Very excited to welcome back Mike Reed's Separatist Party, with a line-up featuring Ben LaMar Gay, Bitchin Bajas, and Marvin Tate

Chicago drummer Mike Reed convenes his Separatist Party in a twisting of musical landscapes. The project features poet/vocalist Marvin Tate, Ben LaMar Gay on Cornet, and the minimalist-psych trio of Bitchin Bajas. The Separatist Party’s music is often heavily rhythmic and synthesized, occasionally epic in scope, with Tate’s lyrics carving out images of fragmentation and isolation. The music is part of a larger catalog of Reed compositions that was inspired by the 2015 news essay, “The Lonely Death of George Bell” by N.R. Kleinfield.

Starting with minimal loops, and adding concentric layers the band creates a collage inspired as much by Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders as by the Krautrock of Can, keyboard explorations of Terry Riley, and street preacher monologues.