BCMC: Foreign Smokes (Vinyl LP)

With BCMC, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes; equal parts east Africa, deep space, rock’s dreamy lyrical interior, soloed multi-track, remix, raga, new age fugue state, field recording, blues and beyond - gossamer-light avant garde noir flowing into fire-and-icy jams, collecting bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life’s strange and sunny days.

Cooper’s organ and synths and Bill’s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of them to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other’s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

Have they been there forever, hanging in the air and we’re only now becoming aware of them? It doesn’t seem to matter. As BCMC beam through the universe, their light hitting yours creates a new arc. Every turntable they spin upon, a new prismatic stream; every bud blooming in ears across the known plane, another voicing. Every resonance, every redolence. Hushed but encompassing, prayerful yet omniscient, intimate and universal.

1. Foreign Smokes
2. The Swarm
3. Ripple In High Tide
4. Sunset Saturn