With Big Thief having been fairly quiet in the last couple of years outside of a recent fundraiser EP, the band's drummer and occasional producer James Krivchenia has announced a solo album. Performing Belief is out May 2 through Planet Mu, and the single "Probably Wizards" is out now.
Krivchenia made the album with electric bassist Sam Wilkes and double bassist and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams, and it draws on the Big Thief timekeeper's extensive archive of field recordings captured in nature.
According to a press release, "The core of the album is a lush, opulent matrix of percussion ranging from the familiar — hand claps and drum machines — to the mysteriously verdant, sampled largely from Krivchenia's own performed field recorded collection," which don't adhere to the quantized grid often associated with electronic music.
Performing Belief's tracklist is below, along with "Probably Wizards."
Performing Belief:
1. Undesigned
2. Judge the Seeds (with Sam Wilkes & Joshua Abrams)
3. Probably Wizards (with Sam Wilkes)
4. Sympathetic Magic (with Sam Wilkes & Joshua Abrams)
5. Bracelets for Unicorns (with Sam Wilkes & Joshua Abrams)
6. Filling In the Swamp (with Sam Wilkes & Joshua Abrams)
7. The Wounded Place (with Sam Wilkes)
8. Metaphoric Leakage (with Sam Wilkes)