The Wire, Julian Cowley
. . . their music registers the character of a gritty urban soundscape. . . Concrete field recordings surface in places, contrasting with wild instrumental intensities reminiscent of Borbetomagus. These sampled environmental traces make audible a pervasive debt, shared by all three of these releases, to John Cage's admonition to listen to everyday life. By extension they also suggest further indebtedness to Marcel Duchamp's teasing play with aesthetic assumptions and the customary placement and meaning of ordinary objects.
the stranger, Dave Segal
. . At its most extreme, BNSF's music ripples, squeals, wails, splutters, and ululates like a menagerie of agitated beasts forced to endure Mariah Carey's Greatest Hits. Saxophonist Adam Diller scars the air with the tenacity of free-jazz titan Archie Shepp while percussionist Matt Crane and guitarist Jason E. Anderson conjure the chaotic scrabbling of improv explorers M.E.V. . .
Dusted, Adam Strom
. . . BNSF are thoroughly alert improvisers, never resorting to some of the lazy crutches that stultify other artists of their ilk. . .
Signal to Noise, Cristin Miller
. . . If BNSF is a runaway train, then Adam Diller on saxophone and timbale s is the escaped convict/lunatic clutching to its rattling roof, trying to gain entry by smashing his boots through a high window. Diller's trademark use of slowly morphing repetition and sudden stops and starts was exaggerated to become almost dadaist in its toying with audience expectation. His timbale playing especially had an electric-muppet-with-an-erratic-power-supply kind of quality. Their set came to a end when Anderson had broken all six strings of his guitar.
the stranger, Christopher DeLaurenti
Few bands live up to their names, but BNSF, named after the Burlington Northern Santa Fe train, defiantly do. . . [BNSF] unleash a rumbling, shuddering, shambling avalanche of saxophone squalls, distorted guitar, and convulsions of laptop-treated sound catapulted by incantatory cannonades of cymbals and drums.
