Technicolor Band – Walks The Blue Circle

Technicolor Band is a revolving-cast, cross-genre improv unit based in Bloomington, IN.

The group, initially instigated by multi-instrumentalists David Brown and Caleb Hickman as a regular gathering to explore improvisation behind closed doors, eventually made its way into public via a residency at a 50 cap bar called Orbit Room. Over the next two years a core lineup formed around the quintet of Brown (keys, percussion, tape manipulation), Hickman (alto sax, electronics), Chuck Roldan (drums, percussion), Brendan Keller-Tuberg (double bass), and Aja Essex (baritone sax).

The band’s debut, Technicolor Band Opens The Green Door, featured early recordings from longform improvisations at Brown’s home studio. Those free-form explorations were then edited, deconstructed, and rearranged by Brown into a song cycle.

The live shows, meanwhile, were pushing toward something more organic, with the increasingly well-acquainted players constructing and deconstructing musical moments on the spot. The longform performances began to have an album-like ebb and flow, some moments somber and meditative, others boisterous and disordered. Luckily, those moments were almost always recorded. Whether in multi-track by WFHB radio volunteers or on sketchy handheld field recorders, the well of documentation of Technicolor Band’s 2024 activity is deep.

Technicolor Band Walks The Blue Circle, forthcoming on Torn Light Records, is the result of that year of live shows. The album draws from three performances in very different spaces—a storefront info shop, a county history museum, a basement bar in an alley—arranged to capture the breadth and scope of the group’s output.