Ka Baird creates a radically present tense and vigorous type of “body music” that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. Her live solo performances incorporate extended vocal techniques and mic use, luminous driving flute meditations, and live electronics. Her 2019 album “Respires” (RVNG Intl) was listed as one of Pitchfork’s Best Experimental Albums of the year. John Saint Pelvyn is a guitarist, singer, and player of some species of dismantled electrified folk. His playing is often interwoven with melodies sung in a haunting countertenor or occasionally slashed through by unnerving theremin squelches.

Ka Baird

Ka Baird is an American multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, producer, and performer based in New York City. She is heralded for her raw, ecstatic, boundary pushing live solo performances involving highly energetic experimental body movements, extended vocal techniques and mic use, luminous driving flute meditations, and innovative use of live electronics. She creates a radically present tense and vigorous type of “body music" that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. Her latest recording “Respires” on Brooklyn based imprint RVNG Intl was included on Pitchfork’s Best Experimental Albums of 2019 list. Her previous album “Sapropelic Pycnic” was released through independent label Drag City in 2017. She is one of the founding and continuing members of the legendary psych-folk/avant-garde group Spires That In The Sunset Rise founded in Chicago in 2001. Recent national and international engagements have included performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), MoMA PS1, Issue Project Room, TUSK (Newcastle, UK), Incubate (Tilburg, Netherlands), KRAAK (Brussels, Belgium), Le Guess Who (Utrecht, Netherlands), and the Festival Of Endless Gratitude (Copenhagen, DK). She has been a music resident at Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, IL), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn) and was a 2018 Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Roulette Intermedium.

John Saint Pelvyn

Guitarist, singer, and player of some species of dismantled electrified folk, John Saint Pelvyn is a musical enigma of the best kind. At the root of his playing is something akin to fingerstyle blues, but rich with quivering whammy bar wobble and shimmering feedback he seems to harvest from the air using his guitar like a musical dowsing rod. His playing is often interwoven with melodies sung in a haunting countertenor or occasionally slashed through by unnerving theremin squelches, an instrument he plays with a raw unschooled fury that has drawn comparisons to Beefheart’s approach to clarinet. One at times finds an affinity for the likes of Robby Basho or Loren Mazzacane-Connors here, but this music is perhaps best likened to cinematic landscapes; sometimes harsh, sometimes otherworldly, but often as delicate as a hummingbird’s wing.

“When wandering the stage singing into the F-holes of his electric arch top bringing forth arpeggios of feedback, or waving the neck of his guitar in the vicinity of a howling theremin, indeed, he seems to be playing the very air itself.”
- Electro Motive Records