Ka Baird

Ka Baird – Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:20 minutes | 758 MB | Genre: Electronic, Post-Minimalism, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RVNG Intl.

Ka Baird’s Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos intertwines elements of the New York based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer’s ecstatic live performances within minimalistic, visceral compositions that expand in scope and sound through collaboration. The album’s eleven movements manifest as shapeshifting invocations defined by their own multiplicity; the emotional outcome of circumstance and grief, played against rigorous conceptualism and musical craft. Featuring a cast of contributors from all corners of the contemporary avant garde community and mixing depth and dimension from Randall Dunn, Bearings is a work of profound abstraction and focus, within which sonorous elements, structure, and meaning reach a single, unified form.

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Ka Baird – Vivification Exercises I (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 32:10 minutes | 296 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Commend There

Visceral piano energy and unsettling electronix meet guttural vocals on Ka Baird’s latest plate.

Based on a performance at Roulette’s Brooklyn theater in 2018, “Vivification Exercises 1” finds NYC avant mainstay Ka Baird in fine form, telegraphing raw physicality through a lively fusion of acoustic and electronic improvisation. The piano sits at the heart of the recordings, improvised intuitively with more attention paid to rhythm and texture than anything particularly melodic; from here, Baird wails and splutters, adding subtle, otherworldly electronics on top.

It ain’t easy listening, that’s for sure, but Baird’s visceral exploration of sound, emotion and physicality is gripping, powering up with each subsequent playthru. There’s a cathartic quality here too, which in the face of a progressively depressing news cycle and customary winter blues feels soothing.

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