approach, and the revelatory decision to make our first record a series of tracks (dare I say songs?) as opposed to one long jam — it was all largely inspired by Mountains. More than any other band, I’d say, they provided crucial guidance in our early days for figuring out how to make music together.

John Fahey

There are probably few things as obvious as the fact that John and I love Fahey. The way he plays an acoustic guitar hits me the same way synthesizers do. It’s hard to describe — something about repetition, drones, and following the way the wind blows. Fahey was a complicated man for sure. Not always a good one, from what I’ve heard. Made decisions scattered across the spectrum of the questionable. Like many others these days, I grapple with how to separate “the person from the artist,” if that’s even possible. I have clear lines that inform my choices about the art I support and engage with, but sometimes it’s foggy and harder for me to discern. To deny that Fahey is ingrained in the fabric of my creative and spiritual self would be disingenuous, and I feel like my John would agree. Whatever the case, the point is this: Tacoma Park is in some ways more a sonic manifestation of our friendship than a band. Practices involve sitting and talking for a long time, jamming, talking some more, jamming some more, and talking some more. The talk becomes the jam, the jam becomes the talk, the cycle is eternal. These ideas that Fahey — the problematic person and the composer of sounds from another Earth — stirs up are ingredients in the psychic fuel that drives us. For better or for worse, Fahey looms large.

Built To Spill — Perfect From Now On

Soon after we officially named our band, I went to see one of John’s other bands, North Elementary. They’re a Chapel Hill institution, but it had been years since I’d seen them and never in this configuration. Afterwards, I told him what I thought (I loved it), including that some of their stuff was giving me Built to Spill vibes. “Now you’re speaking my language,” John said, indicating a type of connection we had yet to identify, but I subconsciously suspected was there. Perfect from Now On is a funny title because it’s about as close to perfect as any record I’ve heard. For example, those guitars. For another example, those GUITARS. John and I went to see them a couple years ago, and it was the first time they’d come through with their current lineup (Melanie Radford on bass and Theresa Esguerra on drums). The whole show was great but seeing those songs from Perfect reimagined with this stripped-down lineup resonated deeply with both of us. It’s really amazing to see a band make songs last without losing an ounce of relevance or wonder for as long as Doug Martsch and co. have, no doubt due to the reinterpretation of this out of sight rhythm section. It’s inspiring, and it’s hopeful.

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Between the World and Me

Remember those pre-jam conversations I was talking about? This was an early topic. Certainly, there’s too much to say about this book here, but one thing I think about a lot is how it illustrates the perspective that a book is a document of where a writer was in their life when they wrote it, much like a record and a band. Coates got a lot of comparisons to Baldwin when this came out, and I think one reason for that might be their shared rejection of themselves as activists. Baldwin thought of his job as bearing witness, and I think Coates might too — bearing witness to the country, the times, and himself. To read this book, formatted as a letter to his son, after all his writing that came before it, is to see and understand how artists never stop. It’s a real act of generosity when someone publicly invites you to observe a small part of their life’s journey, and when it’s done as open-heartedly as it is in Between the World and Me, it’s a wonderful gift. I had an extra copy of the book and gave it to John in the early days of TP, and he read it over a weekend. It started with one conversation and led to many more. I know this book means a lot of things to a lot of people. To me it represents a definitive turning point in my emotional and intellectual growth, especially as a white person and an eighth-grade social studies teacher (my day job). It’s a very personal thing, and to have been able to share it with John was not insignificant. It became one of our resources for creating a shared vocabulary, exemplary, I think, of why we make the music we make together. Required reading imho.

Ami Dang — Parted Plains

Generally speaking, I am easily gripped by music that blends the traditional or classical with the modern. And one cool thing about synthesizers is that they kind of just do that simultaneously — instruments modeled after techniques developed decades ago, if not actually built then, still sound as futuristically relevant as they did on, like, Dark Side of the Moon or whatever. Parted Plains does this beautifully and expertly. Dang’s sitar playing cuts through her constructed soundscape, grounding the listener towards something more organic without losing that magical blurring of lines. This record was definitely a shared point of reference for us after we recorded our first album and started moving towards the sounds and style that became the new one. And to see Dang do this live is really something. We had a gig booked a few years ago at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill called Driade that had this incredible outdoor space for bands to play when the weather was nice. But then one of those mid-October storms started threatening to come through and after a fair amount of soul searching, we called it off. It was also supposed to be an unofficial birthday thing for me, so I was a bit extra bummed. But Dang was playing at the Duke Coffeehouse, so we went out for Thai food with our wives and then took an Uber to Durham for the show. That was a good one.

Pig Roasting

The sentiment that one wants their bandmates to be people who, at the end of the day, they just like hanging out with is far from groundbreaking. But it’s not one to take for granted. John and I love to eat and we love to cook, sometimes together. One time, we were sitting around his fire pit and started talking about how we’ve always wanted to roast a whole hog. It seemed like such an impossibly daunting task, but as we talked through it, we realized we might be able to pull it off. We sought counsel from our friend Alex Livingstone (who plays bass in John’s other, other band, Jphono1), because he’s an expert brisket smoker, and while he had some thoughts, he was ultimately on the same page as us: he’d never done it and always wanted to. So we did some research, built a pit in John’s backyard, loaded Alex’s truck with 700 pounds of oak and hickory, and got to it. The first time was just the three of us, and we started at around 5:00pm, thinking it would take the better part of 24 hours, but then found ourselves pulling pork and making sandwiches in John’s kitchen at three in the morning. Once we got our timing and a few other things figured out, we invited friends and family to partake and made a night of it. We’ve done three altogether, and each time it’s been glorious. Roasting a pig involves a lot of sitting around, and we’ve found a fun way to pass by listening to as much of an artist's catalog as the hours will allow. Chris Forsyth, ZZ Top, and Ween have featured prominently, as has another band who’s name I won’t mention here (it rhymes with the title of the Smashing Pumpkins’ first record). I love cooking for many reasons, the two biggest being that it engages a very specific side of my creative self that I can’t seem to live without, and it brings people together, just like playing music.

Bitchin Bajas — Bajas Fresh and Bajascillators

It’s a challenging thing to make music with roots in the experimental or fringe without it sounding too cliche and unoriginal, especially if that music is less out than it once was. To say Bitchin Bajas pull this off is a gross understatement. Bajas Fresh and Bajascillators are two records that John and I love and have looked towards for education on our approach to Tacoma Park. Where Mountains conjure up the soil of the Earth with acoustic guitars, Bajas do so with percussion and woodwinds among other things. This is the kind of stuff that John is especially drawn to. Something that elevates electronic music for him and makes certain bands stand out. A testament to his sophisticated, top-tier taste. One thing I love about Bajas is their blending of sequenced synths and real-time, human-played melodies, or at least that’s what I think they’re doing (see “World B. Free”). It creates some interesting sonic mind games, the blurring of lines between person and machine — super instructive to me as a synth player. Also, John and I found our way to this band around the same time, totally independently of each other. Some might call that a universal plan or a sign; others might say it was meant to be. Whatever it is, I like it.

Chris Schlarb — On Recording

Chris Schlarb has prolifically produced some versatile and mesmerizing work as Psychic Temple, and he also owns and operates the Big Ego recording studio in CA. I’ve listened to an interview or two with him, and he has some great things to say about music, coming at it from varying angles informed by his vast and unique range of life experiences. John sent me On Recording, a kind of manifesto-guidebook hybrid, which you can buy as a hardcopy or audiobook, the latter of which I did. I listened to it over a few drives to and from work and grounded is a good word to describe the way I felt. It’s not a super technical perspective — though there’s definitely some of that — rather it’s a philosophy, an approach to recording that can be applied to any number of disciplines, music being just one of them. It’s about doing the thing, realizing you love something and finding a way to keep it going any way you can, whether that means driving a truck to make ends meet (as Schlarb did) or utilizing cheap (but wonderful) gear until you’re developmentally and financially ready to upgrade (also as Schlarb did). A certain kind of person will relate to this and not just a musician. Yes, I found it relevant to the double LP that John and I recorded at our respective home studios, but I also found it relevant to, say, the ongoing way I’m trying to find myself as a teacher, or a cook, or an expectant dad. On Recording gets at all of it without always saying so.

Claire Rousay — Sometimes I Feel Like I Have No Friends

Claire Rousay makes some of the most honest, pure, and futuristic music I’ve ever heard, and it hits me like Elliot Smith or Joni Mitchell. It’s honest, heart-on-sleeve and breathtakingly innovative, yet rooted in tradition. It’s a wild thing to be able to pull off the heart wrenching brutality of a certain human condition alongside a niche, sharp sense of humor, and Rousay does so on a masterclass level. Her whole catalog — and she is prolific — is worth a deep dive, but Sometimes I Feel Like I Have No Friends is, to me, on the same level as, like, Marquee Moon or Aja. It’s a tour de force, something that doesn’t just come around, a journey and a classic record (even though it’s only one twenty-eight-minute track). Part sound collage, part drone, part field recording, part emo bedroom demo, part other things, or maybe none of those — perhaps it’s not for me to say — it’s all great. Of the two of us, I’m the bigger head, but it definitely informed the new record. Her music is the kind that makes me imagine how it was made. From interviews, I know that musique concrete techniques have a place in her life, as does free improvisation, and I speculate that a lot of the compositional work was done after playing, during the editing/mixing process. That’s very much how John and I have written and recorded over the last few years, and whether I’m right or wrong about Rousay’s approach, she was a guiding light towards ours. She’s the kind of artist who makes me feel like I know her. I hope she gets to hear our music one of these days.

Jeff Parker — Slight Freedom

I saw Jeff Parker with Tortoise not so long after Millions Now Living Will Never Die came out, but it was many years later when I got into his solo stuff. John turned me onto Slight Freedom and my first impressions were colored in a good way by his profound love for the record. He spoke quietly about it, not saying too much, as if words could break it or change its faultless form. I think it’s Parker at his best, defying genres and obscuring the space between composition and improvisation, like an illusion. I think John was blown away by how he does so much and so little at the same time, loops placed on top of each other like pieces of a 3D puzzle, building rhythms and grooves so tasteful it seems impossible a human made them, while being the most human thing. This is how I interpreted John’s thoughts on it, expressed as minimally as the music itself. A feeling not a sentiment, vibes upon vibes. From there I went through the rest of Parker’s solo catalog, which became my soundtrack to those early pandemic days. But this is the one I come back to the most. It generously offers everything I could possibly want (and need) from a record — deep listening, perfect reading music and everything in between and to the sides. It’s just so great.

#dusted magazine #listed #tacoma park #ben felton #mountains #john fahey #built to spill #ta-nehisi coates #ami dang #pig roasting #bitchin bajas #chris schlarb #claire rousay #jeff parker

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Bitchin Bajas - Union Pool, Brooklyn, New York, December 4, 2022

One of the very best albums of this year (in my humble opinion!) was Bajascillators, the latest masterpiece from the Chicago-based kosmische jam band known as Bitchin Bajas. The trio (made up of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Daniel Quinlivan) knocked it way out of the park with this one, like a dream collab between Sun Ra, Laurie Spiegel and Harmonia. I've listened to the new one over and over and it just continues to give. Highly recommended, to say the least. (Also recommended: Jennifer Kelly's recent interview with Cooper Crain).

The Bajas went out on the road in support of Bajascillators recently, and for those of us not on the east coast, Roolin, the excellent YouTuber, was on hand to film an interstellar Brooklyn set in its entirety. Beyond the infinite! The sound quality is good enough that you can just listen, but the immersive, hallucinogenic Macrodose visuals are very much worth getting into, too. At some point, even Union Pool's ceiling fans start to look pretty psychedelic. (For an even trippier experience, there's an "animated" version, too!) More fresh Bajas? Here's their D.C. set from a few days later ...

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#bitchin bajas

[adailycloud]

#Spotify #bitchin bajas #music #stereolab #adailycloud

[aquariumdrunkard]

Bitchin Bajas :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

We spoke with Bitchin Bajas’ Cooper Crain just before Thanksgiving, as the band was preparing for an East Coast tour and moving forward on two new recordings: a second collaboration with Natural Information Society and a 12-hour improvised jam made last spring in the Azores. We talked about how these three make their music and how their audiences receive it, about starting over after a setback and about how music works best when it’s a bit of a mystery.

#bitchin bajas

[burlveneer-music]

Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators - back to original material on this new album of four long tracks

Bajascillators rolls four unique numbers that act on their own AND as extensions of each other, phases in perfect flow...wave after wave of analogue synth tones and zones extending into a stratospheric arc. Each time, as the needle cradles into the playout groove, you the listener are becalmed, in stasis, forever changed. Until you flip the side — and forever changes again… Bitchin Bajas: Cooper Crain Rob Frye Daniel Quinlivan with Mike Reed on cymbals Nori Tanaka on cymbals Rex McMurry on drums Parts of "Amorpha" were created using Laurie Spiegel's Music Mouse software. Artwork by Nick Ciontea

#Bitchin Bajas #electronic #minimalism #chicago #drag city #2022

[paintgroove]

Paint Groove Playlist #98 ”You are dreaming, me too”

1. Satisfied Mind - Pete Drake, Willis Brothers

2. Postures (Leave Your Body Behind) - 13th Floor Elevators

3. Tezeta (Nostalgia) - Mulatu Astatke

4. There Comes A Time - Tony Williams

5. Marfa Sunset - Dungen, Woods

6. Wenn der Südwind weht - Roedelius

7. Outer Spaceways Incorporated - Bitchin Bajas

Image by @amareazul_

#paintgroove #spotify #applemusic #Pete Drake #Willis Brothers #13th Floor Elevators #Mulatu Astatke #Tony Williams #Woods #Dungen #Roedelius #Bitchin Bajas

[sinceileftyoublog]

BCMC & andplay Live Show Review: 2/20, Constellation, Chicago

BCMC

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Tuesday night marked the beginning of the Peter Margasak-curated Frequency Festival, an annual event hosted by Constellation that focuses on contemporary classical and experimental music. Though this year's lineup is heavy on microtonal music, specifically string players, the headliner of night one was a guitar-and-synth-wizard supergroup. BCMC is guitarist Bill MacKay and Cave/Bitchin Bajas multi-instrumentalist Cooper Crain. They had been playing live together for a few years before releasing their debut album Foreign Smokes last year via Drag City. Unlike what I imagine was the experience of many folks in the crowd on Tuesday, this was my first time seeing BCMC live. Witnessing their performance after their album was released, meaning I had a number of months to digest it, gave me a greater appreciation for how the duo was able to, live, build off of their compositions.

BCMC started off with abstract sounds, gradually becoming more concrete before reverting back to rounded noise. MacKay's bluesy guitar riffs embedded within Crain's synthesizer hum, replete with a sense of motion akin to a chugging train, simultaneously swirling and gentle. At times, the songs turned percussive, via pulsations, as MacKay either meandered or ripped slide guitar licks. Even Crain got an opportunity to solo on the keyboard on "The Swarm". Simultaneously tactile and droney, BCMC were able to lull you into hypnosis and suddenly capture you at the command of their instruments.

andPlay

The opening set from NYC-based string duo andPlay, meanwhile, set the tone (no pun intended) for the rest of the festival's ethos. Violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson performed the two pieces that make up their latest album Translucent Harmonies (Another Timbre), both of which use just intonation. Kristofer Svensson's "Vid stenmuren blir tanken blomma" (“By the Stone Wall, Thoughts Become Flower”) emphasized extremely short strokes of different lengths and volume, using pauses and ultimate silence to create a sense of tension and disintegration. At times, one player would play a note--a mere pluck--and the other would continue their stroke, resembling a sort of synaptic process. Ultimately, the piece was paradoxically meditative, consistent in its lack of consistency. Their second piece, Catherine Lamb's "Prisma Interius VIII", was comparatively deliberate, the players playing in tandem at times and not just off of each other. As a duo, in contrast to larger ensembles who have played on other recorded versions of the piece, Bennardo and Levinson were able to strip "Prisma Interius VIII" down to its essential elements. Though there were many contrasts between andPlay and BCMC--in instrumentation, in groove (or lack thereof), in space--the two acts shared a common desire to hold your patience and deep attention, toy with your expectations, and make you reflect.

#live music #bcmc #andplay #peter margasak #bill mackay #drag city #maya bennardo #hannah levinson #another timbre #foreign smokes #frequency festival #constellation #cave #bitchin bajas #cooper crain #translucent harmonies #kristofer svensson #catherine lamb

[amamaterial]

Bitchin Bajas, comme je les aime, comme ils me font du bien.

#gigsisaw #le periscope lyon #bitchin Bajas

[cornell]

Time Wharp // Bitchin Bajas

#time wharp #bitchin bajas #graphic design

[zaphmann]

In Memory of John Peel Show 220909 Podcast & Playlist

In Memory of John Peel Show 220909 Podcast & Playlist

The Queen – no – Loraine James @timothysaccenti “The Queen is dead, long live the King Charles Spaniel” >> the best new music, independent of the industry system – back this show on patreon Paypal to [email protected] heard in over 90 countries via independent stations (RSS)Pod-Subscribe for free here or Embed/listen at podomatic – itunes Apple, Audacity, Google Podcasts, Gaana, Boomplay, Amazon…

View On WordPress

#@dense_pr #@fiveworlds #@forcefieldpr #@phntmlimb #@raven_chacon #Alexis Castrogiovanni #Bert Jansch #Bitchin Bajas #Bloodmoney Perez @BloodmoneyPerez #Burd Ellen @burdellen_ #Catherine Graindorge @CathGraindorge #damnthatnoise @damnthatnoise #Darkroom @darkroomtheband #David Lance Callahan @TheWolfhounds #Digital in Berlin @digitalinberlin #Drag City @dragcityrecords #Earth @EarthRecordings - Fire Records @firerecordings #Elaine Howley @elaine_howley #Expert Sleepers @SleepersExpert #Faunlet x Dolores Mondo Stash #Glitterbeat @Glitterbeat_Rec #Ibrahim Alfa Jnr @IbrahimAlfajnr #Indifferent Spaces & Jan LF Strach #Johanna Hedva #john peel #Loraine James @LoJamMusic #LOUFR #Mavis Recordings @MavisRecordings #Mille Plateaux @milleplateaux1 #new music

[culturedarm]

The Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti steps on the front foot for an album of sinewy muscle, from Montreal the composer Jessica Moss combines with Jim White and Thierry Amar for more uncanny studies on the violin, engorged in bronze Lucrecia Dalt dabbles in palindromes and floats amid the syncopated sounds of the tropics, and Battle Trance complete their trilogy on New Amsterdam Records as Green of Winter abounds in skronking swirls and breathy lulls before resolving in a series of short choral motifs. Leaking pipes and passing cars provide the panorama as Jon Collin swaps his guitar for the nyckelharpa, producing a staggered and soaring sequence of drones all recorded to tape while cloistered under some of Stockholm's myriad bridges. Tracks by Hatis Noit, Bitchin Bajas, Osheyack, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Will Vinson, Lowertown, and Bad Bunny also feature in the best of the week.

https://culturedarm.com/tracks-of-the-week-27-08-22/

#music #new music #jessica moss #lucrecia dalt #bitchin bajas #bad bunny #elvis crespo #will vinson #johanna warren #battle trance #panda bear #braxe + falcon #ginwoo onodera #kaitlyn aurelia smith #lowertown #mabe fratti #osheyack #classical #experimental #jazz #drone #avant-garde #minimalism #alternative #electronic #dembow #reggaeton #indie #house #french touch

[dustedmagazine]

Bitchin Bajas — Bajascillators (Drag City)

Bajascillators by Bitchin Bajas

Though gorgeous, Bajascillators isn’t the easiest record to write about. It plops you down in an edgeless, non-verbal now, which is fine as a listening experience, but extraordinarily hard to narrate. Intricate patterns of tonal percussion interact in complicated ways, with multiple motifs intersecting like complex machinery but never exactly progressing. “Amorpha” sounds like a waterfall, if the water was made entirely of chimes and bells, and it is best to let it wash over you. Sure, you could note how the bass is the disc’s most earthly element, nodding up though a gamelan-ish mesh like a slow beast, or you could tell yourself that the abstract, unbeat-like cymbal work that Mike Reed contributes is an essential part of it, and neither of these ideas would be wrong. But really, anything you could say would be beside the point. This music lives in a place that theory and criticism can’t really touch. It moves all the time, in precise, luminous increments, and yet stays as still as eternity or Kansas when you’re driving end to end.

This is Bitchin Bajas’ first proper, non-collaborative album in a while, though they dropped an illuminating batch of Sun Ra covers last year and have joined up, ad hoc, with Bonnie Prince Billy, Oliva Wyatt and Natural Information Society in the interim. It is being released on cassette, on LP and as a pair of 12” EPs, one track per side. There’s something appealing about this, though it does mean you’d have to get up to flip the record every 10 to 15 minutes. Perhaps listening that way would make it easier to distinguish these cuts, which blur a bit, or maybe just cohere into a whole, if you listen to the album straight through.

There are subtle differences. “Geomancy” adds a quiet thread of organ melody to its bright automation of cymbals and musical bells, turning sparer, softer and more contemplative than the opening cut. “World B. Free” shimmers with otherworldly synth washes, building tones that glitter and change hue like an aurora borealis. Rhythms are subtler, less the whole point and more a glitchy scratchy element of the sound. A flute and clarinet dart at each other, and the keyboards take on a bouncy, playful air. Later, cymbals rattle and stir, while the woodwinds move in faster, wilder arcs. “Quakenbrück” layers the same rhythmic complexity as “Amorpha,” though the tones come from keyboards, rather than percussion instruments.

Taken together, Bajascillators feels like an extended mindful meditation. It quiets the chatter that clutters your head and asks you to consider this note, that sound, this arc of repeated melody, without worrying too much about where it came from or where it’s going. It’s a nice way to spend three-quarters of an hour, even if you don’t have much to say about it afterwards.

Jennifer Kelly

#bitchin bajas #bajascillators #drag city #jennifer kelly #albumreview #dusted magazine #drone #cosmic #tonal percussion #meditation #chicago

[cbcruk]

Bitchin Bajas - Amorpha

#bitchin bajas

[adailycloud]

Bajascillators

#music #spotify #geometric abstraction #cover art #abstraction #aesthetic #bitchin bajas

[aquariumdrunkard]

Bitchin Bajas :: Bajascillators

Just about 12 years into their trip, Bitchin Bajas just seem to get better and better. The Chicago trio, made up of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Daniel Quinlivan, has just released Bajascillators — and this new four-song collection is perhaps the most skilled and absorbing distillation of their sound yet. Things kick off with “Amorpha,” the kosmische groove strong right out of the gate, jewel-like textures swimming through the mix — this is undoubtedly a record that rewards headphone listeners.

#bitchin bajas

[radiophd]

bitchin bajas -- amorpha

#2020s #jazz #electronic #mtv #bitchin bajas