Bio
Constructing a veritable supergroup out of four of the American underground’s most acclaimed instrumentalists, Bonsai Weeping Willow is the debut recording from the emulsified talents of Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE), Patrick Shiroishi, Lily Finnegan, and Eli Winter. Across seven improvisational avant-garde compositions, the quartet brings the syncretic, omnivorous pursuits of their respective solo oeuvres into a new setting, allowing their unique individual approaches to congeal into a vibrant, biotic dynamism. The pieces are unshackled by aesthetic rigidity and constraints of form; careening kinetically from tranquil to frenzied and back again, their next moves are never easily telegraphed. Altogether, the record sounds precisely as it was made: 4 virtuosos recorded live in a sweltering San Pedro studio, adeptly bouncing off of each other’s musical instincts with no overdubs or roadmap.
The group’s origins lie in a dinner invitation. Winter, finding himself in California not long after playing a show with Watt’s group mssv, reached out to the veteran bassist asking to pick his brain over a meal. He received a long reply from Watt, who changed the subject line to indicate an interest in pursuing collaborative, improvised music. Winter enlisted friends Shiroishi and Finnegan – a longtime Minutemen fan who counts Watt among one of her inspirations to pursue improvised music – and plans were quickly hatched to decamp to San Pedro and record. The quartet tracked the album at Casa Hanzo, a studio run by Watt’s Secondmen bandmate Pete Mazich. Winter and Finnegan flew in to attend the sessions, sleeping on the floor of the studio before recording began the very next day. Upon arising, the band assembled, Mazich checked levels, Watt took his shirt off, and they began. Only after the recording finished was there time for small talk. The quartet tracked ninety minutes of music live, entirely without overdubs – powering through disturbed sleep, migraines, and a noted lack of air conditioning to bottle lightning in the form of uninterrupted, stream-of-collective-consciousness improvisation. After they wrapped, Winter selected the best moments, separated them into distinct tracks, and mixed with Mazich’s guidance.
Discography
