Bitchin Bajas

★★★★ Switched On Ra DRAG CITY. DL/MC

Chi-Town kosmischers’ salute to Sun Ra.

Four years after the ambitious prog-drone explorations of 2017’s Baja Fresh, Cooper Crain’s electronic loop gurus go back to some kind of basics with cassette-only variations on the cosmic Arkestra oeuvre of Herman P. Blount, played in a Wendy Carlos style. A salute to individuality, experiment, and the joy of the non-binary, this is the sound of 19 different keyboards (Yamahas, Rolands, Korgs, Casios, Ace Tone, Crumar DS-2) imagining a parallel world where the test record in every ’70s hi-fi home was Wendy C micro-Mooging her way through the Sun Ra spaceways. The combination highlights the innocence and beauty of both styles, like forgotten ’70s TV themes soundtracking scientific experiments or lonely IBM computers hymning their own obsolescence. The Akai

EWI 5000 voice-samples singing We Travel The Spaceways is a mournfully beautiful highlight.