Ka Baird

Ka Baird

Ka Baird is an American recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and performer based in New York City, known for their raw, boundary pushing solo performances that bridge experimental sound, performance art, and ritual, incorporating body movement, extended voice and microphone techniques, electronics, flute and other instrumentation.

First emerging in Chicago during the early 2000s as one of the core members of avant psyche outfit, Spires That In The Sunset Rise, since their relocation to New York, Baird has continuously pushed into radically experimental and deeply personal creative ground. Following their debut solo album Sapropelic Pycnic, issued by Drag City in 2017, they have issued a series of collaborations with Chris Corsano, Muyassar Kurdi, John Zuma St. Pelvyn, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, and Andy Ortmann, on various imprints including Nihilist, Astral Editions, and Various/Artists, as well as their acclaimed 2019 album, Respires, released by RVNG in 2019, its follow up, Bespires (2020), a collection of outtakes and covers; Vivification Exercises I (2021), a live performance captured at Roulette’s Brooklyn theater in May of 2018, releases part of the Commend THERE tape series; and Hungry Shells (2021), a FRKWYS collaboration between Baird and the late Pekka Airaksinen, recorded during a residency in 2018 at Le Guess Who? (Utrecht, NL), before being produced and mixed by Baird in 2020 after they took time to process Pekka’s passing in 2019.

Baird’s most recent album, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (2024), pushes even further into uncharted territories. Initially conceived as Bearings, a 22 minute performance commissioned by Lampo in Chicago during the spring of 2022, the album’s full scope came into focus over the course of the ensuing year while Barid cared for their mother following a terminal diagnosis. Subsequently expanded into the 11 Gates, or “in-betweens / bardos,” that comprise the album, each nodding to impermanence, traveling, obstacles, portals, power lines, surrender, and release. Realized with an all-star cast of collaborators including Troy Schafer (strings), Max Eilbacher (flute processing, electronics), Henry Fraser (double bass), Nate Wooley (trumpet), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Joanna Mattrey (viola), Chris Williams (trumpet), Camilla Padgitt-Coles (bowls, warterphone), John McCowen (contra clarinet), Greg Fox (percussion), and Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone), and the purr of their beloved cat, Nisa, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos is a durational work of profound abstraction and focus, within which sonorous elements, structure, and meaning reach a single, unified form.