Bitchin Bajas

2025 has already found Bitchin Bajas hard at work. Coming off the long awaited second collaboration with Natural Information Society, the band’s got a certified essential for the year in the bag, but like their counterparts on that album, they won’t let us off with just one release as we glide towards the end of the slog that is 2025. A proper follow up to their 2023 album, Bajascillators, the new record departs from the last’s percolating palette. The heart of Bajascillators was a burbling, crystalline synth sound that balanced the band’s calm demeanor with a slight prickle in the blood. Inland See, on the other hand, finds little reason to fight the steady weights that pulls them deeper into the cocoon. Over the first half of the album, the hackles are shorn, and the record revels in a kind of warm, pulsating aura, punctuated only every so often by the soft purr of sax. It’s as somnambulant as the band have been in some time, washing the keys in a downy glow while tempering their rhythmic elements to a pace that’ll slow the pulse.

As the listener dips in, the record practically glows, a soft inner light that plays on the back of the eyelids like sensory deprivation visions. As more and more have turned their target towards ambient float, the Bajas are back to remind the world who’s been tending the temples of the temperate zones for years. The warm blanket bouquet of the first half of the record finds them inching towards the closing strains of “Graut,” and as they land on its shores, a shift back towards propulsion triggers. Though the tin n’ trickle burbles of the past still stay away, this time replaced with the lock-step steadiness of a beat that bears marks of the German Progressives. The capper builds and blooms; layering flutes, and buzzing synths worthy of an Omni space doc. The record bubbles over like a long simmering science experiment, changing tones and temperament before fizzing over in a flash of fuchsia foam. Many have aimed for the crown, but the Bajas remain truly unmatched in their arena.