Conceptual Artist Bill Baird Premieres New Track
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San Francisco-based musician, producer, and conceptual artist Bill Baird has shared a new track, ‘Walking In A Straight Line’. Describing the creative process behind the track, Baird writes that it initially "sounded like a robotic square dance." He elaborates, "Then I pulled out the trusty ‘50s Gibson Lap Steel and, remembering some quote from Jimi Hendrix about doing 24 tracks of guitar, tried to create a weave of interlocking parts that each reinforce each other. It was all really quick and intuitive. I played it for some friends and they were like, 'What the hell is this?' but with a smile on their face. So it felt like I’d caught something."
‘Walking In A Straight Line’ is featured on Baird's forthcoming album Baby Blue Abyss, which will be released in tandem with Easy Machines through Red Essential on July 28. Very much ‘companion pieces’, each album was written and recorded with a certain time of day in mind – the more acoustic and folk-influenced Easy Machines representing "morning" and the distorted eclectic rock of Baby Blue Abyss reflecting the "evening".
Baird recently released a music video for the track "Muzak of the Spheres" from Baby Blue Abyss. Remarking on the video Baird writes, "The video was directed by my friend Elizabeth Abrams, shot by my friend Matthew Nauser and edited by Ted Feldman. I provide the costumes and the stumbling around. We shot over two days in the Dumont Dunes, this insane Bureau of Land Management site near Death Valley. The wind whips so fast through the dunes that they sing and hold notes. No, seriously. They’re called singing dunes and they really do sound like singing. I tried singing out there but got a mouth full of sand."
The last year has now seen Baird release no less than four albums. Earth Into Aether, released in April of last year, was a freewheeling two-disc, nineteen-track work which drew comparisons to Devendra Banhart, Beck, Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens. Summer Is Gone was a project of epic scale released in October; an online "album" of almost infinite variation which consisted of 250 unique mixes of the ten tracks that span the record, which Baird spent countless hours to produce. These mixes were then reassembled into unique sequences every hour to create an album on which the first iteration will not repeat itself before 1.3 Billion years (give or take a couple of million).
Listen to ‘Walking In A Straight Line’ here
Baby Blue Abyss track listing:
1. Wino Strut
2. Graveyard Dawn
3. Everlasting Pleasure Cruise
4. Diamond Studded Casket
5. Baby Blue
6. Walking In A Straight Line
7. Muzak Of The Spheres
8. Bourgeois Blues
9. Nature Dot Com
10. Social Swamp Quicksand Screen
11. Long Ascent
Easy Machines track listing:
1. Telephones
2. Quicksilver Slip
3. Shape Shifting Game
4. Be Yourself
5. As The Sun Will Rise This Dream Recedes
6. Heaviness Of Flame
7. Sound In Your Mind
8. You’re Someone Else
9. So Says Me
10. Never Go Home Again
