Bitchin Bajas with IE and American Cream Band
Presented by Drone Not Drones
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
6:30 pm Doors // 7:30 pm Show
$20 Advance General Admission // $27 At The Door
All Ages
Ticket Purchases are Final and Non-Refundable
This special night is part of DRONE NOT DRONES MMXXII: A month of Drone aka Dronetober.
Come to The Parkway for a night of the sights and sounds of three of the Midwest's most cosmic bands — each paired with different visual effects artists to bring you deeper into the music and further into your own mind.
Bitchin Bajas are an acclaimed musical trio from Chicago who present meditative and textured music with hypnotic and rhythmic elements from both electronic and acoustic instruments. Their highly anticipated new recording Bajascillators is out 9/2 on Drag City.
The Bajas is back.
Bitchin Bajas will release their first new full-length record in five years — Bajascillators — a double album from the acclaimed Chicago-based trio hits the streets September 9 from Drag City. On October 12, their nation-wide tour kicks off at The Parkway in Minneapolis!
Featuring visuals by Nick Ciontea.
Bajascillators arrives almost five years since their last official full-length, 2017's Bajas Fresh. In the eight years prior, from 2010 to Fresh, Bitchin Bajas issued seven albums, plus cassettes, EPs, singles...wave after wave of analogue synth tones and zones extending into a stratospheric arc. Each release its own headspace, shape and timbre, each one sliding naturally into their implacable, eternal gene pool.
Following the flow, always, the Bajas went ever-deeper-and-higher on these records, whether making soundtracks or collaborating with Natural Information Society or with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, using only fortune cookie fortunes as a libretto. Plus, engagement with a steady stream of shows and tours around the world; live re-airings and expansions of the space captured in their records as they continued to grow and flow — all the way through, really, to the present moment.
Mastered directly from half-inch analogue tape, Bajascillators floats transparently from the speakers, its expansive grooves gathering resonance and building momentum over the four sides, from genesis to reconclusion, cascading ecstatically. The elastic magic of time at its brightest! As the world keeps turning, so too do Bitchin Bajas, in the same unknowable way. You can't explain it — just keep turning.
Featuring visuals by Zach Zimmerman.
IE (pronounced “eee”), from Minneapolis, is a band devoted to experiences of hypnotic minimalism—sonic rituals from the future. Formed in 2016, IE performs with sustained tones, electronic whirrs, slow beats, video and film projections, metaphysical recitations, and carefully crafted atmospheres. Featuring keyboardist Michael Gallope (Janka Nabay, New Pope, Starring), drummer Meredith Gill, singer and multi-instrumentalist, Mariel Oliveira (XOXO Tech), and guitarist / keyboardist Travis Workman, they have performed at the Big Ears Festival, Milwaukee Psych Fest, Drone not Drones Festival, Zebulon (Los Angeles), Constellation and Elastic Arts (Chicago), H0l0 (New York), and Mississippi Studios (Portland, OR), among dozens of other venues across North America. IE has released three cassettes of minimal drone music (Shinkoyo, MJMJ), a recording of Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study No. 2 Live at the Cedar Cultural Center (Drone Not Drones), a full-length entitled Pome (Moon Glyph/ISH), and are currently at work on 2 full-length releases, one forthcoming early in 2023.
Featuring visuals by Heart of the Sun Liquids.
American Cream is the brainchild of Twin-Cities musician, Nathan Nelson. The project exceeds all attempts at definition: it is an experimental assembly, an alchemical escape, a shambolic rock band, a scene of weirdos, a dance party, a poetry reading, a spiritual awakening. In practical terms, Nelson convenes groups of musicians, sometimes rehearsed in advance, sometimes just hours before a show. With bits and pieces of loose guidance as the parameters, the musicians—many of whom are regulars to the project—typically swim on their own in performance, living in the moment, working to channel anarchic music from the unknown. What began as an experimental solo project over a decade ago has since grown into a sprawling phenomenon that encompasses seven releases, dozens of collaborators, and nearly a hundred shows. As it continues to evolve, American Cream questions ever more deeply what music is, what freedom is, and why we collectively keep showing up for no real reason at all.
