Bogie Kaufman Mann Release instrumental Vol. 1 on Custom hand-cut 45s
ATTN: Beats for sale!
We are offering custom hand-cut vinyl 45s featuring two tracks of your choice.
Reserve one before it's too late — orders close once the record hits the digital world on June 29!
— custom hand-cut 7-inch vinyl 45s with picture sleeves
— includes an exclusive interview transcript with the trio
These grooves will be hand-carved specifically for you.
“Don't let your idea of what you think should happen get in the way of what's already happening.” - a note from Geoff Mann to himself, on his floor tom, 15 years ago.
Bogie Kaufman Mann’s Volume 1 is a record of improvisations that don’t sound like improvisations. In stark contrast to what Stuart Bogie describes as the “bizarre addiction to acoustic control” that usually goes along with recordings of skilled improvisers, Volume 1 is truly free - blissfully ignoring the conventions that dictate even improvised music. With a trio composed of guitar, woodwinds, and percussion, each musician is able to occupy primarily one space - melodic, harmonic, rhythmic - allowing the three of them to create incredibly full, detailed compositions in real time, with no overdubs. Produced by D. James Goodwin at his studio The Isokon in Woodstock, NY, the result is lean and clear, with each musician selflessly playing into the mood of each piece.
The players themselves have resumes that could fill ten album descriptions - Stuart Bogie, in addition to leading his own energetic pop project Superhuman Happiness, is a highly sought after arranger, and has performed with Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, Wu Tang Clan, and Iron and Wine; Josh Kaufman has produced albums for Josh Ritter, Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn, and Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir, and collaborated with both The National and The War on Drugs on their critically acclaimed 2017 albums; and Geoff Mann currently drums in LA psych-rock band Here Lies Man in addition to having worked extensively in film and TV scoring and playing alongside Bogie in legendary afrobeat ensemble Antibalas. They came together in this incarnation partly out of a reaction to so much densely structured work, out of a desire to create something more open, and you can hear the joy of that freedom all over the result.
Still, experience in producing records has left its mark on the way they approach improvisation - a strong minimalist streak runs through Volume 1. As Kaufman says, “You can get so stuck in the studio going over the same take with more ideas covering up the ideas that you were originally inspired by, and what was cool about this is that we didn't do that.” Mann: “We wanted to feel like it was a group improvisation all the time, so there was never really a lot of soloing going on - there was a lot of trioing going on.” Playing at low volume, set up close to one another in the same room, headphone-free, they tracked the whole record in two days with Goodwin adding effects and processing in real time, a testament to what can be accomplished with deep listening and collaboration.
Volume 1, due June 29, is the first in an archival series of improvised recordings by the trio to be released on Figure & Ground. Each record is a document of a particular time and place - tracked live with no overdubs and very few edits, and released alongside an interview with the artists. The series documents moments stolen from dense working schedules, small islands in their longstanding musical relationship.
