“It feels like a lifetime ago, but yes,” experimental guitarist/composer Rafiq Bhatia says when I bring up that he studied neuroscience and economics in college. Today, Bhatia is far more defined by his musical career—primarily with his band Son Lux, which also composed the Oscar-nominated score for 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. However, he shares that there is an intersection between these seemingly disparate fields.
“Where [neuroscience and economics] intersect is the science of decision making,” explains Bhatia. Back when he was a new student at Oberlin College, “the lab that I was the most interested in being a part of was focused on decision making under various levels of risk and uncertainty, and trying to pick apart aspects of what happens in the brain before cognition kicks in. What are the precognitive aspects of decision making, and do they predict in any way the decisions that you will actually make?
“And that, I think, is part of the same underlying spirit of inquiry that making music, and especially improvised music with other people, is born of,” he continues. “You’re in these situations where there is uncertainty and there is also risk—and if there’s not enough risk, then it’s not that compelling.”
Bhatia’s latest solo release—his first in five years—is the EP Each Dream, A Melting Door, made in collaboration with pianist Chris Pattishall. The duo improvise their way through the five-track record, unwinding an extended impressionistic world wherein dreamlike piano underscores a range of guitar tones that glimmer in an abstract light. It’s clear that Bhatia has no intention of conveying a traditional sonic image of a guitar, instead preferring to manipulate the instrument as a device for painting colors of sound.
Bhatia’s collaborator on his new EP is pianist and composer Chris Pattishall, at left.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
Of course, before even getting into the methods of how he achieves those sounds, Bhatia says, “I think it’s less important how I get the sounds out of the guitar than the reasons why I might choose to go looking for them. And the way I get them out of the guitar today might be drastically different than the way I get them out of the guitar tomorrow. I care deeply about the sounds that are made, but I’m so not about the perception that you have to acquire all these ‘things’ to make it.”
His prized 6-string, the Flippercaster, was designed by the reclusive-yet-storied luthier Flip Scipio, who’s built and worked on guitars and basses for Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and many others. After coming to recognize Scipio’s trademark on builds he came across in various New York studios, Bhatia sought him out in an effort he compares to the search for the legendary swordsmith, Hattori Hanzō, in Kill Bill. “He’s the nicest dude ever; it just took me a while to find him. But if you go visit him, he’ll make you either an amazing AeroPress coffee or a mug of smoky lapsang tea and then sit and talk with you,” Bhatia adds, smiling.
The guitar is equipped with vintage Teisco and DeArmond pickups wired to a blend knob in place of a switch, which Bhatia loves. “I usually don’t want half and half; I want a little bit of one and mostly all of the other. And to me it’s very dependent on what the room sounds like and what musical context I’m in,” he explains. The Flippercaster goes into a small pedalboard, the brain of which is a custom Eventide H90. Bhatia collaborated with the pedal manufacturer on the development of the device’s design.
The duo improvise their way through the five-track record, unwinding an extended impressionistic world wherein dreamlike piano underscores a range of guitar tones that glimmer in an abstract light.
“I was really excited,” Bhatia shares. “I was like, ‘Can you make it switch other pedals in and out of the chain like one of those pedalboard controllers? And let’s say I’m using one of your reverbs, but I want to put distortion on it. Can you make it only affect the wet signal?’ I thought they’d maybe do 10 percent of what I asked, and they did basically all of it,” he concludes, laughing.
Aside from his expression and volume pedals, his pedalboard is otherwise made up of a Klon KTR and a ZVEX Fat Fuzz Factory, the latter of which he has particular fun with. “I’m very jealous of saxophone players because they have breath,” he prefaces. “But what I’ve found is that if you play in such a way where you flirt with the edge of the [Fat Fuzz Factory’s built-in] gate, you can get the ends of notes to crackle and decay, almost like when you hear a saxophone player breathe out at the end of the note.”
His pedalboard then goes through a Universal Audio Apollo Twin MkII interface, which connects to Ableton Live on his MacBook Pro. Bhatia then uses two MIDI controllers—one on the floor with a digital display, and one with knobs that he controls with his left hand—that are both color-coded to match the lanes of his session in the DAW. “I can then grab these little bits of things that I’m playing, and bring them in and out and manipulate them while I’m also playing the guitar and generating other ones. I’m excited about it because it’s a process that is helping me erase the line between what I’ve been doing on the guitar and what I’ve been doing away from the guitar. I feel like I’m getting a little bit closer to where I can play, and the sound is saying who I am.”
Rafiq Bhatia’s Gear
Filmmaker David Lynch has been a powerful influence on Bhatia—a cover of “The Voice of Love,” from Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, appears at the end of Each Dream, A Melting Door—as have a number of hip-hop producers and jazz musicians.
Photo by John Klukas
Guitars
- 2018 Flip Scipio Flippercaster with vintage Teisco and DeArmond pickups
Amps
Live:
- Strymon Iridium (with replaced IRs and EQ tweaks) > Telefunken TDA-2 DI > Universal Audio Apollo Twin MkII > MacBook Pro running Ableton Live > FOH
Studio:
- Swart Atomic Space Tone Pro
- Anderson custom 1x12
- Swart Space Tone Atomic Jr.
Effects
- Ableton Live controlled by Morningstar MC6 PRO and DJ TechTools Midi Fighter Twister
- Eventide H90
- ZVEX Fat Fuzz Factory
- Klon KTR Overdrive
- Lehle Dual Expression
- Sound Sculpture Volcano Volume
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL Balanced Tension (.011–.050)
- Bluebird 1.5 mm custom picks, handmade from vintage Galalith poker chips
Filmmaker David Lynch has been a powerful influence on Bhatia—a cover of “The Voice of Love,” from Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, appears at the end of Each Dream, A Melting Door—as have a number of hip-hop producers and jazz musicians. Bhatia shares, “If you listen to Madlib beats, sometimes he’s doing a lot and it’s a million different small elements that have been collaged together, but other times it’s just a sample that he flipped and he didn’t change anything except for the loop point. But whether it’s something he made while fussing over all these little ingredients, or it’s just something he looped, you hear two seconds of it and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s Madlib.’”
He mentions how that effect similarly belongs to icons such as Thelonious Monk and Jimi Hendrix. “Those are all the heroes, and they say something that’s so personal and honest to who they are and their experience that right away, you just know [snaps fingers]—it’s them. To me it sounds like honesty, and it sounds like an expression in many cases of hybridity.
“I was in class in 9th grade when the planes hit the Twin Towers, and it was on our school news channel,” he continues, emphasizing the discomfort it created for him as someone of Muslim origin, which drew unwanted speculation from his non-Muslim peers. “That was the backdrop to how I got into playing the guitar and listening to music. So, when I would hear folks who seemed to be able to take all these different aspects of who they were and what their experience was and distill it into a way of communicating through sound, that was really inspiring. It just felt like therapy to engage in trying to figure out how to do that.”
For the release of his last solo album, Breaking English, Bhatia performs here with a trio, showcasing his uniquely creative approach on the instrument in a more traditional context.
