Mansfield, Ohio band Big Bend performed live on Midday Music and spoke with host Evan Miller. Their new album Last Circle in a Slowdown came out on the independent, New York based label Shimmy-Disc. Experimental pianist and composer Nathan Phillips' third album as Big Bend is built upon ensemble jam sessions he hosted at a residency in Australia and co-producer Shahzad Ismaily.
This project came together at Figure 8 Recording in Brooklyn, NY where musician and violinist Anna Roberts-Gevalt contributed to the final arrangements. "Anna came in at a pretty late stage and was helping a lot with big picture. 'What if we just like completely re-edited this whole section or cut off this whole part of the song.' So that was a fun exercise to just hear it through someone else's ears and experiment again with something that I thought was already finished." said Phillips.
Phillips reflected upon the process,"I've had a stronger interest in improvisation in the last five or six years, and getting to play with incredible musicians like this just opens up all these new doors that are like,' Oh, there's this magical moment that happened for 30 seconds in this one hour of playing that could have happened no other way.' It's trying to fit a song around a pre-existing improvisation, that's what brought us here."
The album's title is inspired by a moment Phillips had during Covid lockdown. "I had one of these table fans and either the power went out or something and it stopped working. It had that slowing down effect and it takes up so much space, it's a lot of white noise, so when that's out of the picture you start to notice all these things around you." said Phillips
Check out Big Bend's latest album Last Circle in a Slowdown on bandcamp.
