Song You Need: Bitchin Bajas resist form
“Amorpha” is the lead single from Bajascillators, the Chicago trio’s first album of original music in nearly five years.
Courtesy of Bitchin Bajas
The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.
Bitchin Bajas exist in a stratosphere of their own. Who else — in the years of our lord 2016 and 2021, respectively — could release a whole album of ambient drones to accompany Bonnie Prince Billy as he recites a series of fortune cookie mantras, or drop an eight-track tape of “switched on” Sun Ra covers, without being stoned or pitchforked out of the industry? (No pun intended!)
Today, the Chicago trio of Cooper Crain (CAVE), Dan Quinlivan, and Rob Frye have shared “Amorpha,” the opening track and lead single from a newly announced, forthcoming record. Bajascillators, their first album of original music since 2017’s Bajas Fresh, is due out September 2 via Drag City.
Clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and apparently covering an entire side of the LP, “Amorpha” is at once complex and simple, immense and microcosmic. Undergirding the action is a lattice of interlocking bass and synthetic bell tones, rhythmically intricate but harmonically static — a pulsing drone in the key of A minor, shattered into a million tiny pieces and reassembled as an infinite fractal of sound. Percussionist Mike Reed adds intense, quiet cymbal work which drives the track through a middle section that might otherwise sag, helping the Bajas pull off a remarkable feat: a lengthy, one-chord song without a single dull moment.
Watch Kyle Armstrong’s “Amorpha” music video — an appropriately abstract edit of footage from a NASA launch — and view Bitchin Bajas’ fall North American tour dates below.
Bitchin Bajas fall 2022 North American tour
October 12 - Minneapolis, MN - Parkway Theater *
October 13 - Iowa City, IA - Trumpet Blossom
October 14 - Rock Island, IL - Rozz Tox
October 15 - Milwaukee, WI - Promises *
October 16 - Chicago, IL - Constellation *
November 29 - Indianapolis, IN - State Street Pub
November 30 - Detroit, MI - UFO Factory
December 1 - Toronto, ON, Canada - Baby G’s
December 3 - Kingston, NY - Tubby’s
December 4 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool
December 5 - Baltimore, MD - Normal’s Books and Records
December 6 & 7 - Philadelphia, PA - Boot and Saddle
December 8 - Washington DC - Rhizome
December 9 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox Studio
December 10 - Asheville, NC - Revolve Sound
December 11 - Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light
December 12 - Atlanta, GA - 529
December 14 - St. Louis, MO - Sink Hole
* visuals by Nick Ciontea
