BCMC Interview: “The more detailed your plans, the better it often comes out”

In a post-lockdown world, perhaps the only positive thing to emerge from the strangest moment of our generation is how artistic collaboration has flourished. So much so that we’re in the golden age of it. This decade has boasted some of the best merging of minds, and as BCMC, Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain are another of them.

Over the last two decades, both artists have toiled away in their own corners of the independent music landscape. Crain, the driving force of Bitchin Bajas who are coming off a flagship 2025. Firstly with their latest LP, Inland Sea and their second collaboration LP with Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society (Totality). (All this on the back of their 2016 rumble with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties.)

MacKay has been a similar creative force. Having traded ideas with Ryley Walker for two long-players (2025’s Land of Plenty and 2017’s SpiderBeetleBee), Katinka Kleijn (2019’s STIR) and Nathan Bowles (2021’s Keys), the highlight reel continued alongside Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day’s Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback as Black Duck. (Their self-titled debut, one of 2023’s finest records.) All this while continuing to spin the kind of back porch, homespun warmth that most would dream of writing themselves (led by 2024’s Locust Land).

Between MacKay’s gentle acoustic brushes and Crain’s long-form jams that are like a trip through psychedelic portals that lead to harmony, together as BCMC, their wonderful worlds entwine. The duo, challenging each other to explore the outer reaches.

Having flown under the radar, their 2023 debut, Foreign Smokes, was a radiant sound bath of Floydian echoes. In many ways, a contrast to their much-anticipated follow-up, Stash, where the duo explore more rustic climes.

While Crain may have guided MacKay into the world of modular synths on Foreign Smokes, it’s MacKay’s turn to be the tour guide. On Stash, the duo explore more open, uninhabited space, as Crain’s orbital dreamscapes melt into MacKay’s roadhouse blues. There’s no better example than Boulevard Treats. The faint tape hiss beneath the mix, emitting an intimacy like it’s being performed in your living room.

Not before the excellent opening cut, Cleanse. A galactic electric folk jam that comes as advertised. “It’s from an improvised jam,” says Crain, who alongside MacKay answered a series of questions via email earlier this week.

The more you dig, the more Stash opens up your world. Melodía Compacta and Tête-à-Tête are woozy mediations that reveal the best kind of noodling. Then there’s the exquisite flavours of Kaleidosmoke that sees MacKay and Crain deep in the groove. Alongside Stella Soliteria, a new cinematic layer emerges, led by Crain’s cosmic wanderings that feel like the backdrop to a scene from Broken Flowers.

Elsewhere, MacKay leads from the front on Fin de Journée – humid truck stop blues showered in synths that fill the space with new vitality. Which reaches its peak on Badland Rag. Held together with contemplative, blue-collar grit, it’s one of the best closing tracks committed to tape so far this year.

It confirms Stash as another victory lap from two of the most understated voices in the new music sphere. Alongside Foreign Smokes, Stash will undoubtedly hold up in decades to come. Its power, only growing stronger with time. On the back of it, MacKay and Crain shed some more light on their creative alliance, their process, and more.

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Sun 13: Can you remember the first time you listened to each other’s work and, if so, can you describe how it made you feel?

Bill MacKay: “I’m quite certain I first heard Cooper at a concert of Bitchin’ Bajas in Chicago around 2016 when I was first getting to know Cooper. It was a delightful, hypnotic adventure. There was melody and great movement. It felt very positive and like they were carving their own space in music.”

S13: Where does the impulse to create something come from for you?

BM: “It’s always been there. Partly I think it’s the exhilaration that I had as a child creating. It never left. It’s the magic of drawing and then a figure appears. You change your cosmos. And the impulse to work out psychic struggles is there, too. Music leads the way through a lot.”

S13: Was the writing and recording process to Stash any different from Foreign Smokes?

Cooper Crain: “The recording process was very similar in that we did most of it at my apartment studio. The writing developed over playing more shows and figuring out the duo sound more. We kept Stash all analogue recording, mixing to tape and having the lacquer cut from the mix reels.”

S13: Does your approach in collaboration diverge from your solo work, and in Cooper’s case, from Bitchin Bajas?

BM: “I’d say it does, and has to, and that keeps things intriguing. With collaboration you simply aren’t responsible for the entire drive or reservoir of ideas. You navigate being expressive without stepping over a partner’s path. With solo work you can be a little more reckless, though there’s no one to fall back on either. I love both.”

S13: There’s a really unique atmosphere to these recordings. What was the most important aspect you wanted to achieve with these songs?

CC: “As a duo you need to fill the sound more but also leaving space for each other’s instruments to have presence in the mix and balance. Space plays a big role as well. Even though we recorded this mostly in a smaller apartment, we were shaping to achieve a wider sound using ambient mics and leaving more room between the amps and microphones.”

S13: Badland Rag is wonderful end, too. It underlines the creative synergy between the two of you. Do you guys hang out together away from creating music?

BM: “Thank you. We do hang out, and live near each other, though with tours and other activities there is also a good amount of time I don’t see Coop. But this kinetic energy we have seems always to be on tap when we’re together, this give and receive that rolls forward in the music.”

S13: With both of your albums as BCMC, I find myself digging back into the past. Do you pay attention and try to keep up with new releases?

BM: “Well, there is just so much. I often do listen to new work and like to hear what our peers and so on are doing, and outside of that, too. One feels trends and movements of course, but I never think of it when working, in or outside of BCMC.”

S13: With regards to your bodies of work, are you the type of artists who are always focused on making the next thing, or do you reflect on your past releases?

BM: “I’d say that the eye goes to the next thing, mostly. I like reflecting on them a bit, the joy of something you felt was well-done, and I’ll listen to a track here and there, but today’s idea going into tomorrow draws me most.”

S13: You’ve both collaborated a lot over the years. Is that the beauty of music for you… to always explore new possibilities and find new experience and inspiration from these moments?

BM: “I think you kind of said it the best right there. It’s like your canvas in time, your novel. The experiences of now shape the next work. The more detailed your plans, the better it often comes out, but then the spontaneity is what keeps it really alive, and you also always get a different novel than you planned. It’s a gift to surprise yourself.”

S13: Do you see yourselves making more music as BCMC?

BM: “I think it’s a wonderful idea! We’ve got more to say, and the reaction to the music has been so positive. I’m curious to see what BCMC comes up with next.”

Stash is out now via Drag City. Purchase from Bandcamp.