Mike Reed’s Separatist Party

Long before the pandemic, drummer Mike Reed had been thinking about isolation, haunted by a 2015 story in The New York Times about the death of a resident named George Bell, a hoarder who passed away at home, his body undiscovered for nearly a week. In January 2022, Reed gathered a group of some of the most creative figures in Chicagoʼs experimental and improvised music community to put sound to those thoughts of forced seclusion: cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, and members of Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan). Together, they called the new group and its resulting album The Separatist Party, echoing the loner persona all six musicians transmit at times. Itʼs the first installment of a three-album cycle involving a varied cast of musicians, dealing with themes of inner and outer human isolation.