
This performance felt somewhat miraculous. We had played a short set the night before that we agreed was mediocre. Then, the next day, slightly frazzled and without having practiced in the meantime, we summoned this continuous 40-minute set-- twice as long as anything we had done before-- which seemed to take its own shape, like fluid poured into a vessel.
Although we had practiced intensively in the weeks leading up to the performance, we had not "rehearsed" anything resembling what you hear in the recording. In addition, this was our first public appearance with an expanded array of instruments, expanding from our original voice-and-electronics format. We knew this performance was going to be a stretch, but we didn't know it would feel like a quantum leap to a new state of musical being.
I should also mention that this recording is taken from the middle of a three-hour performance, the outer parts of which took the form of an open-format jam session. For the entire duration, the musicians were joined by improvising dancers, and the energy we exchanged with them transfigured the event into something ritualistic and otherworldly.
I love the title that Aaron chose for this album. The image of the "Mixed Multitude," which nicely captures the smorgasbordal vibes of our performance, also has powerful political resonance at this moment of reactionary appeals to purity and order. It is as a mixed multitude that we will survive, or not at all.