Ka Baird Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos [ARTPL-209] Japan Music CD

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Synopsis: 'Bearings' is a meeting of theatricality and spirituality of art, where impermanence is settled and the cycle of life and death is embraced. Ka Baird returns with her new solo album, 'Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos'. This album intertwines elements of the ecstatic live performances of the New York-based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer with minimalist, visceral compositions, expanding its scope and sound through collaborations with various talented artists. The 11 movements of this album appear as a shape-shifting call defined by its unique multiplicity, an emotional conclusion to a situation and sorrow, tossed about by rigorous conceptualism and musical technique. For over 20 years, Ka has explored dimensions beyond sound through performance. Far exceeding its roots in the early 1980s psychedelic folk movement, Ka is known for his raw, boundary-pushing solo performances that bridge experimental sounds, performance art, and ritual. His live sets also incorporate augmented voices, microphone techniques, electronics, flute, and piano. This work follows his 2017 debut, "Sapropelic Pycnic," and his critically acclaimed 2019 album, "Respires." Originally conceived as a 20-minute composition and presentation commissioned by Chicago's Lampo in the spring of 2022, Ka first explored the concept of "Bearings" through a series of intimate performances in which he shifted between the roles of magician, shaman, clown, and athlete, and through physically demanding performances that involved both play and struggle, enduring a continuous state of groundlessness. This work, combined with the heavy burden of caring for a dying parent for the following year, laid the foundation for 'Bearings,' and the album's final narrative structure became clear in the months following her mother's death in September of the following year. Ka explains: "This album began to focus on the summer of 2022. After my mother was diagnosed with terminal illness in February of that year, I was living with her in Decatur, Illinois. For the next six months, I worked in the quiet time while she was sleeping, putting together, arranging, and creating these sounds. The live performances of 'Bearings,' caring for my mother, and the experience of witnessing her death all came together to create this record." 'Bearings' is a meeting of theatricality and spirituality of art, where impermanence is settled and the cycle of life and death is embraced. This album is divided into 11 gates, intermediate states, or "intermediates," each acoustically representing a state of stagnation or gap in experience, each correlated with transition, movement, obstacle, portal, surrender, and liberation. It proposes a search for sublime meaning within this ongoing state of displacement and instability?a state of losing one's direction?and within its flowing, intoxicating form. To borrow Ka's words, "We are always in the intermediate state, because impermanence never rests." The album features a stellar lineup of musicians, including Baltimore-based multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone), Max Eilbacher (flute processing, electronics), also a member of Horse Lords, and the eccentric drummer Greg Fox (percussion), as well as Gabby Fluke-Mogul (violin), Henry Fraser (double bass), Joanna Mattrey (viola), John McCowen (contra-clarinet), Camilla Padgitt-Coles (bowl, waterphone), Troy Schafer (strings), Chris Williams (trumpet), Nate Wooley (trumpet), and even Ka's own cat, Nisa (meows). Ka and his friends create a vast density of minimalism to generate collective humming and pulsation, painting a vast minimalist density divided by sudden starts and stops, complex harmonics and textures, percussive brilliance, and single, cyclical, lyrical phrases. Ka sees this album as a deviation from the song cycle in which specific motifs are repeated in various configurations. In the album's sonic dictionary, trumpet sounds signify birth and death, while distant string motifs represent memory. Bearings is a sustained work of deep abstraction and focus, in which sonic elements, structure, and meaning reach a unified form. This is nothing less than a work that has reached creative heights for Ka Baird, one of the most dynamic and uncompromising artists active in the music world today. Media reviews and more: Ka Baird is back with his new solo album, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos. This album intertwines elements of the ecstatic live performances of the New York-based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer with minimalist, visceral compositions, expanding its scope and sound through collaborations with various talented artists. The eleven movements of this album emerge as a shape-shifting call defined by its unique multiplicity, a situation and a sorrowful emotional conclusion, tossed about by rigorous conceptualism and musical technique. (C)RS