KARL BLAU
KARL BLAU
A decade ago, when Karl Blau was still a lifetime fixture of the small but fertile creative enclave in Anacortes, Wash., he hosted a Sun Ra worship group on Monday nights. Open-minded locals who lived on Fidalgo Island would stop by to indulge in participating in free music and sound experimentation in the style of the astral traveler; given the day of the week, and the town’s general spirit of play, they called it Moon Raw. Four years later, Blau and his family of four finally left Anacortes for the opposite coast and, ostensibly, the opposite atmosphere—Philadelphia’s Germantown. Without planning, they wound up two blocks from the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra, the three-story stone towhouse that still serves as the collective’s headquarters and is now a National Historic Landmark. That was the first little miracle that led to Vultures of Love, the swaggering and irrepressible record that feels like the culmination of the first quarter-century of Blau’s career.
VULTURES OF LOVE
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In January 2024, Dave Flaherty—a Brooklyn drummer perhaps best known for Cuddle Magic and Good Intentions—drove to Blau’s space during an open afternoon.They’d never met, but Flaherty had come with the imprimatur of friends. Blau had some very loose song sketches in mind, like a few chord changes he wanted to try and beats he wanted to hear. For five hours, he and Flaherty just played, Blau switching between bass and guitar as Flaherty responded to his prompts. The salvaged tape machine captured it all. Blessed mistakes happened, as when Blau incorrectly loaded the reels for their first take, resulting in the seasick drums that frame the gorgeous “Who.” When Flaherty left that afternoon, the core of Vultures of Love was complete. Blau loaded the rhythm tracks into the Mac on that desk and then spent several weeks adding bits above and around them mostly by himself, writing lyrics and melodies as responses to how the instrumentals made him feel.