Intuitive Music

Kimara Sajn is a multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for his Progressive and avant-garde experimental project Polyethylene Pet / +1. The band is an unique improvisational quality music project that features Kimara Sajn on drums, percussion, keyboards, bass, tapes, and vocals, plus a different sets of musicians that includes Chris Diurni (guitars, percussion, tapes, vocals, misc), Peter White (drums, percussion, vocals), B. Susan Johnson (percussion, tapes, vocals, misc), Ed Dickie (percussion, keyboards, vocals), Joe Palermo (drums, percussion, brio), Van Spragins (fretless bass), Peter White (tapes, lights), and Dave Egan (live tape manipulations).
Kimara also runs Precognitive Records, an independent label located in Seattle that hosts the different music projects he is involved in. Polyethylene Pet / +1 is one of the most interesting bands I have lately discovered. A wonderful mixture of Dadaist forms, contemporary tape composition, ambient electronics, musique concrete and avant-progressive rock.

Kimara talks to Intuitive Music about his influences and music recommendations.

- My last discovery album:

I think the most recent exciting discovery for me has been the Rascal Reporters. Never having even heard of them before, I stumbled across a reference to them in a review of something else. It sounded fascinating, so I visited their website. They are like no-one else i’ve ever heard. Brilliant, diverse, highly original and often quite funny music. They have an incredibly unique sense of form and a harmonic language that is both immensely beautiful and sometimes rather dark. My favorite album of theirs - today - is “The Foul-Tempered Clavier” but they’re all quite wonderful. “Happy Accidents” is another favourite.
In the last few years, however, I’ve discovered a number of bands and new music.
Hamster Theatre and Thinking Plague jump immediately to mind. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to strike up a personal friendship with Dave Willey and Mike Johnson, who shared their music with me. I’ve been a huge fan ever since. “History of Madness” is my favorite Thinking Plague album and the new Hamster Theatre is quite excellent.

- The song I always wanted to cover:

“For All We Know” by The Carpenters, hands down. This is just such a beautiful tune and has a special place in my heart. I was a very big Carpenters fan. This may not be evident from any of my work as “Polyethyelene Pet”. They often had great songs and some of the best writers wrote for them, including the Carpenter/Bettis team. My wife and musical cohort B.Sue Johnson writes some fabulous tunes. She has one called “Beauty Lies” which I’ve often thought of doing. However, I don’t tend to want to cover stuff being primarily a composer myself.

- The artist (alive) I’d like to work with:

Mike Johnson and I have talked about collaborating for years now. That would be fantastic and i don’t doubt that a Polyethylene Pet project may see us together someday. I would also like to work with my good friend Brian Burman someday. He has a lovely arrangement of one of my pieces which I will hopefully use on a project. We share many of the same musical interests and I know that creating some music with him would be a treat! (Note: Brian Burman was interviewed by Intuitive Music in October 2006 and he was actually the one who recommended us Kimara Sajn’s music)

- The song that always makes me cry:

Barbra Streisand’s version of Bernstein’s “Somewhere” is achingly beautiful. Of course, she is an amazing singer (though her material, in my opinion, is all over
the map - ranging from transcendent to hideously awful). She has an album of broadway tunes, though, which has that on it. The whole album is quite good but that song gets me everytime.
I suppose I’m betraying my love of many many things NOT “progressive”. Joni Mitchell has a song called “River” which always has an effect on me, as well as James Taylor’s song “Baby Buffalo”. Another one is Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son”. WOW - what a song. Sometimes it’s the lyric but more often than not the music alone will get me going. Actually, I write a lot of dark and somewhat melancholy music myself and frequently upon playing one, shortly after completing it, I will have a cathartic moment. We don’t want to get sappy or personally over-revealing though - and so let’s leave it at that.

- The most underrated band/artist

Hmmmm… that’s pretty tough - there are way too many artists not getting their due, especially in the more avant universe. Let me just say, we have a number of brilliant musician friends who work multiple jobs and barely find time to produce their music. Except for the brilliant part, I’d include myself in that. Mike Johnson is a monster musician, a great composer and all-around nice guy. Thinking Plague has found a following but the level of recognition and remuneration is pretty low. Others would include Dave Willey (Hamster Theatre) who works multiple jobs; John Curtis, an amazing multi-instrumentalist and writer; the Rascal Reporters (who are barely known but are mind-blowingly good); needless to say, the list is much much longer when it’s not just people I know!
Granted those folks are all somewhat askew. Of the people who are more mainstream “prog”, there are likewise many who can barely, if at all, make a living just doing music. We’re big fans of Advent as well as The Underground Railroad - both of whom I highly recommend to anyone who asks (or not).

- The weirdest music I’ve ever heard:

Well, I’ve heard a LOT of what most might call weird music, so that’s also a tough one. I guess the strangest music I’d ever heard was back when I was at University and got the first exposure to musique concrete and electronic music for tape. This had a big influence on my own work, as may be evident. The composers working in that realm were really charting new territory: Schaeffer, Maderna, Berio, Stockhausen, Wourinen, Varese , et al. It was revolutionary to me, being a student of recorders and recording technology at that time (late ’60s). Following that, I think, in the rock realm, was Frank Zappa who had absorbed many of the same influences and produced rock music from it (so to speak). That turned my head around for sure. He probably had the next largest impact - then Faust and Egg pretty much sealed the deal. So the weirdest music I ever heard was largely the same music that influenced me deeply!

- The underground music in 2010:
That’s less than 4 years away. So I guess much of the same music which is underground now will still be then. Whether that’s good or bad, I can’t say. Some new albums by currently “underground” artists are scheduled to have come out by then. So my prediction is that the new Thinking Plague album may be the underground music of 2010!
Geez - did I say that 2010 is less than 4 years away? That’s a scary thought.

- My Myspace band/artist recommendation:
There are so many great artists there! I’ve made contact with so many. I don’t want to slight anybody so I’ll pick one to recommend : Yugen. Very imaginative and genuinely musical band. With an interesting sound and style. I wish they had longer samples on the MySpace site but their new CD is out and I plan to order it as soon as I’m done here.