biography
Either playing solo or with a mutable group of collaborators, Ben Vida spent 2005 establishing Bird Show as a standalone, ongoing musical entity. Vida devoted a good part of 2005 to live performance: touring Italy and going coast to coast in N. America alongside Greg Davis and Keith Fullerton Whitman. Live Bird Show becomes a group ceremony, Ben at the center surrounded by percussionists with songs morphing and looping, stretching out and becoming charged rhythmic meditations. Lightning Ghost is the product of that extensive performance experience. Besides Lightning Ghost, 2006 will see Bird Show contributions to compilations on Audio Dregs and Amish Records as well as a Bird Show/ Lichens collaboration for Rebis Records. More touring is planned for 2006 beginning with shows out west in January and in Japan in March.
"...a primal drone that unites Vidas obsessions - electronic hum, acoustic ambience and woodsy buzz - into one massive sound." - Marc Masters, The Wire, April 2005
"Green Inferno feels more like a ceremony than a record. It banishes the gray cold... and coaxes a lush tropical foliage to grow out of the speakers and steam up your living room." - Bill Meyer, Magnet
"...he seems focused on capturing the mysticism and mystery of those remote locations with haunting blurs of sound and ambient chatter. When he builds up layer upon layer of violin scrapes, it feels like a tranced-out version of Kronos Quartet creating a jarring, yet seductive fever dream." - Steve Ciabatonni, CMJ Monthly March 2005
"Vida has concocted a rich, febrile soundscape populated with buzzing, droning, scything strings, wheezy harmoniums, distant voices and the chatter of insects." - BBC Music
Green Inferno is his second solo recording, a long-in-coming successor to Mpls., which was released on Brent Gutzeit's Boxmedia label in 1999. Boxmedia described Mpls as "a record of delicate acoustic guitar compositions, soft melodic songs with hidden teeth." Green Inferno is a different beast, showing its teeth with dense percussive tracks and odd stream of consciousness vocal/acoustic/drone songs. Green Inferno was recorded alone at home during the winter of 2003 and 2004. Ben Vida describes it as an attempt to fuse all of his favorite aspects of the groups he has been playing in.
Though best known for his work in Town & Country, Ben Vida has been a prominent player in the Chicago music scene, placing himself at the nexus between improvised and acoustic minimalist musics. Ben Vida has played and recorded with the experimental chamber group Terminal 4 with Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jeb Bishop and Josh Abrams. He is in the improvising group Pillow, formed in 1996 with Michael Colligan, Liz Payne and Fred Lonberg-Holm. There will be a new Pillow album out later this winter. Ben Vida and his brother Adam (who also drums in U.S. Maple) founded Central Falls with Jason Adasiewicz and Steve Doreke. That group has recorded two albums and toured. And he is a member of the rock group Everyoned with Chris Connelly and Tim Kinsella.
Ben Vida plays guitar, cornet and harmonium in Town & Country, who have been experimenting in acoustic resonance , minimalist composition, and world folk musics for the past seven years. Town & Country continue to record and tour, most recently with Tony Conrad in spring 2004. Ben Vida has brought the deliberation and repetitive structures of Town & Country to Green Inferno and augmented it with somnambulant vocals, a trellis of percussion and psychedelic drone.
While working on Green Inferno, Vida had been listening to field recordings from around the world and Morocco, Zimbabwe, Japan and Pakistan in particular. He found himself as interested in the surroundings the recordings were made in as he was in the music itself. The home recording sessions were made in the attempt to retain a casual yet focused feel. Rough edges and external noises from the recordings were left in. Ben Vida recorded using vocals, violin, cornet, accordion, acoustic guitar, organ, qrareb (Moroccan castanets), assorted shakers, tambourine, mbira, field recordings from Tokyo by Atsuhiro Koizymi and from Puerto Rico by Fred Lonberg- Holm. Green Inferno was recorded and edited by Ben Vida at home on a digital 16 track and mixed with Jeremy Lemos at his apartment.
Subsequent to recording the album, Vida began Bird Show. Bird Show intend to pick up on and extend the material on Green Inferno and plan to tour as soon as the album is released. Although recorded entirely by Ben Vida, Green Inferno is being attributed to the band Bird Show.
-->Ben Vida Select Discography
Central Falls Latitude CD (Truckstop, 2002)
Central Falls Love and Easy Listening CD (Truckstop, 2003)
Pillow Pillow CD (Boxmedia, 1998)
Pillow Field on Water CD (Here Forever Always, 2000)
Pillow Three Henries CD (Hapna, 2001)
Terminal 4 Terminal 4 CD (Truckstop, 2002)
Terminal 4 When I'm Falling CD (Truckstop, 2003)
Town & Country Town & Country CD (Boxmedia, 1998)
Town & Country Decoration Day CD EP (Thrill Jockey, 1999)
Town & Country It All Has To Do With It CD (Thrill Jockey, 2000)
Town & Country C'Mon CD (Thrill Jockey, 2002)
Town & Country 5 CD (Thrill Jockey, 2003)
Everyoned Everyoned CD (Brilliante, 2004)
Ben Vida Mpls. CD (Boxmedia, 2000)
kranky titles available
Lightning Ghost
Green Inferno