Bitchin Bajas released their latest album Bajas Fresh last November and now they are taking it on the road. The Chicago trio have announced a string of lives dates in the US this month before heading to Europe for several shows, including a stop at London’s Cafe Oto on May 15th.
A divine double record, which made it to our Picks of 2017, Bajas Fresh spans 80 minutes of music in 7 tracks. The album features their longest track to date, the twenty-three minutes and three seconds ‘2303’. Meditative and serene, ‘2303’ boasts a sense of peace and purity, pulling us into its depths. Bitchin Bajas have unveiled a visual pairing for the track, created by the band’s own Rob Frye. Let yourself get carried away.
Intriguing, intense and compelling, ‘Quatere’ opens Mario Batkovic‘s outstanding self-titled album, released last year through Invada. The track is now being offered with an accompanying video. Watch it below.
If you have been following CTD for a bit, you will know by now that we are huge fans of experimental guitar virtuoso and singer-songwriter Eric Chenaux. So we’re thrilled to know he’s following his divine Skullsplitter, which was one of our Album Picks of 2015, with a new record called Slowly Paradise. Set for release on March 9th through Constellation, the album is described as “a lovely collection of songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork”.
The album’s closing track ‘Wild Moon’ is the first enveloping and spellbinding single to emerge and it comes with a video directed by Eric Cazdyn. Wrap your ears around it.
To celebrate the album’s release, Eric Chenaux has announced several UK/European live dates in March and April, including a show at the Lexington in London on April 9th. Take a look at all his stops below and go experience his gorgeous and magical songcraft live.
12th March – Librairie Le Festin Nu, Biarritz FR
15th March – Temps Machine, Tours FR
30th March – Le Bal Des Fringants, Lyon FR
31st March – Médiathèque de Montbrison, Montbrison FR
5th April – Les Instants Chavirés avec Bass Clef, Paris FR
6th April – BRDCST, AB Salon, Brussels BE
8th April – Asylum Studios, Ipswich UK
9th April – The Lexington, London UK (with Jamie Stewart)
11th April – The Portico Library, Manchester UK
12th April – Tollbooth, Stirling UK
13th April – Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh UK
14th April – Glad Cafe, Glasgow UK
15th April – Fuse, Bradford UK
25th April – Alice, Copenhagen DK
26th April – Tape, Aarhus DK
23rd May – Kiezsalon, Berlin DE
Best known as the drumming force behind bands like PVT (formerly Pivot) and Triosk, unrelenting and inventive drummer and composer Laurence Pike has numerous other projects and collaborations under his belt. Pike has spent the last two decades recording and playing with an array of bands and artists intersecting with the realms of electronic and jazz music, including Savath and Savalas, Prefuse 73, Szun Waves, Bill Callahan, Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders, and legendary jazz pianist Mike Nock, to name but a few. We first heard of Pike when he released a solo drum 10″ under the name Laurenz Pike in 2006, featuring the monumental and perpetual favourite track ‘Drums For Fun And Fitness’. So we welcome the recent news of his debut solo album with excitement. Entitled Distant Early Warning, it arrives on March 30th through The Leaf Label. “Originally conceived as a technological and spiritual jazz suite for drums”, as the press release describes, the album is “a series of solo performances for kit and sampler recorded live in a single day”.
Speaking about the mood on Distant Early Warning, influenced by our post-factual society, Pike had this to say:
“The music on the album feels ominous, like a warning bell in the distance. This moment feels like a collision of ideas to me, a point of transition in human evolution. As a musician you try and stay connected and aware of changes in your environment but you don’t want certain ideals to get lost in the process. I guess that’s what is happening in the music, a confluence of perspectives and sounds, multiple flows of time, connecting and disconnection, known unknowns…”
Ahead of the album’s release, Laurence Pike is teasing it with the first tantalizing single ‘Life Hacks’.
We were instantly taken by A Boat Upon Its Blood, the debut album from Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist Jason Sharp, when it came out in 2016. So we’re glad he’s following it up with a new album, Stand Above The Streams, slated for February 23rd release through Constellation. As well as playing sax, Sharp also continued to develop his custom-built equipment, breathing and signal processing techniques to create all the sound sources on the record, as the press released explains, with the exception of violin on one song from Jesse Zubot. “Bass and baritone saxophones, heartbeat, pulse, and breathing are played/processed in real time”, it adds, using Sharp’s own signal-bending synthesis rig and also the bespoke ‘controlled feedback’ amplification system from Canadian sound artist Adam Basanta, who collaborated on the album.
For a riveting taste of the upcoming Stand Above The Streams, listen to an excerpt from it, ‘Stand Above The Streams Pt. 3B’.
Nightports is the project of Adam Martin and Mark Slater who collaborate with other musicians exploring and reworking their music in varied ways. With their only remit to use “only sounds produced by the featured musician”, as the press release describes, “these sounds can be transformed, distorted, translated, processed and reprocessed, stretched, cut, ordered and reordered without limitation”. Their latest sonic adventure brought them together with pianist and composer Matthew Bourne, and the fruit of this collaboration is a full length album, Nightports w/Matthew Bourne, set for release on March 2nd through Leaf Label. Nightports and Matthew Bourne used a variety of pianos, old and singular, to explore and produce different sounds and textures. To get you enticed, here’s the album’s first stunning single ‘Exit’.
Bitchin Bajas released their latest album Bajas Fresh last November and now they are taking it on the road. The Chicago trio have announced a string of lives dates in the US this month before heading to Europe for several shows, including a stop at London’s Cafe Oto on May 15th.
