We Are

Alex Koi // Vocals, lyrics, synth, composition/production

www.alexkoimusic.com

Alex Koi is a vocalist, composer/producer, and improvising musician. Her music is the mystical translation between the privacy of her inner world and the somatic extrication of such. Through polyphonic narrative, ecstatic release, and coy murmurs, she bends between her diverse musical influences in the avant-garde, opera, Jazz, and electronic music. She is the vocalist and co-composer of saajtak, called “one of the most intriguing and unclassifiable bands in the country right now” [Tone Madison]. Centering the emotionality of the human experience, she creates an explosive sound that has been called “impossibly stunning” [Stereo Stickman], “primal and futuristic at the same time” [Current Magazine] and that “bends between operatic and punk rock” [Audiofemme]. 

Alex has had the privilege of collaborating with musicians, composers, visual artists, directors and dancers at venues such as Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joe's Pub, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, and more. She recently played the combined role of Tracy Dunn/Jillian Gilchrist in the Off-Broadway production of "Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower", Toshi Reagon's theatrical adaptation of the beloved novel. Photo by Alex Brown. 

Ben Willis // Bass, composition/production

ben willis is a bassist and animator from the midwest united states, currently based in Los Angeles. He plays in the bands saajtak, Throwaway, and Lovely Socialite. With a performance practice that uses improvisation as a nexus for communication, he has worked with artists across many areas, including artist Pope.L, novelist Kathe Koja, and dancer Sally Gross. An occasional professor of improvisation and creative practice, he teaches workshops in improvisation and advises artists in the process of creating new work. Notably, he’s worked as a producer with Teiku (577 Records) and Michael Malis and Virago (Made Now Music). As an animator, he has made music videos for bands in Detroit, Osaka, New York, Los Angeles, and has presented his live video work in the United States and Japan. His video for Throwaway’s “Kyubabe” won the juror’s award for Best Michigan Filmmaker in the 2024 Ann Arbor Film Festival. In 2024 he’s working on numerous film and music projects, and will be performing throughout the United States.

Saajtak // LONG BIO

The band Saajtak, based in Detroit (Jonathan Barahal Taylor, Ben Willis, Simon Alexander-Adams) and Brooklyn (Alex Koi), makes futuristic music that synthesizes a wide range of genres—often in ways that seem to clash against each other, always in service to the song. The band has quietly made music in Detroit for the better part of a decade, collaborating with members of clipping. and sharing bills with Xiu Xiu, Ava Mendoza and Greg Fox. Koi sings and writes lyrics; Taylor plays drums, Willis bass; Alexander-Adams contributes keyboard and electronics. But to individuate their contributions does the music a disservice. Saajtak sounds, feels, like a living, breathing organism, for which recordings don’t present definitive documents as much as they reflect songs at given points in their lives. After four independently-released EPs, saajtak released their highly anticipated debut album, For the Makers, on American Dreams on June 3, 2022.

Saajtak’s compositions are rooted in collective improvisation; their first release, spectral [ drips ], collects several free improvisations. The band was recording music live for a full-length debut when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic pressed pause on their principal way of making music. In response, the band began working on new music remotely, in increments of eight days. Every two days, members would trade songs, gradually sculpting them into final iterations. Willis recalls putting on his headphones as he began recording bass: “The layers that Alex, Simon, and Jon had begun to craft engulfed me like a wave, filling me. I was suddenly surrounded by my friends.” Over time, the music organically cohered into an album, bringing together influences as wide-ranging as Richard Davis, Meredith Monk and Melvins. Koi’s lyrics balance narrative and enigma, incorporating several perspectives within a song in an approach she calls polyphonic narrative. “I like to imagine how personas might converse in worlds with varying levels of familiarity and skewness,” she explains. “What we receive are relationships that flow between splintery and harmonious, and that contain both ecstasy and affliction. There’s a big thrill in all this, when nothing can be apathetic.”

The record is in motion from the start, opening in medias res with anthemic lead single “Big Exit.” Koi treats her words like playthings, stretching syllables past semantics, vocal lines in conversation with one another. Alexander-Adams’ electronics quiver, and Taylor’s clattering kit seems to deconstruct the rhythm it builds, before the song unspools into a lush, minimal coda just before the 4-minute mark. “Concertmate 680” follows in a similar fashion, with a tight groove belying the song’s spare lyrics: “Desire 5ever rainbows. Spy on you.” Collaborations with guitarist Kirsten Carey, saxophonists Marcus Elliot and Kaleigh Wilder, cellist Pat Reinholz, and vocalist David Magumba add still more color to the band’s vibrant compositions. “There’s a Leak in the Shielding” references history, then uses it as a weapon: “Here, now, there is no pen,” Koi sings, “and your children’s children will not recognize them.” Her vocal melody, and the seeming naiveté of her inflection, recalls Arthur Russell, as do Alexander-Adams’ wet, percussive electronics. Throughout, the album mixes the organic and synthetic. Even as motifs, images and lyrics recur, the music thrums with energy, opening into new worlds. 

This, perhaps, is part of the point: to illustrate an escape, to be one. To Alexander-Adams, For the Makers was "as much a healing practice as it was a means to create"; to Willis, it "feels like a year-improvisation, for which the music never stopped the whole time." Says Taylor, "it represents our collective voice in the deepest sense: an amalgamation of our individual vulnerabilities, imaginations, ambitions, and love for each other." The album is testament to the restless creativity powering Saajtak's engine, and the importance of cultivating creativity, trust and community.