Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas

The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead.

LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed ‘space’ and the second side ‘time’. With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly. Recorded in a single day with Greg Norman at Chicago’s Electrical Audio, then slowly considered into the finished record we hear here, ‘Totality’ is a sweet-tempered second child. It experiences time in ways the first kid didn’t. There are lots of simmering time and synth atmospheres dappled with radiant woodwinds, but there’s some head-snapping hypno-rhythms that stand apart from the groove energies of the first one. It’s just natural facts: two different days in time separated by years, with the experience of several live encounters between the two groups in between. Beyond that, only the music can say anything else.

The low-key revolutionary thump of ‘Nothing Does Not Show’ and ‘Clock no Clock’ notwithstanding, ‘Totality’ charts impressive new launch angles from Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas’ improvisatory heart, with their careful listening and response time continually redefining the space in a relaxed manner that rewards deep zoners. Additionally, their blended corps assimilate marvellously on Abrams’ composition ‘Always 9 Seconds Away’. Here, and with the aforementioned groovers, the collective resonates beyond familiar Kraut / spiritual / minimal power lines, bringing new time conceptions to bear in the always-expansive space of this album event.