Ka Baird

***Sapropelic Pycnic is the Drag City and world debut of music presented under the name of KA BAIRD. While this record is a commencement of many sorts, it is in no way a mere beginning. Ka’s ritual is well underway here, her craft clearly already a dedicated mastery; it finds her on the hunt for new discoveries with a humble desire for the transfigured, the sublime. This has been among the goals since early times, when Ka was one of the founding members of experimental psychlings SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE. Ka relocated to NYC in late 2014 and immediately embarked upon new directions—exploring piano improvisations, electroacoustic intervention, extended vocal technique, physical movement, and the electronic processing of her flute playing. The singular force that is Ka is represented on two releases under the SAPROPELIC PYCNIC—the improvised piano album See Sun Think Shadow (released in November 2015 on Brooklyn’s Perfect Wave imprint) and the Coltrane tribute A Love Supreme (on Chicago’s No Index label in January 2016). With the release of Sapropelic Pycnic, Ka manifests an evolving selfhood, expanding upon the essence of her first two albums’ artist name, while replacing and thus becoming that name on her own. “Sapropel” is a contraction of the ancient Greek words sapros and pelos—putrification and mud. “Pycnic” draws from pyknos—dense; stocky. This wordplay is meant to suggest a physical consumption, ingesting of the nutrient-rich mud found at the bottom of seas, lakes and rivers. Very much akin to the gorging of this metaphorical sludge, on Sapropelic Pycnic, Ka Baird imbibes sounds to provoke unseen forces within the wilds of her own unconscious, then brings them into the play. (STREET DATE - 9/22/2017)