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Archive for the ‘Rafiq Bhatia’ Category

Rafia Bhatiq / Ian Chang / Riley Mulherkar (Solar Myth, Philadelphia PA, October 8, 2025)

Posted in Ian Chang, Philadelphia, PA, Rafiq Bhatia, Riley Mulherkar, Solar Myth on October 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 8, 2025] Rafia Bhatiq / Ian Chang / Riley Mulherkar

Technically this show is a Rafiq Bhati show, but the show was a trio and they were all equal partners so for me they all get top billing.

I know of Rafiq from his (amazing) work with Son Lux.  When I was lucky enough to see them in 2022 I felt

Drummer Ian Chang is just amazing to watch as he plays all sorts of different things and in unusual rhythms.  But then I would notice that guitarist Rafiq Bhatia was making some incredible sounds out of his guitar and I would wind up watching him for awhile.

So here was Rafiq touring his new album Environments.  This album is more or less an hour of sound shapes and explorations.  Rafiq is a guitarist but there is very little traditional guitar playing on the album.

Watching them live it was fascinating to see that Rafiq would play little bits and pieces and then he would sample himself and mess around with these new sounds.  He sat and played guitar and he had a gear box of some kind next to him.  And he would frequently reach over and twist knobs–and you could hear trills and low notes floating around.

For one song in the middle of the set, he put his guitar down and made sounds using that box– I don’t know what the original sound sources were for this, but it was fun to watch.

Ian Chang is one of my favorite drummers to watch.  He plays spare rhythms with occasional explosions of sound.  He uses brushes, mallets, stick and he has a laptop that he tinkered with from time to time.  When the set opened (Aviary I) he gently touched the various percussive elements on his kit (bells, cymbals, rims).  As the song progressed he had bursts of snare and crashes of cymbals but very rarely did he create a steady beat (except for one song late in the set where they locked into a real groove for a few minutes).  The songs didn’t call for it and his drumming was a great punctuation to Rafiq’s sounds.

I didn’t know Riley Mulherkar at all before this.  I’m not a huge fan of horns, but his trumpet playing was amazing.  For the opening bit (Aviary I), he blew into his trumpet but didn’t produce any notes.  Rather, it was like he was generating a kind of musical wind.  His subtlety was incredible as he played incredibly softly.  My very little understanding of the trumpet is that you blow harder to get the notes higher.  Somehow, he was able to create high notes while playing so delicately as to be almost inaudible.  And of course, he played loud blasts as well.  Of the three, he was the least interesting to watch, but he was the most fascinating to try to understand what he was doing. (more…)

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Marisa Silver–“Old Enough” (New Yorker, June 11, 2007)

Posted in Essays, Film & TV, Half Waif, Ian Chang, Marisa Silver, New Yorker, Old Enough, Rafiq Bhatia, Ryan Lott, Son Lux on June 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SON LUX-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #200 (April 28, 2021).

Robin Hilton is a huge fan of Son Lux and it was his gushing that got me to check them out.

The band is absolutely incredible.  Ryan Lott started the band as a solo project.  He is the composer and singer (with an otherworldly voice and sensibility).  Guitarist Rafiq Bhatia, plays pretty melodies and then turns the same guitar into an instrument of noise.  Sometimes at the same time.

And then there’s drummer Ian Chang.  He is utterly mesmerizing to watch.  It’s not that he does things that other drummers don’t do–he just has his own sense of where beats should go.  And I love watching how he puts them there.  Ian Chang was supposed to open for Half Waif in 2019 and I wanted to go to the show mostly to see what Chang would be like as the main performer.

I had tickets to a Son Lux show and was really excited to go and then something came up and I was out of town.

But I can simply enjoy this concert.  And Robin’s excitement about it.

Watch this stunning “home” Tiny Desk performance from Son Lux and you might conclude the band members live together in an all-white universe without walls or boundaries. But it’s all an illusion. In fact, guitarist Rafiq Bhatia, drummer Ian Chang and singer-keyboardist Ryan Lott, who started Son Lux as a solo project back in 2008, each shot their own, separate video with their iPhones, at different times, at their homes scattered across different states. So did the guest vocalists, Nina Moffitt and Kiah Victoria. Editor Evan Chapman then stitched all the videos together.  The effect is dizzying and sometimes disorienting.

 Together – and alone – they’ve perfectly captured the upside-down world we’ve been living in this past year, where the lines between what’s real and imagined are blurred, all sense of place fades into the ether and the normally predictable rhythms of life come undone.

“Prophecy” opens with a bass line (which is actually Bhatia playing  seemingly simple guitar line.  Lott starts singing and then throws in some synths.   Once Chang hits a snare drums the voices seems to descend like they are falling to earth.  And from there, the melody continues with little guitar notions and gorgeous (and surreal) backing vocals from.  An unfussy but complicated drum fill transitions t the second half of the song.

superimposed images flicker and warble over one another against Bhatia’s skittering guitar lines. Everything is bent and a little off – intentionally, not because of the production challenges – and nothing sounds quite like you expect it to.

Near the end of the song we see Bhatia’s guitars one on top of the of the from the same angle–playing different things.

“Only” opens with an operatic voice and Lott’s keyboard as images flicker in an out.  Chang’s drums seem to roll as he uses brushes (rolling the stick on the rim of the drum) and plays short sharp fills–following perfectly Bhatia’s guitar.  And with the bass drum hits Chang flashes on screen in time.

Watch Bhatia’s all-too-short solo on “Only”

It’s simple and almost all static but it adds so much to this unsettled song.  As it does a the end of the song when the guitar seems to try to take over with the noises he’s making.  It’s easy to lose the beautiful keyboard melody that Lott is playing underneath as he sings in a clear, deeper voice: “I need a different kind of love.”

[Watch] Lott as he walks his fingers over the keys near the beginning of “Vacancy.”

The sounds are otherworldly and don’t seem like they are made by human hands.  So when Chang’s drums kick in (is he hitting the microphone or his lap?) it’s a shock of reality.

The players fade out visually so that Kiah Victoria can come in and sing lead for a verse–her voice is perfect.

The end part of the song features Bhatia paying the main melody on the guitar while the rest of the music seems to float in and  out.

The setlist for this performance includes a song from each of the band’s last three albums, a trilogy released over the past eight months, called Tomorrows I, II and III.

There’s really nothing quite like a Son Lux song.

[READ: June 1, 2021] “Old Enough”

The June 11 issue of the New Yorker had several essays under the heading “Summer Movies.”   Each one is a short piece in which the author (many of whom I probably didn’t know in 2007 but do know now) reflects on, well, summer movies.

Like Miranda July’s essay, this one is about the author’s first film.  Although for Marisa Silver it’s a feature film.

She had broken up with her significant other and the day before she started shooting, she went to get her essentials.  She promised herself that she would not get into it with the guy–she would be cordial and quick.   But instead, she found her stuff in the garbage out front:

everything I owned overflowing the twin garbage cans that fronted my old building

(this including school report cards she had felt the need to bring with her). (more…)

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