Purple Witch of Culver is a unique meeting of forces by Sarah Safaie and Evan Taylor, the Echo Park-based duo exploring a diverse cross section of music and poetry.
Raised on bebop and straight-ahead jazz before an obsession with Parliament-Funkadelic (the other Jazz kids took to calling her “funky child”) illuminated other musical avenues, Safaie moved to New York City out of high school to attend the New School for Jazz. While there, she once again ventured out of the traditional jazz world, discovering the city’s vibrant experimental Noise and warehouse art scenes.
A move to Los Angeles in January 2020 followed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, led her to finally distill these disparate influences into something of her own.
Shortly after her arrival in L.A., she met and felt an immediate musical connection with Taylor, whose credits and list of collaborators include Jimmy Destri (Blondie), Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads, Modern Lovers), mike watt, Theresa Wayman (Warpaint), Money Mark (Beastie Boys), in addition to running the LA-based label Loantaka Records (Sofia Bolt, Jess Cornelius).
Most notably for Safaie, Taylor was part of the extended Parliament family, having worked as production partner with Bernie Worrell, the keyboard wizard of Parliament-Funkadelic, and collaborator with Talking Heads.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the group’s new single “Trig,” which officially hits on September 18th via Safaie’s own Loantaka Records. It is the first of a series of singles being released in 2020 by Purple Witch of Culver. Just over four minutes of the track showcases a tight groove with rock solid interplay between drums and bass. Safaie punctuates the beat with blasts of saxophone and spoken word lyrics of chaos and hope. Bridging the gap between jazz and electro funk with an experimental edge, the song layers poetic vocal cadence over the tight jam to make for a musical dynamic that grabs the listener in its fresh originality. Safaie points to her involvement with the legendary St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project in the East Village as a major influence on the song, citing further inspiration from seminal poets such as Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, and Bernadette Mayer. Deeper listens to the lyrics find the song to be at times painfully relevant to this fucked up year we are living in while also establishing Purple Witch of Culver as a group to watch.
LISTEN:
