We Are

Alex Koi // Vocals, lyrics, synth, composition/production

www.alexkoimusic.com

Alex Koi is a vocalist, composer/producer, and improvising musician. She has dedicated her practice to exploring rainbows of musical possibilities and practicing a voracious effort of artistic innovation, expression, and collaboration. She heads her eponymous solo project and is the vocalist and co-composer for the art rock band saajtak. She has had the privilege of working and performing with many people who inspire her including Shara Nova, Toshi Reagon, Chris Bruce, Morley Kamen, Nathan Thatcher, Joo Won Park, Eleonore Oppenheim, Nicole Mannarino, Aaron Edgcomb and Ragnar Kjartansson.

With improvisation as a foundational part of her practice, Alex utilizes electronic processing, extended technique, and her diverse musical influences to create an explosive sound that has been called “impossibly stunning” [Stereo Stickman], “primal and futuristic at the same time” [Current Magazine] and that “bends between operatic and punk rock” [Audiofemme].

Simon Alexander-Adams // Keyboards, synth, composition/production

www.simonaa.media

Simon Alexander-Adams is a multimedia artist and designer working within the intersection of music, visual arts and technology. He specializes in real-time generative art, interactive installations and audiovisual performances. He is inspired by the emergent patterns found in nature and uses complex systems to simulate natural phenomena in the pursuit of organic textures and surprising interactions. He also draws on a love of fractals and geometry, science fiction and glitch art (the aesthetics of failure.)

His work has been presented at international festivals, including Electric Forest, Coachella, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the 2020 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture Shenzhen. He has worked on projects for a range of companies and clients including ARTECHOUSE, Intel, HP, GQ Magazine, and McAfee. Simon received an MA in Media Arts in 2015 from the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Jonathan Barahal Taylor // Drums, Percussion, Composition/Production

www.jontaylormusic.com

As a performer, composer, and improviser, Jonathan Barahal Taylor prioritizes movement and tactility as the foundation for musical expression. His drumming utilizes “carefully crafted chaos” [Midwest Action] and possesses “the rare ability to drive a band with constantly shifting rhythmic and melodic patterns … without ever overpowering the group” [Semja Review]. This sensibility informs his original projects and collaborative pursuits, which in addition to saajtak includes Teiku, which reimagines unique ancestral Jewish melodies in a creative music context, Mover, a modular suite of graphic scores, the art rock band Throwaway, and Root Beneath Bones, his solo project for drums and electronics. Tabla study is a central component of his practice, and in 2023 Taylor returned to Varanasi, India, to deepen his engagement with the instrument and rehearse with an ensemble of North Indian classical musicians to exchange and test methods of improvisation. He has performed with such luminaries of creative music as Wadada Leo Smith, Angelica Sanchez, John Lindberg, Michael Formanek, Tomeka Reid, Dave Liebman, and Jaribu Shahid.

Ben Willis // Bass, composition/production

Ben Willis plays bass, produces music, and creates collaborative media. He is lucky to be performing in 2023 with many great artists - David Hurley, Sonya Belaya, Annick Odom, Tim Haldeman, James Cornish, Kirsten Carey, Alex Koi, Meg Rohrer, Michael Malis, New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, and touring as a member of the bands saajtak, Lovely Socialite, and Throwaway. He writes songs for the Success and Opportunity Band, most recently developing a set of music for a 2022 tour in Japan. He also works as a producer and educator, helping artists develop recordings and performances, and teaching workshops in improvisation and collaborative composition. He is currently recording his quartet for double basses, and new albums with saajtak, Throwaway, and Annick Odom. His mentors in double bass include Richard Davis, Diana Gannet, Robert Hurst, and Valdin Buchmeier. A self-taught animator and video artist, he has made music videos in collaboration with some of his favorite musicians from Detroit, New York, Chicago, Osaka, and Los Angeles.

Saajtak // LONG BIO

The band Saajtak, based in Detroit (Jonathan Barahal Taylor, Ben Willis, Simon Alexander-Adams) and Brooklyn (Alex Koi), makes futuristic music that synthesizes a wide range of genres—often in ways that seem to clash against each other, always in service to the song. The band has quietly made music in Detroit for the better part of a decade, collaborating with members of clipping. and sharing bills with Xiu Xiu, Ava Mendoza and Greg Fox. Koi sings and writes lyrics; Taylor plays drums, Willis bass; Alexander-Adams contributes keyboard and electronics. But to individuate their contributions does the music a disservice. Saajtak sounds, feels, like a living, breathing organism, for which recordings don’t present definitive documents as much as they reflect songs at given points in their lives. After four independently-released EPs, saajtak released their highly anticipated debut album, For the Makers, on American Dreams on June 3, 2022.

Saajtak’s compositions are rooted in collective improvisation; their first release, spectral [ drips ], collects several free improvisations. The band was recording music live for a full-length debut when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic pressed pause on their principal way of making music. In response, the band began working on new music remotely, in increments of eight days. Every two days, members would trade songs, gradually sculpting them into final iterations. Willis recalls putting on his headphones as he began recording bass: “The layers that Alex, Simon, and Jon had begun to craft engulfed me like a wave, filling me. I was suddenly surrounded by my friends.” Over time, the music organically cohered into an album, bringing together influences as wide-ranging as Richard Davis, Meredith Monk and Melvins. Koi’s lyrics balance narrative and enigma, incorporating several perspectives within a song in an approach she calls polyphonic narrative. “I like to imagine how personas might converse in worlds with varying levels of familiarity and skewness,” she explains. “What we receive are relationships that flow between splintery and harmonious, and that contain both ecstasy and affliction. There’s a big thrill in all this, when nothing can be apathetic.”

The record is in motion from the start, opening in medias res with anthemic lead single “Big Exit.” Koi treats her words like playthings, stretching syllables past semantics, vocal lines in conversation with one another. Alexander-Adams’ electronics quiver, and Taylor’s clattering kit seems to deconstruct the rhythm it builds, before the song unspools into a lush, minimal coda just before the 4-minute mark. “Concertmate 680” follows in a similar fashion, with a tight groove belying the song’s spare lyrics: “Desire 5ever rainbows. Spy on you.” Collaborations with guitarist Kirsten Carey, saxophonists Marcus Elliot and Kaleigh Wilder, cellist Pat Reinholz, and vocalist David Magumba add still more color to the band’s vibrant compositions. “There’s a Leak in the Shielding” references history, then uses it as a weapon: “Here, now, there is no pen,” Koi sings, “and your children’s children will not recognize them.” Her vocal melody, and the seeming naiveté of her inflection, recalls Arthur Russell, as do Alexander-Adams’ wet, percussive electronics. Throughout, the album mixes the organic and synthetic. Even as motifs, images and lyrics recur, the music thrums with energy, opening into new worlds.

This, perhaps, is part of the point: to illustrate an escape, to be one. To Alexander-Adams, For the Makers was "as much a healing practice as it was a means to create"; to Willis, it "feels like a year-improvisation, for which the music never stopped the whole time." Says Taylor, "it represents our collective voice in the deepest sense: an amalgamation of our individual vulnerabilities, imaginations, ambitions, and love for each other." The album is testament to the restless creativity powering Saajtak's engine, and the importance of cultivating creativity, trust and community.