MAX BIEN KAHN
new singles out now
Magnolia Stroll I & II
bonus tracks from the latest album
Flowers
Nov 2024
Well Kept Secret & No Vinyl Records
bandcamp
vinyl
Making a record in your living room is not an out-of-the-ordinary affair in New Orleans—often, it’s a necessity. You can hear the sounds of shotgun houses—a distinct reverberation of a long, narrow room—on a lot of New Orleans albums. On Max Bien Kahn’s latest album, Flowers, you can hear four friends (Kahn, Video Age’s Ross Farbe, The Deslondes' Howe Pearson and Cameron Snyder) convening at Kahn’s house, setting up a studio for a few days at a time, recording, taking a few weeks off, and then returning to each other and doing the same thing all over again. The quartet did this for an entire year, lasting from extreme lockdown to a post-vaccine world.
The result is a true departure from the maximalist Americana recordings of Kahn’s previous work. On the title-track, Kahn and Farbe wanted to explore the idea of “What if Suicide made a folk song?” and tracked synthesizers and a between-the-lyrics melody. On the spacey, vibey, cinematic “Ghost,” they created an actual ghost character through the song’s sounds, using a warbling synth as a specter. Kahn was aiming for a Phil Spector-esque, classic-sounding tune—where the producer would implement fascinating bridges. The chords move oddly, taking you someplace else for a moment and returning quickly.
From track one to track nine, Kahn, Farbe, Pearson, and Snyder stretch the limits of their own pre-determinations, pairing electronica with lap steel in a way that feels historical and futuristic all the same– a record of distinctive earworms, timeless and lived-in, yet existing someplace beyond the folk bonafides that have long encapsulated Kahn’s off-kilter lilt.
-Matt Mitchell
When I Cross It Off (2023)
Mashed Potato Records/Perpetual Doom
illustrations by Rae Buleri
lyric book risographed in New Orleans by Max Seckel
When I Cross it Off is an album about big things and little things - - grief, heartbreak, new love, sex, making coffee, walking dogs, and getting through your day, one task at a time. Max approaches universal themes like processing loss and falling in love with a sense of levity that reveals an underlying wisdom: in the wake of grief, ultimately it's the embracing of the little, everyday pleasures that brings happiness back into your life. As such, this album was made more so for dancing than quiet contemplation - - with shakers, tambourines, and bongos featuring heavily alongside lap steel, organ, vocal harmonies, and the occasional horn section. Enlisting frequent collaborator Duff Thompson to co-produce alongside him, Kahn employed minimal gear to create a live sound peppered with experimental tones, designed to bring some levity and rhythm into the listener's life, too.
-Steph Green
All the Same (2021)
Perpetual Doom
limited vinyl and tapes
Max opens the record with an unlikely invitation: “I’ll just wait in this burning building,” he sings as the track builds, “It’s all the same to me and you.” Care to join him?
All the Same is a record for dancing while the building burns—it’s the sound of freedom mingling with unease. “I’ve been waiting for the summer, but the summer came too fast” quips the rowdy “Love on Vacation.”
These tracks confront heartbreak, grief, and that creeping sense of unease at summer’s end. But if these are sad songs, Max and the Martians do not believe sad songs need make you cry. Max insists that even the saddest songs can make you want to dance and even laugh a little.
Assisted by engineer Ross Farbe of the band Video Age, Max crafts arrangements that can fan that blazing building into a fury (“Milky Way,” “Please Remember”) or bring it to soft glow (“Lust Will Linger,” “Lay Your Body”). The house lights come down on lead single, “Please Hold On,” (engineered by Duff Thompson and Bill Howard at Mashed Potato Records) where the band revives a country swing: “I’ll be a flash of light for your weathered mind, if you hold on.”
It is a promise that speaks for the entire record, which brings together talent from across New Orleans. In the collaborative tradition of that city, the album features contributions from musicians who are also songwriters and bandleaders (Duff Thompson, Steph Green, Esther Rose, Ross Farbe, Ray Micarelli, Jordan Odom, Gina Leslie, Sabine McCalla, Camille Weatherford, and Shaye Cohn).
Backed by this enormous supporting cast, All the Same is Max and the Martians reaching new heights.
-Perpetual Doom
Please Hold On/Love on Vacation 7" vinyl
buy from Mashed Potato Records
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Side A: Upbeat drums, groovy bass, and washed out organ are balanced by Max Bien Kahn's understated and moving vocals on the warm, hazy, and melancholic, "Please Hold On". “This is a love song to everything we lose. I wrote the lyrics years ago when my grandpa was struggling with Alzheimers, but the song didn't take form until recently. When loss and grief found me, I rediscovered this song and it took on new life" says Bien Kahn. Describing the recording process, he notes "It was late spring, it was hot. We would take breaks to let the tape machines cool down, and had to record overdubs with the lights out to avoid the termite swarm in the evening. Duff Thompson, Ross Farbe, and Steph Green, some of my favorite songwriters, were playing on this session. We worked on this song all day and we got some really nice results thanks to everybody who was in that room and those magic old reel-to-reels that Mashed Potato Records is known for".
Side B: Love on Vacation is a fun, buoyant, summer pop song also recorded in collaboration around the same time with Video Age bandleader Ross Farbe.
Release date: September 20, 2019