Kishi Bashi – Lighght (2014)

Violin virtuoso and of Montreal associate Kishi Bashi release his new album, Lighght, on May 13th via Joyful Noise Recordings. The follow-up to 2012′s 151a takes its name from the 1965 one-word poem by Aram Saroyan and continues Bashi’s exploration of experimental pop.
K. Ishibashi opens his second solo album by taking a tone-setting 48-second violin solo. Titled Début – Impromptu, it skids and squeaks with accelerating abandon until the notes distort and smash together chaotically; by the end, the instrument has become largely indistinguishable from the machines he so often uses to loop and manipulate it. It’s equal parts introduction and mission statement for Lighght, in which technique and experimentation collide in high-spirited even disorienting ways.

That song morphs quickly into Lighght‘s first single, whose title sounds like a mission statement in and of itself — Philosophize In It! Chemicalize with It! — at which point Ishibashi gets to the meat of the frantically busy sound for which he’s become known. A former utility player in of Montreal, he’s fully established himself as a formidable solo artist; his loop-intensive live shows are the product of a mind that always seems both hard at work and immersed in play.