Tashi Wada: What is Not Strange?

Friday, September 13, 20248:00 pm

Los Angeles-based composer Tashi Wada celebrates the release of What Is Not Strange? (RVNG Intl., 2024), his first full-length album in over five years, comprising his most far-reaching and impassioned music to date. This live performance features musicians Julia Holter, Ezra Buchla, Dev Hoff, and Corey Fogel with visuals by artist Dicky Bahto.

Written and recorded over a period that encompassed the death of his father and the birth of his daughter, the album sees Wada reflecting inward to explore broad narratives—being alive, mortality, finding one’s place in the world—through new modes of ecstatic, song-based expression. While the denser forms, stark contrasts, and overt surreality may carry a different weight than Wada’s earlier work, which elicited perceptual effects with minimal means, the heart of What Is Not Strange? is still in experimentation and unforeseen outcomes.

Wada refers to What Is Not Strange? as dream music, inhabiting “emotional states that are difficult to pinpoint” and “shapeshifting from moment to moment.” The search for innate truths by way of experiential knowledge of the self was influenced by Wada’s immersion in the writings of the American Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia. In addition to titling the album after a poem by Lamantia, Wada was inspired by the visionary poet’s belief that the secrets of the world lie within us, as we are a reflection of that very same world. And yet a basic premise of the album is the underlying feeling that there is no “there” there. Even the ground under our feet is uncertain. This seeming interiority allows the ethos and music of What Is Not Strange? to defy easy categorization, unfurling like a vision of the past, present, and future.

Tashi Wada keyboard, bagpipe, misc.
Julia Holter vocals, keyboard, misc.
Ezra Buchla electric viola
Dev Hoff double bass
Corey Fogel percussion
Dicky Bahto visuals

“It represents his breakthrough: a simple statement of purpose from a composer newly confident in his abilities.” —Pitchfork

“Wada gestures towards a dazzlingly interlaced future that’s dense, unpredictable and entirely human.” —Boomkat

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.


Los Angeles-based musician Tashi Wada works within a heady, intergenerational slipstream bridging storied East and West Coast art music institutions, and the DIY experimental scenes that emerged in the 2000s and 2010s. Between recording and performing with his creative and life partner, Julia Holter, and running his record label Saltern, Wada has carved a unique path as a forward-thinking composer alongside a tight network of collaborators, drawing on diverse influences and exchanges. Wada’s new album for RVNG Intl., What Is Not Strange?, strips away preconceptions of the scope of his music, presenting complex, pop-informed compositions that bristle with joy.

Tashi Wada at Roulette 2024 (audio)

 

Tashi Wada: What is Not Strange?

Friday, September 13, 20248:00 pm

Los Angeles-based composer Tashi Wada celebrates the release of What Is Not Strange? (RVNG Intl., 2024), his first full-length album in over five years, comprising his most far-reaching and impassioned music to date. This live performance features musicians Julia Holter, Ezra Buchla, Dev Hoff, and Corey Fogel with visuals by artist Dicky Bahto.

Written and recorded over a period that encompassed the death of his father and the birth of his daughter, the album sees Wada reflecting inward to explore broad narratives—being alive, mortality, finding one’s place in the world—through new modes of ecstatic, song-based expression. While the denser forms, stark contrasts, and overt surreality may carry a different weight than Wada’s earlier work, which elicited perceptual effects with minimal means, the heart of What Is Not Strange? is still in experimentation and unforeseen outcomes.

Wada refers to What Is Not Strange? as dream music, inhabiting “emotional states that are difficult to pinpoint” and “shapeshifting from moment to moment.” The search for innate truths by way of experiential knowledge of the self was influenced by Wada’s immersion in the writings of the American Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia. In addition to titling the album after a poem by Lamantia, Wada was inspired by the visionary poet’s belief that the secrets of the world lie within us, as we are a reflection of that very same world. And yet a basic premise of the album is the underlying feeling that there is no “there” there. Even the ground under our feet is uncertain. This seeming interiority allows the ethos and music of What Is Not Strange? to defy easy categorization, unfurling like a vision of the past, present, and future.

Tashi Wada keyboard, bagpipe, misc.
Julia Holter vocals, keyboard, misc.
Ezra Buchla electric viola
Dev Hoff double bass
Corey Fogel percussion
Dicky Bahto visuals

“It represents his breakthrough: a simple statement of purpose from a composer newly confident in his abilities.” —Pitchfork

“Wada gestures towards a dazzlingly interlaced future that’s dense, unpredictable and entirely human.” —Boomkat

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.


Los Angeles-based musician Tashi Wada works within a heady, intergenerational slipstream bridging storied East and West Coast art music institutions, and the DIY experimental scenes that emerged in the 2000s and 2010s. Between recording and performing with his creative and life partner, Julia Holter, and running his record label Saltern, Wada has carved a unique path as a forward-thinking composer alongside a tight network of collaborators, drawing on diverse influences and exchanges. Wada’s new album for RVNG Intl., What Is Not Strange?, strips away preconceptions of the scope of his music, presenting complex, pop-informed compositions that bristle with joy.

Tashi Wada at Roulette 2024 (audio)