Bitchin Bajas :: Isle Peaks
Artwork: Elisabeth Fuchsia
Like being pushed out of a perfectly fine airplane and into anaconda-infested waters deep in the jungles of South America, primarily East of the Andes Mountains, while plummeting to the evaporating earth with no parachute. Their prehistoric bodies ultimately break your fall as you fall further into the slithering hive mind that contains dozens upon dozens of “matatoro.” The dark brown, amoeba-rich water is warm; your inescapable fear of being trapped in its cataclysmic current begins to turn the rustic river ice cold as you suddenly realize your fate is coming to an end, and not even the gorgeous glow of the metaphorical moon hanging high above your head can guide you home to safety. The Windy City-based trio Bitchin Bajas have been sonically summoning their bombed-out brand of transcendental textures for well over a decade. With each new album they set free, a weird wave of esoteric electricity emerges from the group’s creative core, and into the ears and eyes of listeners like some ghostly substance that’s lain dormant for centuries. While a vicious vapor leaks from the valley’s vents, a cosmic cure sits on the edge of a swollen windowsill like a freshly baked apple pie just in time for the stinging smoke to settle, and for its irreversible effects to take over the brain, destroying the body immediately afterwards like a sensational sequence of science fiction. Following up 2025’s “Inland See” with their latest effort, “Isle Peaks,” the band takes the bull by the horns instead of trying to control its destiny, iconic impact on its surroundings, or its overall strength; they eagerly embrace its energy like the champions they are. Similar to a biblical blast from an electronic earthquake, what’s not damaged by the radioactive rays will thrive and continue its evaporated existence like a faded memory in the distant collective of some fossilized figure of the past.
Consisting of longtime members Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, and Daniel Quinlivan, the album’s sharp soundscape pierces an already atmospheric anatomy that’s more than just a friendly fever dream that breaks across your forehead like snow melting on hot skin, but a well-balanced body of work that’s just as cinematic as it is cosmic. Originally sourced from the epic “Inland See” sessions and released as a two-track Qobuz exclusive back in January, “Isle Peaks” ultimately deserves to be deeply embedded in the grooves on vinyl wax for eternity because, after all, Bitchin Bajas are “a band of the people, for the people.” While these specific cuts were purposefully pushed through galactic gears for further inspection and edits, the transcendental textures from sampled kalimba, field recordings, autoharp, and EWI ultimately give the album a life of its own, while maintaining a minimal yet metaphysical range in overall sound. Carefully captured at Electrical Audio in Studio B and at Sweat Lodge, the former LA-based recording studio run by Ty Segall, this record is completely different from anything else the band has ever done before, while effortlessly entertaining the idea that each release is a cosmic continuation of another.
