Ka Baird
Ictum Exercises (Polyrhythmic Studies)
In November 2020 Phill Niblock sent out an email informing a group of us that Experimental Intermedia planned to have their usual December concert series. However, due to the Covid pandemic, the series was set to be streamed online via Zoom or Vimeo Live. I, along with Earl Howard, Marcia Bassett & Bob Bellerue, Gill Arno, Mike Bullock, Lars Åkerlund, Matthias Kaiser & Hans Tammen and Austin Larkin were asked to perform from our own home/studio/space either live or prerecorded. At the time, I wa…
Sapropelic Pycnic
*2024 stock* Sapropelic Pycnic is the world debut of music presented under the name of "Ka Baird." While this record is a commencement of many sorts, it is in no way a mere beginning: Ka is one of the founding members of experimental psychlings Spires That In the Sunset Rise. Formed in 2001 out of the Chicago scene, and described by late guitar legend Jack Rose as a "female Sun City Girls," Spires' sisterhood of sound deepened the New Folk slant with an array of avant- and world-flavored directi…
Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos
Ka Baird’s Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos intertwines elements of the New York based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer’s ecstatic live performances within minimalistic, visceral compositions that expand in scope and sound through collaboration. The album’s eleven movements manifest as shapeshifting invocations defined by their own multiplicity; the emotional outcome of circumstance and grief, played against rigorous conceptualism and musical craft. Featuring a cast of contribut…
Kinematics 7"
* Edition of 100. Lathe-cut 7" record with laser etching. * Kinematics is the explosive first time collaboration between multi instrumentalist Ka Baird and percussionist Chris Corsano. Side A, Ordinate, is a frenetic weave of bamboo reed pipe, bubbling vocal utterances and drums, sounding much like a cart-full of shimmering dodos on the loose with the wheels flying off. Side B, Abscissa, is a more focused beating drone that mixes layered tones from an Asian battery operated tone generator (used …
Hungry Shells
In process of stocking * One time pressing of 1000 LPs with spot gloss jacket, accompanied by a printed insert including artist essays. * Hungry Shells, the seventeenth entry in RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaborations series FRKWYS, brings together vocalist,multi-instrumentalist, and sound artist Ka Baird with avant-garde composer and radical performance art pioneer Pekka Airaksinen. Recorded six months before Pekka’s passing, Hungry Shells alchemizes separate but similar spiritualistic pr…
Vivification Exercises I
* Limited edition of 225 cassettes with hand stamped covers * Ka Baird’s Vivification Exercises, a recording for piano, voice, and electronics that references an invigorated consciousness, is primarily based on a presentation at Roulette’s Brooklyn theater in May of 2018. The event added to Baird’s history of performances that embrace the physical and visceral, though the musical, provocative sounds this time exorcised from both her body and the piano’s. Written, performed, produced and mixed by…
Respires
Respires, the second solo album by Ka Baird, blurs the line between word and action, definition and possibility. Spirited yet restrained, bearing its wildly thrummed heart strings and inner calm alike, Respires ventures toward the unknown, charting the shifting ground of experimental music and the rewards born of risk.
Tapping the ecstatic energy and cathartic experience of Baird’s live sets, pushing the extremes of psychological and physical release, Respires represents an unquestionable leap f…
Voice Games
**75 copies** Primarily voice improvisations from the duo of Muyassar Kurdi and Ka Baird, also performing on piano, bells, gong, flute and spike fiddle. Recorded at Pineapple Reality and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY, between 2017 and 2018, their work focused on typically delicate interweaving of their voices and instruments, with a sense of suspense, humor and joyful mystery.