| $16.81
new to stock as of
january 26th, 2010
threads:
modern-psych
live-electronic
electro-acoustic-improvisation
analogue-synth
free-improvisation
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| | | amish (usa) #ami 041 lp bird show band “bird show band” long playing record - quintet one (9:09)
- little song (2:02)
- quartet (2:57)
- bsb synthesizer solo (2:36)
- quintet two (8:06)
- quintet three (5:55)
- quintet four (5:35)
| | click the play button to hear an excerpt of "bsb synthesizer solo" |
| january 2010 release ; just 10 days after ben vida’s masterful tape of solo moog pieces landed, so did this collection by the bird show band - a new aggregate pitting ben’s newly-forged live-synth chops against an a-list of chicago’s rock & jazz players , including tortoise’s john herndon & dan bitney, jim baker (battling ben on on arp 2600) and and josh abrams ...
think a more “herky jerky” version of herbie hancock’s “sextant” (not a knock ; seriously one of my top-ten all-time favorite records) sans the epic ostinatos and you’re close ... ben of course sounds majestic all over this piece & steps out for a few fine solos (listen to the sound-sample) before rejoining the group for extended throwdowns... it’s especially great to hear a capable hands-on version of the synth-freakout approach when the sun is being all but blotted out by tapes of slow-lfo-sweeps as master-concept ... this is the real shit !!! |
| | ami 041
bird show band
s/t lp
bird show band documents bird show's new collaborative spirit and stands as the culmination of ben vida's chicago-based work, featuring a who's who of the city's improvisational luminaries, including josh abrams, jim baker, dan bitney and john herndon.
the improvisatory feel of the bird show band sessions function as vida's paean to the windy city. rather than another bird show release that involves guest accompaniment on select tracks, vida conceived of these recordings as a foray into session playing, tracking the entire album over just two days. while herndon and bitney's percussion invokes german psych, progressive rock, and jazz idioms, vida's synth-based experiments, here accompanied by jim baker's arp 2600, provide the first indication of his recent musical preoccupations, an interest that relies heavily on the moog and his own fluid, lyrical melodic lines.
if you have had the luck of catching bird show or ben vida perform live over the last few years, you have witnessed the centrality he now gives to the moog and one-touch patchwork, experimental forays that point to europe and the mid-century avant-garde, especially the cologne-based innovations of stockhausen and his many students during the late 1960s and early 1970s. regardless of this description, bird show band is more than a mere intellectual exercise and the sessions balance brain with musical brawn in ways that vida has yet to achieve on his previous outings. |
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