Collection: Bitchin Bajas

Bitchin Bajas began in 2010 as a solo project for Cooper Crain, guitarist and organist of Chicago krautrock band Cave, and expanded into a trio with the addition of Dan Quinlivan on synthesizer and Rob Frye, also of Cave, on flute, saxophone and guitar. The sound they developed, warm, patient, instrumental, built from analogue synthesizer textures layered alongside acoustic woodwinds and melodic fragments that repeat and slowly transform over extended durations, sits in the space between minimalism, krautrock and something that has no genre name. They have released prolifically on Drag City, and their collaborators across a fifteen-year discography have arrived from unexpected directions: Bonny "Prince" Billy on "Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties" (Drag City, 2016), and most significantly for a jazz-oriented audience, two albums with Chicago ensemble Natural Information Society, "Automaginary" (Drag City, 2015) and "Totality" (Drag City, 2025). The NIS pairing makes intuitive sense: both groups operate in the zone where acoustic and electronic instruments share melodic and rhythmic duties, where long duration is a compositional tool rather than an indulgence, and where the pulse matters more than the beat. Their 2021 album "Switched On Ra" is a direct tribute to Sun Ra, processing the Arkestra's music through the Bajas's synthesizer vocabulary in the spirit of Walter Carlos's "Switched On Bach" but with considerably less reverence and considerably more drift.