Bird Show

Originally launched as a solo vehicle by Town and Country guitarist Ben Vida, Bird Show turned into the Chicago musician’s central focus once that ensemble disbanded. Straddling musique concrète and psychedelic sound collage while occasionally incorporating conventional song structures, the home-recorded Bird Show discs remained steadily exploratory. Treating the project as a laboratory, Vida built enveloping electro-acoustic environments by blending field recordings with instruments that ranged from Moroccan castanets and mbira to organ, violin, and accordion. The 2005 album Green Inferno incorporated captured sounds from Tokyo and Puerto Rico, allowing birdsong and urban environments to intermingle with his vividly textured, subtly droning constructions. Rhythmic momentum came to the fore on 2006’s Lightning Ghost, where pieces pulsed forward through churning mbira patterns and handclaps. The 2008 self-titled release, which included contributions from former Chicago resident and electro-acoustic associate Greg Davis, marked the introduction of the Moog as a significant new component. Layered atop the customary spectrum of timbres—Vietnamese jaw harp, wood flute, elephant bells, and zither—were more defined frameworks shaped by Vida’s keyboard lines. Those frameworks reached greater completion on the 2010 Bird Show Band LP, which placed a complete quartet behind Vida, among them Tortoise drummers John Herndon and Dan Bitney, signaling the direction the endeavor would subsequently pursue.