Totality (Drag City)
Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas
Released April 25, 2025
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2025
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nJeez0QWI-9CVOos3YHDuQR7hSaYDW4kc
Spotify:
About:
Totality! It can only be good news. 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.
Track Listing:
1. Totality 16:55
2. Nothing Does Not Show 4:30
3. Always 9 Seconds Away 13:20
4. Clock no Clock 8:27
Personnel:
Joshua Abrams: double bass, guimbri
Lisa Alvarado: harmonium
Mikel Patrick Avery: drums, percussion
Cooper Crain: organ, synth
Rob Frye: flute, synth
Jason Stein: bass clarinet
Daniel Quinlivan: electronics
Recorded at Electrical Audio, by Greg Norman
Editing and Mixing: Cooper & Joshua
Mastering: Rashad Becker
Painting: Lisa Alvarado
Review:
In 2015, two pillars of Chicago’s free music scene joined forces. Spiritual jazz collective Natural Information Society and synth trio Bitchin Bajas found the intersection of their two very specific paths of exploration that year with their collaborative album Autoimaginary, an ooze of space rhythms and blurred boundaries between organic and digitized tones. Just short of a decade later, the two entities reconvene for Totality, the second album documenting their specific meeting of the minds. Even with that many years in between, there’s a natural synchronicity that the players pick back up like no time has passed. Natural Information Society has a slightly different lineup here than they did on Autoimaginary, but their mission statement remains one of group playing that’s ecstatic, confrontational, restrained, or visceral as the moment it’s happening in calls for. Totality tends more towards restraint than its groove-heavy predecessor. The opening title track, especially, takes its time unfolding, transforming very, very slowly into different shades of droning woodwinds and synth figures. It’s a nearly 17-minute-long track, and it’s not until the final four minutes that a beat is introduced. At no point, however, is the song dull or static. The changes in timbre, tone, and instrumentation all melt into each other with such a soft touch that the 17 minutes glide by almost unnoticeably, suspending time. Of the three remaining pieces that make up the album, “Nothing Does Not Show” and “Clock No Clock” are based around steady, forward-pushing repetitions of groove, while “Always 9 Seconds Away” (another long-burning number with a 13-minute run time) locks into a slow-motion theme that rocks back and forth much like the troubled waves of Sun Ra’s “Lanquidity.” This reference point isn’t surprising considering Bitchin Bajas paid tribute to Sun Ra on their 2021 set Switched On Ra (which even included a synthetic interpretation of “Lanquidity”), and Natural Information Society’s tightly arranged horns are the perfect sound to fill out the framework of this sweetly melancholic tune. While Totality is more meditative and focused than the spaced-out energy of Autoimaginary, it’s by no means sleepy. Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas have both invested many years in individual practices of thoughtful, searching, and reality-defying music. The second chapter in their collaborative work is such a natural progression that it feels simultaneously like a continuation of a single moment and light years ahead of where they started.
Fred Thomas (AllMusic)
