the band CAVE

Jerusalem played Steeple and it ruled. They played a bunch of old songs.
Kim was feeling under the weather, though, so they cut their planned hour-long set short.

They sounded like fucking Deep Purple or something.
sounds awesome. listening pure moods right now -- kind of think it might be my favorite thing ... ever?

I missed EVERY LAST ONE of their many recent local shows, but I do plan to make a special trip to buy the latest Bitchin Bajas EP.
I'd even be a booster. I recommend "Jelly" to fans of slow warm droney atmospheric music with a faint hint of melody.
https://soundcloud.com/bitchin-bajas/

hmmm yeah this bitchin bajas stuff is bitchin! what is the connect betw. cave and these guys again?

cooper crain iirc?

still totally disgusted by rotted tooth btw. what's with these guys and nomenclature? i do like the name of the new ep though ;)

"jelly" is definitely some excellent terry riley kinda stuff.

totally -- if i'm not going crazy, they seem to be getting incrementally more melodic, so i hope they reach (and stay at) a comfortable balance of drone and melody. on an appealing trajectory, but i haven't heard the new one yet. their sound is always warm, that hasn't changed.

ok now i'm down a bitchin bajas rabbit hole. new favorite band!

yay! my work here is done.

look what i got over the weekend! (not a ceiling fan)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8248/8519440201_a9d9062c3d.jpg

went to the store for the special green version, it's pretty

the sound is what i expected EXCEPT each track gets progressively more and more layered (to the point of busyness occasionally but usually evens out) and ends with a midtempo jam that lends itself to dancing, more like a cave song but through an 80s electropop filter. kinda weird! i like it.

Actually, the dance jam at the end of one of the title track isn't 80s, more Neu. Either way, I like it. Wish I had gone to at least ONE of those shows, but OH WELL.

Bajas just played a local gig last week! BB started as Cooper's solo gig, but has since expanded to a three piece. There is already another album in the can and lots of stuff in progress, too, I think. I heard some of the new Cave record-in-progress, too, and I'm really excited about it.

bajas may tour dates FYI
bitchitronics coming to a town near you

Bitchin Bajas May tour dates:

9 - Indianpolis, IN @ House

10 - Columbus, OH @ Double Happiness

11 - Pittsburgh, PA @ 6119

12 - Philadelphia, PA @ Little Berlin

16 - Portland, ME @ tba

17 - Boston, MA @ Video Underground

18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Body Actualized

19 - Brooklyn, NY @ Body Actualized * Cosmic Yoga

23 - Lafayette, IN @ tba

24 - Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle

wtf is cosmic yoga?!

pretty much what their new album sounds like! i got a promo and i was blasting it -- my wife asked "are you doing yoga up there?"

cave or bitchies?

bitchin bajas new one

yeah, it's really good! the end of each song gets a little fast for yoga, or at least my kind of yoga. more like groovy dance party!

Every Sunday we host a Cosmic Yoga party. These parties involve a more relaxed and casual yoga class accompanied by live music, performed by various artists and bands. After yoga, our chefs create raw/living foods dinner which are provided at affordable and reasonable prices

here's the info on the new one, in inimitable drag city style

Bitchin Bajas are back, baby! Their new album Bitchitronics, out July 16, 2013 on Drag City, is ready with the quickness we expect from the Chicago-based band - which is funny, since their area of expertise and mastery is in the area of synthetic ephemeral sonic languidity known more instinctively, inclusively (and let's face it, irresponsibly) as drone music. Put it this way - they make slow music at a fast pace. Bitchitronics is their first realized record as a trio.

Since their first appearance way back in 2010, Bitchin Bajas approach has been simple - unfold tones via synth and keyboard, allowing micro-frequencies to press against each other in a way that pleases the ear, the mind and the soul. From record to record (three albums, a split 7" and a split 12", a cassette and an 12"EP), their process is redefined by confronting the technologies of formative and outmoded machines, sliding into different quadrants of the ambient/post-organic/electronic/and drone universe each time around. Thus, the experience of slipping inside their music seems so singular and pure, like floating naked in a sensory deprivation tank. Just us and our minds and the music. Simple, right? But other things occur underneath...

For Bitchitronics, the concept was: use tape techniques to create and then solve problems - loops and edits were there to make things fun and the music great in the style of experimental tape pioneers upon whose shoulders the Bajas play. Mission bitchin' accomplished! Recording was mostly done in, all over and around a house in Fennville, MI with three tape machines reeling in the sounds - sometimes, in addition to sounds that have never seen the light of day, you're also hearing the sound of the light of day on the tape (or when they recorded at night, evening stars). Two 1/4" tape machines were utilized to make loops and execute the Bitchitronics sound system, one of which discreetly captured the combined sounds of the loops with live playing. Once done, it was back to HQ where edits of the 1/4" recordings were utilized to create larger tapestries on the 2-track master tape.

You want to use the Bitchitronics method for yourself? That's how it's done! Taking the long path to realize this album makes for some heavenly music indeed.

that sounds maximum fruity
would stretch/breathe under those conditions...maybe?

first song is called "transcendence" last song is called "turiya"...

oh ok i haven't heard it yet because i'm not on the promo circuit
looking forward to it!

it's great -- first tune is heavy on the no pussyfooting/frippertronics vibes.

They've been huffing Alice Coltrane.

http://www.twitteringmachines.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/alice_coltrane_turiyasings.jpg

that sounds great
love alice!!

dude djing at our last show played some bajas, it made everyone's ears perk up.. must have been something from krausened as i didn't know it

http://www.dragcity.com/products/threace
http://www.dragcity.com/system/album_products/images/2132/large.jpg?1372877757
Behold, Threace! It's the brand new LP from international touring sensations CAVE, arriving October 15th, and it might just bring an end to your party -- no more dancing, no more talking, just people listening to every last clang, tweet and honk of a band really getting after it. Recorded on a 1" 8-track Scully machine that may or may not have spent some quality burn-in time at Muscle Shoals, Threace was half-planned and half-jammed using different mic placements, building up from a basic set of as few mics as possible. Then, they got out the razor blade and...well, this isn't the Rolling Stones! They used it to cut tape (and realities) together into a metro-musical albumen that's only started to flower in this world.

Threace comes on guitar up and jelly tight, saving the keys for color commentary among the beats. Cooper and Jeremy explore their six-string relationship, finding shared space, ducking, parrying, working the edges, and finally, twinning to gut-clutching effect. Meanwhile, there's a cameo appearance from sax and flute textures in here that create new soul-jazz sensations. Last and most, Dan and Rex bring the heavy with thickness, moving rhythm with exceptionally light feet, playing coloristically while always driving, driving, ever driving, bearing the lode and raising the arch under which everything happens in CAVE.

CAVE are known for playing with rolling funk minimalism; Threace finds them inhabiting their cut-up aesthetic with tremendous ease and fewer reference points than before. They access new depths of meditative stasis, and then torpedo the dream and turn on a dime to ride the riffs again. On Threace, CAVE have gained access to their unconscious mind, and we hope they never find their way out again.

After the record release show last night, I feel like Bitchin Bajas deserve their own thread. I had to leave early, but they were playing as a 9 piece with strings, 3 guitars, a flute and a...bass clarinet? It was really great, better than expected. I'm not much into boosterism but I feel like they're going somewhere. They're not all the way there yet (imo), but they've got the texture just right. I am hoping they bring that guitarist back who played last night. WHOOEY. It was good, aaaaaaaaalmost reminded me of some of the more soaring guitar parts in LT-LN era Popol Vuh but maybe that's just wishful thinking. It's just the melodic boost they needed though, I liked it. More flute pls!

Next month they are gathering a bunch of people to perform IN C
Not the key of C, but the Terry Riley composition entitled IN C

I mean they named their album Bitchitronics ffs -- they are practically begging you to like them! Anyway I plan on listening to it while I clean the floors today. Cosmic yoga mop time.

here Bitchin Bajas

Here is a little history of the Bitchpork festival that was curated and staffed by members of CAVE and friends
http://pigeonsandplanes.com/2013/07/bitchpork/
After you hit "continue reading" scroll up to read the text.

new album is sounding pretty fusion-y in parts. in a good way.

where's it at

hey is dj trip maker the same as ilx's trip maker? i saw the name bc i'm going to see this band (AGAIN) tonight and apparently that's who is the inter-set dj, would be too weird to not be the same person but who knows?!
if so, see you there!

how was the show?
new video here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLrofQRFQ6k

it was great!! they have a new secret weapon -- i don't know the guy's name but i saw him when he played with bitchin bajas. i really liked the added baritone sax/flute stuff. he also had a snare and cymbal but i couldn't always hear their contribution. as always, they were super tight. i have an altogether new appreciation of the drummer for playing the exact same beat for as long as he plays it. yikes.

yeah that dude is a machine. there is some horn action on the new one, it is pretty good. really does kinda sound like herbie hancock/headhunters/miles in the 70s at times.

yeah they were very tight, the rhythm section in general is sick. i hadn't seen them in a few years, i was surprised that dude who used to pretty much only play keys was now pretty much only playing guitar. he's a good guitarist but i missed the keys tbh, my fave song live had him on keys and the "secret weapon" on flute. the flute playing was great bc he wasn't doing jazz solos or whatever, he was doubling the keyboard part and it sounded amazing.

new video btw http://www.thefader.com/2013/09/24/video-cave-shikaakwa/

lol i think that's the track i was just talking about with the flute.

cave cruise! http://t.co/oLVJYPPLzK

new album is dope

Ha. La Lechera, I dj'd that gig in absentia. Cooper just used a bunch of mix tapes i've made for him over the years for the incidental music.
i was surprised that dude who used to pretty much only play keys was now pretty much only playing guitar.
Two different dudes.

They played in town on Halloween. I got to sing a cover of "Sister Ray" with them at the end of the set. Lots of fun.

that sounds awesome -- where's the youtube?

I don't even have a photo!
I was wearing a pink blouse, blue shades, and a blonde wig.

Ugh that sounds SO FUN!! Did you sing the whole thing?! man that sounds like fun.

All I remember from your mix was Bohannon but it was enjoyable!

We didn't play it for twenty minutes. I sang maybe three verses and improvised a "freakout" that climaxed with repetition of the phrase "don't shake me, lucifer." We were going to cover a Roky Erickson song but current events changed our original plan.

'silver headband' on the new one is so sick. not many can evoke the neu! vibe without resorting to a generic motorik beat. agree with tyler on the rest of it pulling serious fusion moves.