[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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