Crucible Sound is a series of concerts and workshops in Pittsburgh PA focusing on the practice of free improvisation. Each month, musicians from different backgrounds and styles collaborate to create live improvised soundworks.
Madeleine Campbell records bands under the Accessible Recording banner, runs live sound at Brillobox, works at Pittsburgh Modular, teaches classes through TechShop, publishes the Women in Sound zine, and with all the time that's leftover she also plays cello and synthesizer. She'll be improvising with Matt Rappa, Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson, and Jeff Weston as part of Crucible Sound #21 on Saturday, November 5th at Wood Street Galleries.
Many people here in Pittsburgh are familiar with your recent work with Gangwish (alongside Sam Pace and Crucible alumni Jim Lingo and Keith DeVries). What role does improvisation play in Gangwish?
Playing shows with Gangwish is fun. Sam is an incredible musician and it's always a treat to see what he does with various iterations of his projects. He was kind of my gateway back into regularly playing cello. Those shows were my first time making music in front of anyone after taking a couple years off post music school graduation. I stopped after my final recital because I felt stuck - I realized I had the last spent 12 years taking private cello lessons, playing with various youth and university symphony orchestras, and memorizing pieces I didn't necessarily care about purely for the sake of a more impressive performance, yet I could not just sit down and improvise or compose an original melody. For me, all the power was in the sheet music. The idea of making up parts of my own was terrifying. Sam laid a great foundation that made it really effortless to formulate ideas and build upon. I consider it untamed/unconstrained structure.
In March, we opened for Faust in Detroit. At the end of their set, we rejoined them to play their last song in the middle of the audience. All I heard was "It's in D!" This was totally out of my comfort zone. It felt similarly to when I learned how to drive stick shift and had to go up Herron Avenue for the first time. I thought "You can't half ass this. You have to commit and just go with it." I felt like I leveled up a lot over those 10-15 minutes. The whole experience was really affirming and encouraging. I think I felt like more of a musician than I ever did in a recital.
I heard good things about Red Eft Trio's first show — what can you tell my about that project?
Red Eft Trio is Jim Lingo, Emily Hawkins and me. Emily is a phenomenal percussionist and co-organizes the Pittsburgh New Music Festival. Jim asked if we would be interested in collaborating through improv. I'm always intrigued by his ideas so I obliged. We opened for Wume and Richard Pinhas a few weeks ago. It's pretty free form but we went into it with a general road map. It was my first time playing synth in front of people. It's more sparse than other projects I've been involved with, which is funny considering how many objects are on stage at one time, but after going to a lot of punk and hardcore shows over the last couple years, it feels like a nice change of pace. I think the first performance went well overall. I think we'd all agree it could use more focus but there were moments that genuinely made me smile.
In your mind, what makes an improvisation successful or not?
It's hard for me to say since I feel like I'm just dipping my toes in this pool for the first time but in my own ensemble and improv experience, balance and communication between players is a big determining factor in how I interpret success. It's similar to how I converse with people. I talk a lot so I have to remind myself to give others space to do the same and actively listen, as well. The comfort of non-verbal communication comes with time. (Not having that one reason why I think Crucible is exciting.)
Carrying through with the intention of ideas is also important to me, if that makes sense. Maybe that could be framed as not rushing a process. Someone in the audience during the Red Eft Trio set said he enjoyed all the different things happening on stage but felt it was all over the place towards the end and wished some themes would have been more developed before abruptly ending. I think his exact words were, "A wrench is a good instrument and I like how it's being played but I want to hear it for more than six seconds before it's tossed to the side."
The bulk of your work uses a proactive DIY ethos to address issues of gender inequality in music. Here I'm thinking of Women in Sound, Accessible Recording, the recent panel discussion at VIA, and Girls Rock Pgh, to name a few. From this collective experience, what are a few strategies that you have found to be effective in creating legitimately inclusive, welcoming spaces within the music community?
I don't think it's something I've necessarily strategized but I'm definitely learning a lot as I go along. My creative endeavors are often responses to my own experiences. If there is a need, I hope to help fill it. I wasn't (and still am not) seeing enough representation of women in audio literature so I started a DIY zine about it. I engineered at a big studio where none of my friends could afford to make records so I left and am outfitting a room of my own to try and bridge the gap between lugging your four-track to your friend's kitchen and saving for years to cut a few tracks at a large professional space. Both sides of the spectrum are beautiful in their own ways but I don't want my skills and ideas to only be accessible to people with a $3,000 minimum budget.
I think there are a lot of really simple ways we can start to make our music communities more inclusive. For some people it will involve stepping outside of their comfort zone but it's time to do that. Let's try to book shows and curate events with diverse lineups. It's not hard to book shows that aren't 100% men. It's not hard to include women and queer and trans* people. I see this happening more and I hope it continues to move in that direction. I'd love to see more all-ages events. It's often feasible to offer sliding-scale entry and childcare, too. More consideration for parents from non-parents need to happen. I'm not saying smoky dive bar punk shows are bad. I've been to a lot and I'll go to more in the future. I just hope we can continue to mix it up more.
From VIA "Mothership - The Future is Female" panel. Photo: Nico Segall.
Another personal goal for my work is that I establish a platform where people can comfortably ask questions. To me, accessibility to all skill levels is a huge part of inclusion. I was terrified to ask questions when I started recording. It's something I'm still getting over. I was really inspired by a sound recording skill share I co-facilitated with Tessa Barber from Carnegie Library this past summer. There were about ten people who wanted to learn some basic principles and establish a foundational knowledge of audio signal flow but weren't sure where to start. I don't have all the answers but I do know the basics so I can help someone cross that threshold and hopefully feel empowered to build from there. I'm really grateful for the people who have done so for me.
I think a lot of this comes as a no-brainer to me because of the network of brilliant, inspiring, innovative women living and creating in this city. Volunteering with Girls Rock! Pittsburgh for the last few years connected me with many wonderful musicians and artists and it spread from there. Collaborating with Lauren Goshinski of VIA has taught me so much about curating and executing an event. Alexis Icon showed me everything I know about live sound and has continually told me to stop doubting myself. Celeste Smith of 1Hood Media represents the business woman I hope to be someday. Getting to know Molly Burkett has inspired me to start exploring production techniques for my own music. This support network is invaluable and my biggest motivating factor.
You may already know Matt Rappa as the drum half of the long-running self-described "A.D.D. bludgeon rock" band Triangle and Rhino. More recently, he's been experimenting on his own as Skeletonized, which has mutated into a full live band. Whatever the context, Matt's playing seems to be always recognizably heavy and packed with detail and nuance. He'll be improvising with Madeleine Campbell, Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson, and Jeff Weston as part of Crucible Sound #21 on Saturday, November 5th at Wood Street Galleries.
Can you give me a little history of the various musical projects that you've been involved in?
I grew up in Meadville, Pennsylvania and started playing music with my best friends in a punk band called Fogo Junior. I started playing drums on buckets in my friend's basement, and eventually got a used Rogers drum kit and "taught" myself how to play by listening to records and trying to replicate what I heard. I was lucky enough to come up in a thriving small town DIY scene in the 90's. We had a good variety of bands and styles come through on tour, which exposed me to a variety of different underground music from all over the country.
Before I moved to Pittsburgh, I was in a band called The M.O.T.L., which was my first experience playing improvised music with a variety of different people & instruments at shows. After moving to Pittsburgh in 1997, I enjoyed attending shows at Millvale Industrial Theater and eventually played shows there and wherever we could in a band called Warlocks. Warlocks was largely improvised as well, and included drums, bass, french horn & sometimes guitars or other instrumentation. We hosted house shows in the North Side, and were lucky enough to have Thrones play in our dining room, among other great noise acts and bands. The first tour that I went on with a band was with Warlocks in 1999 or 2000, driving around in a packed station wagon from show to show. The highlight of being in Warlocks was opening for Men's Recovery Project & Thrones in Cleveland, as well as opening for Enemymine(ex-Godhead Silo) for a leg of their tour.
After Warlocks ended, I was one half of sample/loop noise project Boda P'nodo with my friend Jake who I played with in Fogo Junior & Warlocks. Boda P'nodo made sounds with a 202 sampler & Halloween voice changer from what I recall. In our short existence, we were lucky enough to play shows with Reynols, Evolution Control Committee, and Burning Star Core.
After Boda P'nodo, Jake & I started writing songs on guitar and drums as Triangle & Rhino. We went on a month long U.S. tour without ever having played a show in Pittsburgh. We had various third members through the years contributing vocals, horns, electronics, or guitar sounds to the band, but the core duo always remained. Throughout our 13 (maybe 14?) years as a live band, T&R played countless live shows, went on various tours, released music on cd, cdr, cassette, vinyl and digital formats, and played shows with countless amazing local, national & international acts. Jake now lives out of state so Triangle & Rhino exists solely as a recording project as of 2015.
More recently, I played for a couple years in a punk-ish, heavy, weird band called Fantasy Crime, and started Skeletonized as a recording project. Skeletonized existed as a recording project for a few years, mainly as an opportunity to improve on my recording and mixing skills. My friend Eric helped considerably with information and techniques to improve my recordings, and then helped me get started on translating Skeletonized to a live solo project. After playing some shows solo, my friend Luke joined on saxophone and we started writing and practicing as a duo with me on drums, vocals & electronics, and Luke on sax. Most recently, my friends Eric, Brian & Eric have joined in live on saxophone, electronics and guitar. We're currently recording and mixing songs for what I hope to be a digital release, as well as a release on cassette.
Is it fair to say that, over the years, you've gravitated toward making music that is more tightly composed? Are there still elements of free improvisation that figure into recent Skeletonized material?
I've always enjoyed improvising in a live setting, particularly on live recording sessions.
Throughout the existence of Triangle & Rhino, we always had fun improvising on recordings, and normally half of each release was improvised material, sometimes with overdubs. Sometimes ideas for structured songs came out of improvised recording sessions as well.
All of my parts in the Skeletonized live set are "written", or practiced and played essentially the same way each time. The other instrumentation (saxes, electronics, guitar) is partially improvised and partially written/practiced. I have & am currently taking improvised Skeletonized recordings and attempting to make arranged pieces from them. At this point, it's one of the best ways to generate ideas for songs.
Do you draw a distinction between "jamming" (for lack of a better term) to generate ideas that will eventually be solidified into songs versus free improvisation for its own sake?
I'd say I do draw a distinction between the two. A lot of times, a passage of a recorded improvisation will fall in to place for a few minutes and stand out to me and/or whoever else is involved and listening to the session. That passage would end up on a physical or digital release after all the performers agreed that it sounded great. Sometimes the bi product of that passage is inspiration for a piece with structured parts that's performed the same way or essentially the same way each time.
I think recording those improvised moments/sessions was always important to me & whoever else was involved at the time. When everyone hits a sweet spot in the recording session, it's great to be able to go back and listen any time you want.
At the same time, there is something magical about improvising live in front of an audience. Everyone performing and observing can potentially share a moment in time that can't be replicated, even if the audio or video are recorded live. That's why I'm so excited about participating in Crucible Sound with other performers I've never met before. Anything good or bad can happen, and that unpredictability is exciting.
"Daniel Malinsky is an improviser and composer from Pittsburgh in the United States. His work is improvised electro-acoustic music, with varying instrumentation but in recent years his ultra-minimal performances have been comprised of audio feedback, electro-magnetic interference (from mobile telephones or other electronic devices), and amplified object manipulation" (blurb swiped from Cafe Oto). He'll be improvising with Matt Aelmore, Stephen Boyle, and Eric Weidenhof as part of Crucible Sound #20 on Saturday, October 1st at Wood Street Galleries.
I had a very nice time performing in Japan and exploring that beautiful country (it was my first time there). I played in Fukuoka, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, and Tokyo, collaborating with folks like Masafumi Ezaki, Yuma Takeshita, Yuji Ishihara, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Toshimaru Nakamura. All of these people are innovative and amazing artists, and it was really a privilege to work with them. It was especially interesting since there was with some people somewhat of a language barrier (I don't speak Japanese, unfortunately) and so in a few cases the bulk of our communication occurred while playing. Toshi Nakamaru has been an inspiration to me ever since I was just getting into electroacoustic improvised music, and playing with him was a special honor — I was very nervous. He was also instrumental in organizing the tour and I am really thankful for that. Everybody I met there was also really nice and friendly, I had a lot of fun. It was nice to see a bunch of great performances on nights I was or wasn't playing. I saw some creative stuff that spanned the gamut of noise, improvised music, electroacoustic improv, jazz, weirdo rock, and folk, plus mixtures of these things and styles hard to classify. Some of the performances which most surprised me and made me uncomfortable (in a good way) were ones that combined folk or pop or "straight ahead" jazz with electroacoustic music in ways I had never seen in the USA. It was obvious that Japanese musicians are continuing to push the boundaries of innovative art. On top of all this, I managed to visit places (venues, record labels/stores, etc) that I had only read about but which played an important role in the history of Japanese experimental music, so that was really cool for me.
In Europe I played a handful of shows -- in London, Prague, Berlin, and Munich -- in between attending some conferences and visiting friends, so it was a low-key and spread out kind of "tour." All the shows were good experiences (though I blew out my mixer in London -- forgot about the voltage difference on the power grid!). I had an especially nice time in Prague, which is a beautiful city where I saw a nice mix of experimental music and film/media art. In addition to playing a solo set there, I collaborated with Laura Luna and Michal Kindernay which was a really good experience. In Munich the show was great, but I also had a nice time playing baseball with some new friends, in the park where Oktoberfest happens. I felt a bit of pressure because I was coming from a country where baseball is the national pastime and I am terrible at sports. Luckily, I managed to do ok.
Any examples of those performances which surprised you?
I can't think of the group names right now, but for example I saw Yuma Takeshita perform with a band that was playing something akin to indie folk or folky indie rock (say, in the style of Galaxy 500 or something). Yuma plays "electro-bass" which is a self-made bass guitar with oscillators and various noise-making electronics built into the body. So, on top of reverberant guitar strumming there were electronic clicks, sine waves, low frequency oscillations, etc. Those strange sounds were not superfluous, and they did not come off as gimmicky or weird for-the-sake-of-weird. They combined with the other sounds to make for a strange and creative kind of harmony.
Can you describe the music you were performing on these tours?
The materials I perform with vary, but on both of these tours I was amplifying the electromagnetic interference of mobile phones with a guitar pickup. I have a small collection of old (donated) phones which are not connected to service, but they keep searching for signal and thus interfere with the magnet in the pickup, which is transformed into audible crackling and fuzz and clicking. I manipulate this signal a little bit, just with the EQ on my mixer. I also use the mixer to create feedback (in a "no-input mixing board" style), mostly quiet and high-pitched pure tones. In addition to this, in Japan I was amplifying the surface of a snare drum, and scratching/scraping/poking/rubbing it with various objects. In Europe I was mostly using a cymbal in place of the drum. But various components of this setup changed from show to show. Something nice about taking the cell phones on tour is that they behave quite differently in different places, I guess because the operating standards of cell towers and cellular network infrastructure differ country-to-country.
That's interesting, I hadn't considered the notion of site-specificity when it comes to physical phenomena like interference. Did this result in any unexpected moments or cause you to improvise in new ways?
Setup from DM's performance in Tokyo
Some of the sounds coming out of my phone setup were quite different than what I had come to expect based on recent performances in the US. (I seem to remember things being especially different in Germany.) This was nice, as it provided new material to work with, especially since I often prefer to let the phones and other electronic components do their thing for long stretches of time without intervening. When I don't know how my equipment will behave ahead of time, I get to focus on listening, rather than preoccupying myself with producing a certain outcome. I like to experiment in the moment, learn how the constructed "system" (of electronics, speakers, wires, space) behaves in the course of a performance. Then the structure of the resulting piece of music is a reflection of my learning process. This is why it is also nice to use borrowed equipment. Some years ago, when I was playing mostly with microphone feedback -- something very site-specific since feedback behaviors would depend strongly on the room, the condition of the equipment being used, the spacing between microphones and speakers which was never exactly replicated -- "learning" the behavior of a system and putting that on display as performance was very important to me. That has been less central in recent performances, but I'm happy to get back into it.
What you're saying about listening reminds me of a line from Michael Johnsen's bio: "His work is characterized by a relative lack of ideas per se, and an intense focus on observation, the way a shepherd watches sheep." This deemphasis of the artist's role as idea generator and embrace of an almost journalistic approach is compelling. I wonder how this plays out when you're collaborating with other musicians, though. How/does your approach to observation change when you've got multiple human actors involved?
That's a tough question, and my own views about it are far from settled. One of way of thinking about it just considers those other human actors as part of the "system" — they determine by their actions some major part of how the whole performance sounds just like features of my electronic components and instruments and performance space influence the sound of a solo piece. So, I try to listen carefully, to think more about what's going on around me and where the other players might be going than "what's my next move." I'll admit that I'm not always successful, this is something I'm working on.
In Japan I was traveling with a good friend who is not himself a big fan of this kind of improvised music, but he is an astute listener. He mentioned at some point after a concert that some improvised performances seemed to him to exude a kind of masculinity. When I asked him what he meant he said that some players came across as dominating — they kind of flex their musical muscles and determine for others where the music will go, what the presiding aesthetic will be like, maybe by being loud or persistent or uncompromising or by using certain kinds of sounds that compel other players to react instead of contribute as equals. (I'm paraphrasing here.) I think there is a lot of truth to this, and if we intend to have truly egalitarian improvising experiences we have to be vigilant. We like to think that improvising which is "free" (i.e., not structured by the forms and expectations of jazz and other genres) is non-hierarchical, but just as in politics dismantling hierarchies is not sufficient to ensure equality, so it is in improvised music. There are always power differentials and social dynamics; even when there is no prevailing order or structure explicitly elevating somebody and putting somebody else down, domination and marginalization can arise in subtle ways. So, I like to think about which practices (if any) can really ensure that all the people playing do contribute to the artistic product as equals.
More information about Daniel Malinsky's music is available at dmalinsky.info
Aaron Zarzutzki describes himself as "an improviser of various sorts." From his home base in Chicago, he investigates "misuse and perversion of objects and systems...virtuosity, volatility, futility, and capability are thought of." He'll be visiting Pittsburgh to perform at Crucible Sound #16 on Thursday, June 11th at Modernformations.
The long-running Myopic Improvised/Experimental Music Series in Chicago is one of the inspirations for Crucible Sound here in Pittsburgh. Can you talk a little about the series and your involvement?
En route to Chicago from Florida 10 years ago, I played a gig in Atlanta and bassist Pat Lawrence mentioned the series to me. My first day living in Chicago was a Monday so I checked it out. Shortly after that, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Brian Labycz roped me in as a host. The series was founded over 20 years ago by Weasel Walter. The shows are aimed to be like a workshop for the musicians as they are encouraged to play in first time groupings often with others they might not normally play with. Percussionist Julian Kirshner is currently the other organizer. The series has hosted players ranging from Jim O'Rouke to some dirty dude off the street.
Can you talk about some of your recent collaborations?
I've got a new project with guitarist Jacob Kart that has been fun. Guitar and synthesizer duos with attention towards harmony. It feels great to actually play notes now and then.
Ben Bennett and I were booked to play in a quartet with Wilson Shook and Ryan Jewell back in 2009, but my trip to Seattle got bumped to a different month. Ben and I finally played in 2012 as a totally acoustic duo. Last year we played in a trio with Fred Lonberg-Holm which was one of my favorite sets I've ever played. Ben just stopped through Chicago and Fred wasn't around so we did a couple days of recording as a duo. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the material that resulted from the recording. Lots of overlapping timbres, but the main aspect of the music might be stochastic and gesture-free processes versus more gestural events. A lot of moments might sound like a field recording, but mutate into something that is definitely two people hacking away in a room while keeping the same timbral elements. Very excited to see where the duo is headed.
I don't really know how to discuss playing with Graham (Stephenson). I met him when I was a long-haired teenager at a Lescalleet show. It took us a long time to finally play together and now we do it often. Playing with Graham always feels very low-key and casual.
The Green Pasture Happiness was one of the greatest improv trios of all time and criminally under-documented. Danfan (Daniel Fandiño) lives in Jersey now and Brian (Labycz)'s efforts have shifted towards house and techno musics, so tGPH lies in a state of dormancy. We do have unreleased material with Guillermo Gregorio, Jim Baker, and Frank Rosaly which will hopefully surface someday before the reunion concerts.
Nick Hoffman is one of my favorite people on and off the court. When he was last living in Illinois, he was out in Schaumburg so we didn't get together regularly, but we still managed to do some weird weekend tours. Sometimes as a duo, but we did trios with Mattin and Takahiro Kawaguchi in Normal, Illinois of all places. The most recent things Nick and I have done together are rock music. His Pilgrim Talk imprint released my "best of the hightone years" tape and I played in drums in a disastrous tour for his black-metal-sans-distortion-and-screaming-meets-garage band Back Magic. Their last album "Chorus Line to Hell" is really something special.
How about your solo pursuits: what have you been focusing on lately?
A few years ago I had a computer failure that lost two solo projects. An acoustic and field recording based "softcore" for Ghost and Son and an all synthesizer based "relentless love" for Copy For Your Records. The last track off the latter was saved and now I'm about to make the rest of the record inspired by the lost one.
Can you talk about how you choose your weapons? I know historically you've invested a fair bit of time and energy into creating or modifying your own instruments and processes, like: no-output turntable, homemade electronics, and the setup you described to me recently that involved tattoo coils and mechanical feedback. For Crucible Sound, you're going to be playing synthesizer. Conceptually, what has pulled you down these different paths? Do you see them as separate modes, or as related threads?
I've been working with electronic instead of acoustic setups lately because people seemed too interested with the objects I was using instead of the sounds they were making. I don't really see my different instruments as being different paths. It all stems from the same curiosity. When I got my first guitar I had to mess with the tuning pegs and see what was under the pickguard. If I'm walking down the street and something catches my eye, I have to pick it up, flick it, shake it, see what sounds could come out of it. I don't really consciously develop these ways of playing, I just mess around all day and see what sticks.
Adam MacGregor is a guitarist, vocalist and sound artist known to Pittsburghers as a member of local bands Brown Angel, Microwaves, Conelrad, Fate of Icarus, and Creation is Crucifixion. He also performs solo under the names Lothal and torus, and is one half of the free-improvised rock duo Orlop (founded in Beijing, China, 2013) with drummer Stephen Roach. He's also performed with Anla Courtis, Li Jianhong, Li Qing, Yan Jun, Vavabond, and Klaus Bru. He'll be performing in a special two-night event: Crucible Sound #12 this Wednesday and Thursday (December 17th & 18th) at Modernformations.
I know that you've been in Beijing for the last couple of years. What can you tell us about the improvised music community there?
I moved to Beijing in November of 2012 for my fiance's job. I'd done a lot of travel through Europe and India in the past, but China was a totally new frontier for me - I knew absolutely nothing about the people, language, or culture at the outset. To stave off the shock of relocation, I figured the most obvious thing to do would be to get back to basics and seek out the things I knew best: creative music that was weird and abrasive enough to keep my interest.
It took a little bit of sleuthing and the help of some very knowledgeable American expat friends: Josh Feola, who performs as Charm and promotes shows under the Sinotronics and Pangbianr banners, and Nevin Domer, Fanzui Xiangfa guitarist, proprietor of Genjing records and COO of the influential Maybe Mars label. As my bilingual guides (and themselves witness to the recent and very rapid development of the scene over the past decade), these two helped me to ease into what I found to be a vibrant improvised music community.
Josh used to organize a weekly improv night at a venue called School Bar under his Pangbianr (the Beijing-accented transliteration of the word for "next to") venture. He kindly booked me for a performance there as torus in March, 2013. It was also around this time that he introduced me to Yan Jun. Yan Jun is a sound artist, writer, poet, and founder of the Subjam label who is regarded as the godfather of experimental music in China. His own music is heavily based upon controlled feedback, micro-sound, environmental recordings, and silence. As I observed to be the case with many other artists on the scene, Yan Jun's delivery seemed to me to be more focused and measured than brash and chaotic. I don't know if I would characterize this as a sweeping characteristic inherent to Beijing artists necessarily, but some other performers such as the modular synth/effects duo Soviet Pop (Li Qing and Li Weisi of the popular Beijing postpunk band Snapline), Liu Xinyu (guitarist of dark psych band Chui Wan, who performed solo on no-input mixer) and laptop glitch exponent Vavabond (aka Wei Wei) exhibited these affectations often.
On the other hand, there are the out-and-out cathartic blasts of free-noise saxophonist Li Zenghui and guitarist Li Jianhong, whom I had the pleasure to see many times. Nevin once described his playing as "elemental", which is spot-on. At his most intense, I'd compare his playing to the feedback-soaked atavism of Masayuki Takayanagi, but he manages to avoid any kind of idiomatic framework during his solos for the most part. He frequently uses a small stone to attack the strings rather than a pick, enabling him to grind some harrowing sounds out of the strings. Li Jianhong collaborates frequently with his wife Vavabond in two units (Mind Fiber and Vagus Nerve, the latter of which has released material on Utech); here they explore psychedelic masses of sound and so-called "environmental improvisations" where the two play together in an outdoor setting, responding to the ambient sounds from their surroundings; however, they use headphones to isolate themselves from one another. The resulting hybrid of field-recording and free improvisation yields some interesting chance-based "interaction."
There are many other active improvisers in addition to the ones I've mentioned, many of whom take part in the Miji Concerts and improvisational workshops that Yan Jun holds frequently at a few venues around town, namely Zajia Lab and XP (a real hub of experimental music, indie rock, punk, and lots of other great local talent). Minimalist violinist Yan Yulong (also in Chui Wan), He Fan and Zhouwang of Carsick Cars, avant-guitarist and Plunderphonics artist Feng Hao (who plays in the excellent, terrifying Walnut Room with Li Zenghui), A-Ming Liang (who performs on a type of electroacoustic contraption made out of a pedal-driven sewing machine), erstwhile P.K. 14 guitar strangler Deng Chenglong, Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong (multi-instrumentalists who perform solo and as no-wave duo Xiao Hong and Xiao Xiao Hong), are just a few of the folks who you're likely to see on experimental bills in Beijing. And those are just the native Chinese musicians - Beijing is a world-class city, and as such there are many foreigners who take part. Drummer and saxophonist Stephen Roach - who is featured in this edition of Crucible Sound - continues to be a great friend and cohort of mine in the free-rock/thrash/noise duo Orlop that we started in Beijing, late 2013.
There's another stable of artists in the Nojiji (literally, "no pee-pee") camp, who used to be based out of a venue/house (and fish hatchery!) called Raying Temple located in far-out neighborhood of Tongzhou. This place was closed by the time I arrived, but the guys who were the core of the collective maintained a few projects and at one point set out as a nomadic troupe, traveling across China in a van and playing impromptu concerts. These artists ranged from the harsh noise of Li Yang Yang (also the mind behind the noise-rock wrecking crew Mafeisan), to the more stark and meditative "ethno-ambient" ensemble ONG, to the dark, manipulated field recordings of Dead Sea.
In short, I was intrigued, blown away, and terribly comforted to find likeminded musicians so far from home. And I was honored to play alongside on many occasions. My only regret is that we didn't talk much about "process", and as a result I left with a sizeable chunk of the story absent. But, there's always opportunities to backfill while enjoying the music at face value.
Josh Feola has written an excellent article for Tiny Mix Tapes on the history and development of experimental music in China, and covers far more ground in a much more erudite manner than I could: check it out here.
At Crucible Sound, you're going to have groups improvise along to guidelines provided by Yan Jun and Vavabond. Can you give us a preview?
At some of the improvisation workshops that typically precede the Miji Concerts that Yan Jun organizes, he'll have a guest coordinator choose parameters for the players. I participated in one of these with Alan Courtis (Reynols), who stopped through Beijing on a China tour early this year. This past September, Vavabond organized a monthlong residency at XP Club's "Zoomin' Night," which is a mainly free-improv program held every Tuesday night. We collaborated using the "no-thought" guideline that she devised. Here are some (but not all!) of the guidelines below:
Yan Jun:
One musician sits on stage. The rest sit among the audience (it will be better if they don't use a P.A. - i.e., better to produce the sound from each one's own position). The one on stage plays less (it will be better if he or she plays no sound. But definitely in a tension of playing). He or she is the first one who finishes performance. The rest have to play at least 5 more minutes after he or she leave stage (without bow).
And here are a preview of Vavabond's guidelines for Thursday; again, one group will perform according to these:
No-Brain Improvisation - A Tribute to Dogura Magura
"Brain is not the place where thinking comes out." In the Japanese novel Dogura Magura, the doctor proclaimed. "Brain is a protein without nerve or sense." "Our spirit or living consciousness rest on each corner of our body." "All our desires, emotions, wills, memories, judgments, faith, etc, equally scattered in each of our 30 million cells."
No-brain Improvisation is an attempt to practice and prove what was told in Dogura Magura.
Rules: DO NOT use the brain during creation and performance — try to abandon all the concepts, aesthetics, logic, thinking, judgments and decisions about sounds that are “ordered” by the brain. Let body and instinct do the job.
Orlop has just released a split tape with Slime Street on Telepathy Tapes. It will be available at Crucible Sound #12.
Most people probably know you from your wide-ranging collaborative work: Graveyards (with John Olson), New Monuments (with Don Dietrich & C Spencer Yeh), "Weight/Counterweight" with the late great Bill Dixon and Aaron Siegel, duos with Joe Morris, C Spencer Yeh, Mike Khoury, and Wally Shoup, the list goes on. You're known to be both prolific and highly discerning (a rare combination). Can you talk about what you look for in a collaborator?
That's not something I think about per se, like if I'm putting a band together. It's available resources but also who I've built with before. Sometimes that's somebody like Lytton where we hit it off on the bandstand but didn't kick it much. Getting together seemed smart and appropriate. Dietrich and I played together for 'bout five minutes and we were just like, "Band." There's thought on it but it's mostly just friends, people I want to spend time with chopping it up.
I also tend to follow those peoples work closer because they're friends and therefore end up being really apprised of what they're talking about because I'm really apprised of what they're working on. I'll listen to anything Spencer, Joe Morris or Nate Wooley send me. I'll try to find them in the work. And if you add Olson to that equation you're talking about a tremendous breadth of production, approaches and outcomes.
That feels like a warm space to operate in because I know if send Joe a record I'll get a fair listen, any of those dudes... And most of the folk you mentioned have a serious history of listening. I mean combined you're talking about huge travel from someone like Spencer to Dixon to Khoury to Olson, ridiculous coverage. You don't want to make your framing bias too small or exclude what might teach, so recommendations from that group are real important. And that's how we build — just chopping it up.
So is community the lynchpin? Is being there, in conversation and in the same places with each other, the thing that causes all these collisions and enables the kind of cross-pollination you've been a part of? Because not just anybody gets a chance to get on the bandstand with the likes of Bill Dixon and Paul Lytton.
A lot of this art stuff in general is not wanting to sit in the bleachers. The collaborative effect isn't osmosis, but again you start to build a matrix out of bandstand experiences with those dudes, and again if you're not getting it first hand, it's Olson telling you about Braxton, or Dixon telling you about Cecil or Zitro or Marzette Watts, or Nate telling you about Hadley Caliman. Those aren't my histories but they kinda become my memory.
So for me it's not really about reaching out to big names. It's just this question of where you get your information from and I'm always more interested in folk who are more interested in the work and how it manifests than in themselves or in the game per se.
On that list there's a lot of bad motherfuckers. Serious thinkers. And I'm sorta the low man on that totem pole if you want to judge it. I just keep trying to make the work, and because there's a handful of people that are aware of that, I get to be a part of a good salon.
There's a thread of communion, of cohesion and wholeness, that runs through your work.
I have a set of compositional ideas that I work through and then some, what could be described as, material concerns, that is, actual physical sound issues or mechanical issues, they will out.
It's harder to exert control over that in New Monuments not because of the players but because the music is moving really fast, it's like the ship is sinking and you have to not fuck up. I don't want a collision but I'm only a third of the conversation so I can only say and guide so much. So it becomes a matter of framing by block of sound rather than by individuating things. With Dixon or Graveyards, it's relentlessly trying to corral the movements and frame and destabilize.
I distinctly remember a passage from an interview you did with Dusted where you talked about "how not to be a self-important, chucklehead improviser." Do you think individuals have certain responsibilities when they're improvising in a group?
I think people have different approaches. I've noticed that for a lot of straight musicians who happen to improvise the language is often not there. The letters and words, yes, but the grammar less so. It's also opposite from most pure improvisers. So when you have someone like Evan Parker doing the thing it's beautiful because he has the slang, the turn of phrase, the lexicon with which to make a deep and engaging conversation. He's not gonna rule out performance, mechanics, sound, ensemble etc nor does he have to bc he has the tools to juggle all those things in his brain at the same time.
Most improvisation, to my ears, places a premium on the individual, though you'd hear a lot of denials. If you're not interested in discontinuity, but it happens to be a default setting, that slows everything down quite a bit, the accuracy of decision making, and so for me as I listener I fall asleep.
If folk aren't discussing the value of the individual or group, in the music or syntactically then it shows. You know you can fool the fans but not the players and I think if you do close-listening to music, music that's widely considered interesting, Follow The Leader, Talking Book, November 1981, you can discern the capabilities inherent to basic decision making. If basic decision making is the order then I just look for those people. It's a sort of pre-responsibility.
So let's talk about the value of the individual. You're going to be doing a solo set at Crucible Sound. How do you approach your solo practice differently (or not) from your groups?
Well, I think it's changing for me right now. I've never done much solo work but naturally I primarily work alone day to day. I guess Milford pointed out that to be a soloist is to be an avowed egotist, and Olson always told me the power of the solo is the fact that "you can't break up with yourself."
I just did a solo at Anabel Anderson's Snugs series in Brooklyn last month and it was really great exercise to be asked to do a solo and think about the conceptualization of time and presentation of material. Typically I'm thinking about the nature of voicing and blocks of sound in a group. Presentation is pretty low on the list, but if it's just you, you really gotta be on the ball. I know this is obvious but it's still the basic fact I have to return to each time I perform solo, which has been probably less than ten times. That said, I've done a lot of duets with dancers, so in terms of continuity and voicing it's helped me a lot because I don't like narrative or program music but I think having something that opens up those pathways is really powerful. I end up being way more aware of the performance aspects of the deal and really focus on that as much as the sound.
Tell me about "object-based percussion."
Well it's just a basic set of rules that I started to have when Graveyards was touring a lot. It was partially to keep myself sharp. I really just didn't want to play the same set on a separate tour. Olson and I have been playing for 15 years so it was a really comfortable place to say "I'm only bringing this set up" without having to worry about the preciousness of the known brand or assuring a continuity of image. It was more about how to get the same set out of a totally different instrumentation and still have it be Graveyards. I noticed Skaters could play the exact same set on gear that someone just brought them at the gig. You could say that's because Skaters suck and it always sounds the same because it's all shit (as I've heard someone counter). For me, I found something unique in that.
More to the point: on the percussion tip, I just like to think about objects more than the instrument and it allows me to think about sound and the arrangement a lot different. I wanted to have sound that was spatial and architectural so part of it is just thinking about the different beat frequencies and what they do acoustically and how that might produce a new image.
For me a snare, a ride, a hi-hat is so rooted that when I hear someone play a fill I can hear the Motown or the Bonham and it snaps me right out of the music. David Simon said something about that with The Wire: he wanted to use actors that didn't pull you out of the moment for one second so he could build something bigger than what is otherwise possible.
Vince Gilligan said the exact opposite about Brian Cranston. He wanted to use someone who was so deeply rooted to a single role that he could use that against the audience. So if I play something traditional, I want to be able to use that as an activator, a smelling salts rather than just a collection of notes seemingly denuded from their source material, though still rooted in the muscle memory and mechanics of producing, of learning something like Purple Haze. If I execute the smelling salts properly it's not supposed to be some meta, Lothario, bricoleur deal. It's supposed to break up the monotony of the performance. Not to mention that these objects have different trajectory in the world than maker, music shoppe, musician. It's trying to understand the inability of the objects to only sustain one role. I mean I don't like anything more than a table that has a book underneath a short leg. It's still a table and a book but they both become so much more enabled and empowered. Which brings me back to basic understanding of the capital inside of a book which is only wood pulp dried and printed on. But obviously the cultural value of a book can be so powerful and does not lose that power by virtue of being a prosthetic for a table. It doesn't make it less Don Quijote. It doesn't de-exalt it for me, it just allows it to have a grander provisional status.
For me, the problem with the bricoleur/engineer binary is not only that it's a binary but it doesn't have an allowance for primitive to become the engineer. I don't think there's a lot of sneer but it's problematic to unpack it and put people into one or the other category. In the new Ed Park novel this office is trying to divide themselves into Berts and Ernies and there's always a compromise or a qualifier.
I wonder where you place Sean Meehan on that trajectory. What he's doing is ultra-technical on an engineering level but it's really deskilled in a way. Meehan is an important guideline for me not as a percussionist but thinking about how to get the work to have the qualities you want it to. I mean I could follow Meehan around the Iron Triangle with his snare under his arm like other people follow Kanye's twitter. It's just so engaging on a performance level. He has me thinking of Helmholtz, Cage, and Henry Threadgill at the same time without referring to that for a sec.
In that way it's very American in that it stems from this very Rube Goldberg-ian idea of the trap set, or contraption set. Cartoon jazz 78s have percussion that's just mind-numbing (and I mean mind-numbing with the highest regard) because you hear people playing rhythm on what are essentially effects that aren't rooted in clear use like a clarinet.
Guitarist Han-earl Park has been focused on collective improvisation for over 15 years. He's collaborated with some of the planet's most accomplished improvisers, including Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Gino Robair, and more. He currently plays in a number of groups, including Eris 136199 with Nick Didkovsky and Catherine Sikora, Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, and Numbers with Richard Barrett. I'm thrilled to have him as the first out-of-town participant in Crucible Sound, just months before he relocates to Europe in 2014. Don't miss this chance to hear his thoughtful and virtuosic guitar work at Crucible Sound #7, this Thursday November 7th at Modernformations.
You describe your work as "fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics." In choosing those terms, are you outlining an ethos that guides you, or are you attempting to accurately map where your intuition has taken you?
It’s a kind of artspeak marketing line, or a miniature manifesto of sorts. You can take that statement as seriously, or not, as you want.
That said, I used those specific terms to express certain notions of borders and identity, trying to avoid being boxed into one corner or another (say, ‘experimental music’). Idiom, tradition, identity, history (personal or collective) are things that I value. I tend not to subscribe to the vanilla notion of a pure, non-idiomatic state. I value the meeting: I want to know who you are, who I am, and that fascinating stuff is when those things collide—what we have in common, and what separates us. Border crossings are always fascinating; full of contradictions and (potential) misunderstandings.
So, maybe a little bit of an ethos—maybe more ideology—probably not much intuition involved (but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise).
I want to dig into this idea of how musicians relate to each other. Meetings and border crossings make me think of brief encounters, limited investment, not long-arc relationships. Is that what free improvisers are left with: connecting only in that moment? Is that initial collision potentially more interesting to hear than when musicians get to know each other intimately (and calculate accordingly)?
I think I may be thinking of different borders, or maybe I’m finding them in different places. Borders do shift, after all, as does the crossing protocol.
For example, one of the most durable relationships I have is with the guitar (actually, it’s with one particular guitar). And a big part, if not all, of what I do as a guitarist, is responding to the instabilities in boundaries. The meeting point between the artifact, the body, traditions, idiomatic considerations, etcetera, etcetera. Those boundaries are never solid (you might call them ‘fuzzy’), timeless or stable.
Charles Hayward once talked about, what he called, the ‘jet set improviser.’ You know the one, the one who flies into town, does a gig, flies to the next town (what I’m doing in November, in fact). But there are alternatives.
I do value the band, of long-term collaborations. It allows for greater complexity of interaction, greater speeds of decision making, more oblique, unexpected, choices. We, Eris 136199, coined a new term—‘weirderation’—after our last performance, to denote something — a set of relationships, decision making process—getting just that little bit weirder with each iteration.
On the other hand, spaces such as Crucible Sound have their own value. I’m not sure ‘brief encounters’ necessarily equates to ‘limited investment’ in those relationships.
Wadada was one of my teachers, and it’s difficult to describe exactly how much, and in what way, my musical DNA has been shaped by our interactions—in the classroom, on stage and off. I don’t doubt that our practices are very different, but every so often I encounter situations where my choices seem very strongly to be influenced by Wadada; when I started to teach, for example, my classroom methodology was informed by Wadada’s, my sense of the rhythm section—particularly what I look for in drummers—is shaped by Wadada’s.
The first time I performed with Evan, and the time I performed with Pauline, was in a large ensemble context. In both cases, I came away with, among other things, an appreciation of, for lack of better expression, power dynamics, real-time networks of influence. How individuals might shape the direction of the collective.
Matana Roberts, I’ve only played once with, but… She may be the most compelling composer of her generation. I don’t usually use words like ‘genius,’ but I’d be tempted to make an exception in the case of her work.
Hard to summarize the late, great Lol Coxhill, except maybe with a little story: last time we performed together, after the performance he turns to me, chuckles, “I’ve never played anything like that before.” “Lol, you say that everytime!”
But really, of the people I’ve performed with who’ve shaped how I play, how I approach improvisation and interactive musics, I think Paul Dunmall, but mostly drummers. Drummers are who I’ve been learning from the most in recent years.
You taught improvisation at University College Cork, Ireland from 2006–2011. How was your course structured? What concepts did students excel at, and which ones did they struggle with? Any memorable a-ha moments?
I taught a few courses at UCC from an introductory course on group improvisation, to classes for those who’d been taking improvised music seriously for some years. In terms of structure of the class, in the early days, I tended to enforce a stronger scaffolding—time tables and the like—but as the years went by, the structuring of the pedagogical space became more and more about a dialog with, and among, the students. So there’s this constant negotiation, this constant conversation, about the goals, and the processes, of the class. Not that there’s no power dynamic or inequality (I did have to, after all, grade everyone), but teaching improvisation has much more to do with creating a context in which students can learn—in a big way teach themselves.
On the other hand, possibly my biggest role, as someone with a little more experience, was to introduce and expose students to the music and its practice out there; help students reverse engineer tactics, and systematically critique and assess the viability of their models.
We struggled, I think, with everything, and I like to think that, ultimately, many of the students excelled as a result of those struggles. The concepts that cause the strongest discussions were to do with notions such as leadership (the problematics of, or the possible lack of), and the possibility of musical misunderstandings (that there might never be a ‘correct’ form of interaction, and that actions and reactions might be oblique to the extent that they may be unknowable).
As for eureka moments, too many to mention—teaching is, in fact, like going back to school—but here’s one: figuring out that being able to do your own schtick—to keep on track—while listening intently to the rest of the ensemble, if you can do that—listen while resisting the urge to ‘cohere’ or ‘respond’—you’re halfway there. If you can do that, interaction (overt, oblique or otherwise) becomes a choice rather than an unthinking, automatic reflex.
Mike Tamburo has been a fixture in Pittsburgh's experimental music community for two decades. He's played in the bands Meisha and Arco Flute Foundation, performed and recorded mountains of solo music, and ran the New American Folk Hero and Sounds Eternal labels. Along with his wife Gallina, he also hosts yoga classes and sound healing workshops in his home studio, Crown of Eternity. He'll bring his spiritual approach to improvisation to Crucible Sound #6, this Thursday October 10th at Modernformations.
How did you get interested in improvisation?
Looking back now, I started improvising before I knew what improvising was. I received my first tape recorder when I was 5. From that point on, I was always capturing the moment on tape. These recordings ranged from field recordings, to "radio plays", to me chanting my telephone number, to the sounds I made in the bath tub, to a capella love songs, to me holding down all of the keys on the chord organ, to a whole lot of really hokey stuff I am sure. I got a real thrill out of listening back to whatever it was I just recorded. I learned clarinet and pretty remedial drumming in elementary school. I was only allowed to have drum pads at first because of the noise, so I feel like a lot of the sexiness of being a drummer was not instilled in me. I yearned for something else.
My folks got me a guitar with a speaker in the body and some Casio keyboards. They sent me to guitar lessons for a few weeks, but the teacher was pretty drugged out and would just leave me alone for 50 minutes of the hour-long class while he scored with the money that my mom gave him. I spent a lot of time while he was gone making noise, probably out of frustration. The speaker inside the guitar would feed back if you turned it up the whole way. I remember liking that and playing with that a lot.
By the time I was in middle school (1990), my tastes had taken me through metal and into hardcore, punk and alternative music. I listened to WRCT pretty obsessively at the time and I was exposed to so many sounds. I became aware of other people improvising around then. I was also first exposed to Sonic Youth around then as well. They were very much a gateway band for me back then, directing me to so much cool music. I really loved the noisy sections they played and fantasized some pretty fascinating scenarios as to how these sounds were being made.
What did you imagine they were doing?
Well I was pretty green at the time still so it is a little hard to remember. I remember seeing a picture of Thurston and Lee Rubbing their guitars together. I am not sure if that is what I imagined was happening in all of noise parts. But that thought was there for sure. My speaker guitar had a floating tremolo bridge and was sensitive to feeding back. And I had of course found some of the higher pitched sounds that you get from playing behind the bridge. I thought they wrote a lot of that first record by playing everything behind the bridge. I also imagined they were just tuning and detuning their guitars a lot of the time. It seemed so controlled though. I had never heard guitar like that before. It was so alive and powerful. I was very attracted to it. I wanted to know how they got those sounds. I did not really understand how to use dissonance to create tension, I just knew that I loved what they were doing.
My first Sonic Youth albums were Daydream Nation, Evol and the self-titled EP. They are all really different from each other. After reading some interviews I learned that there was tuning manipulation going on and distortion, but beyond that I am not sure. I had no idea that they were shoving drumsticks and screw drivers into the strings and just torturing their guitars – probably not until I saw The Year Punk Broke did I understand what was going on. It was all very mysterious to me – especially the self-titled record and parts of Evol. Needless to say, I spent a lot of the 90s with drumsticks shoved in my guitar. I also was way into alternate tunings. I still am; in fact, I hardly know standard tuning.
Around this same time I learned how to bounce tracks between tape machines. I would record myself reciting pretty overly-emotional poetry onto one tape and then I would improvise textures and other sounds over top of it. I would bounce between that tape recorder, my Dad's 2 track and the audio coming out of the VCR. It was way lo-fi and very in-the-moment. These were probably the roots of me looping and improvising by myself as well.
As all of that experimentation was going on, I decided that I wanted to be the lead singer or the lead poet or perhaps just the center of attention in a band. I still only played clarinet and remedial drum pad and terrible guitar at the time. I was best at the clarinet, but I had not yet realized how cool the clarinet could be. Plus it was not sexy. I found some other kids to play with and I became the lead singer. We were playing in kind of a Janes-Addiction-meets-the-Butthole-Surfers, mixed in with some other alternative schmaltzy styles or something like that. It was very "120 Minutes"-sounding. We were writing our own songs though. In a few of the songs I had almost Jim Morrison/Perry Farrell-esque vocal improvs (in my mind at least) where I would sing/talk stories or poems and roll around on the floor. It was all very dramatic. A lot of that was improvised, and to my 15-16 year old self, it was a thrill to do that in front of people.
I started getting instruments other than clarinet right after this band broke up, maybe 1993-ish. I got a Telecaster, a bass, real drums, my first 4-track and a Digitech PDS pedal with infinite sustain at this time. This is when I started improvising in earnest, and I also started looping using answering machine tapes through the two track. I probably started improvising out of necessity because I was not necessarily proficient on any instruments. I faked it pretty well though and learned to play just enough to fill up 4 tracks and make them sound like something.
Do you think a lot of improvisers are faking it?
In Kundalini Yoga we have a saying that goes: "fake it until you make it." I feel like that can be applied to a lot of non classical forms of music as well. I personally would just play what I could and what served the song or the moment and as time went on, I kept getting better and better at my instruments and at understanding music. I do not feel like it invalidates the music I was making in high school because I did not understand music the way that I do now. What I think is the most important part of making music, composed or improvised, is the heart, the vision, and the passion.
A few years back I was on a huge tuning kick. I guess I still am to some extent, but my perception has changed. I was also a little more arrogant than I am now (hopefully). I remember having a conversation with one of my friends (a New American Folk Hero artist in fact), and I said something to the extent of tuning being the key to all music and that if you did not understand tuning, you did not understand music. He kind of kicked me into place a bit, first by saying he knew nothing about tuning and he just turned his tuning pegs until it sounded good to him. He secondly told me that it simply was not his interest and that he was focusing on texture, time and very slow builds. Had he not told me that he knew nothing about tuning, I would have not known because what attracted me to what he was doing was how he was working with texture, time and the dynamics. His intention is what really came through. After that my concept of musicianship changed once again (as it has thousands of times). I started to become more interested in how the “space” of the performance was held, among other things.
To answer your question more directly, I think that every person working in sound and music today has a spark that builds inside them and pushes them to do what they do. You can not fake that. It does not matter if I connect to their music or not, I admire anyone who goes out and plays music in front of people – especially if they are ready to put themselves out there and have pretty much no idea what is going to happen.
So if improvisation was a way for you to keep working at music-making, where did you go from there?
In 1993 I met Manny Theiner and I allotted him the role of musical Taste Police in my life. He turned me onto a lot of really cool music and some really great ideas about sound and performance. I joined another band that was a little more experimental called Eskimo 88. At this point I would say I really started to know where I wanted to go with music, even if I could not quite play it yet. I started playing drums, singing and playing the clarinet in this band. We were doing some improvising and also a lot of composing.
I started writing little one or two page zine manifestos about how everyone should play music and how people should be inventing their own music by any means necessary. I was into the Riot Grrl movement and I was really into the japanoise scene and had become aware of John Cage. It just seemed like anything was possible with music and sound and that improvising, making noise or trying to play something you did not know how to play was way more punk rock than 90s era punk rock could ever be. At this point improvising felt like a social movement to me.
I started playing noisy guitar with my friend Cary Toasa on drums as often as possible. Having the drums behind me freed me up so much. I started entering some really beautiful "in the moment" spaces. I became way more interested in instrumental music then. My desire to sing melted away. It was all really raw, but I started to know that feeling that playing music in the moment gives you and I have kept this going in one way or another ever since.
I wrote my 12th grade English thesis on the history of improvisation in jazz music. I am sure that propelled me in some way as well. I remember I was wanting to experience the fiercest aspects of human emotion. Seeing live free jazz at the time did just that for me.
What kind of stuff did you cover in this thesis? Do you have a copy of it anywhere?
It has been probably about 15 or more years since I’ve read it. I imagine that it is in my mom’s house somewhere. I spent a little bit of time talking about the history of jazz and started my real analysis from Duke Ellington’s bands on through the electric fusion records in the 70s. I was really interested in how the soloists changed throughout the years. I was also really interested in how the group dynamic evolved. There was a really interesting progression from the big bands to the quartets into the electric groups. It was such a living evolution. I was really interested in structured improvisation vs. total all out freedom. I was leaning toward all out freedom then and I am more into hearing improvisation on a theme today.
To be honest, in hindsight a lot of my first opinions for the paper came through reading about certain records and what milestones they were and then hearing the recordings after reading about them. There was a lot of anticipation and expectation. Some of them totally stood up and some of them fell short for me. Some of them were such milestones for certain authors and I think it was a time and place kind of thing. Other records like a lot of the Sun Ra, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Art Ensemble records delivered on every level. The authors I was reading for my research said they were from out of this world and I definitely believed it to be true when I heard them. They were other worldly to me – some totally spaced out, some just raw human emotion.
Some of the records took some time to actually really hit me. Not to say I was lying in my thesis, because I was speaking more historically than personally. For instance, I had read so much about Ornette Coleman’s ‘Free Jazz’ album. I had really built this album up in my mind – two double quartets completely improvising – one in each speaker!!! HELL YEAH. Reading about it I assumed it was an all out onslaught a la Borbetomagus. I love this album now, but when I first heard it, I thought it was kind of tame and sounded like there was some structure going on there. It did not necessarily sound completely free to me. By this point I had Borbetomagus records, I had seen the Boredoms live, I had RRR tapes. It was not as shocking to me then as it was in 1961. For the paper I was able to put it into context of the times though. At this point in my life I would always choose that record over any Borbetomagus record, but at that point I was just looking to have my mind blown. I wanted to be surprised, even shocked.
What probably affected me the most about doing that paper was learning about the spiritual evolution of these musicians. As they got deeper into the sound they got deeper into themselves. There was a sense of finding an uncharted depth of the soul in a lot of that music. It was like they were trying to tune into the cosmos. It still moves me – especially the horn players. I can almost hear their consciousness changing as they are pushing all of their air into those tones and those screams. So much wisdom and pain can be heard. It is very yogic to me.
I feel that since then I have looked at my music in much the same way. As my music changes, I feel like my entire life philosophy changes as well and vice versa. As my consciousness evolves, my music evolves. I am not sure if I would believe in God or spirituality or ecstasy had I not experienced these truths through playing music. There is a certain point where everything just falls away and I am completely in the moment riding the wave of sound. It could be anyone making the music because the part of myself that I generally attribute to being the doer has completely left the building. There is just the sound, the moment and the feeling of complete awe. Those are my best nights. It happens for me more when I am playing solo than it does in the group experience. When it does happen in the group experience it is even more beautiful. It is like we have gone off into creation together – perfect symbiosis.
I record almost everything I play. I can listen back and see what my personal development was at the point when I made the recording. It is beautiful to me.
What kind of live free jazz were you seeing when you were in high school?
Watershed 5tet was pretty big. Ben Opie really shook it up for me. His tone was amazing and he could move from something very structured to complete freedom so effortlessly. There was something really magical about that band – especially because I got to see them a number of times.
40 Stories was like that for me as well, though in a completely different way. I saw them a bunch of times and the combination of Micah Gaugh and Kevin Shea just blew me away every time. CMU was bringing in a lot of great music at that time. I had seen Ken Vandermark a number of times. I remember an awe inspiring performance by the Steel Wool trio, where the drummer just kept taking it to the next level. Awe inspiring! I had seen Charles Gayle, Sabir Matin, Cecil Taylor, Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware...there were so many good shows.
I feel fortunate because for me at that time in Pittsburgh it was just so fertile. I went to see almost everything Manny was hosting – jazz, experimental, indie pop, noise. It was a great education.
Your bands Meisha and Arco Flute Foundation seemed to reflect that eclecticism.
When I gave up vocals, it allowed me to really get deep into the sound current. It also allowed me the opportunity to get lead singer/band leader syndrome out of my head (it took a long while actually). I started writing a ton of music that eventually led to my collaborations in Meisha and Arco Flute Foundation, and at the same time I kept recording a lot of solo music on my own. With Meisha it was easier for me to be very structured most of the time and then have some parts that were improvised. I think I was much more focused on collaborative composing then. By the time Arco Flute Foundation came to be, we were writing a lot of our parts through jamming. I think having such a fantastic drummer (Jeff Komara) really freed me up a lot. My focus as to what I wanted to experience playing music really grew during those years. I feel like Arco was pretty much 50/50 between composed music and improvised music. We were just always pushing each other further out. We pushed each other in Meisha as well, but for me Meisha was all about beauty and AFF was about chaos.
All of my music started out improvised at one point though. Some things I just remembered better than others. After those groups grew apart I have been playing primarily solo (though still collaborations here and there, especially with Matt McDowell) and that has been a whole different vibe.
Do you prefer improvising in a solo setting or improvising in a group with other musicians?
It is pretty situational for me. I like them both for different reasons. They can also bring up issues in my personality and thought processes that I have been working on for years. I am definitely the most comfortable improvising alone. My playing can be fairly idiosyncratic and sometimes it can be a little nerve racking trying to fit my ideas with other people’s ideas. Sometimes it works out perfectly and turns into real magic.
It is a lot easier for me to let go and flow when I am playing alone. When I work on my Brother Ong project, I find that my vision is very complete and I feel exhilarated by the experience nearly every time – especially live. I am very clear in my intention before I play and I am generally improvising within a certain number of limitations – such as fixed tunings and scales, what pedals I am using, what instruments I am working with, etc. I love tuning my 36 string zither and using only 5 notes on multiple strings. Can I play for an hour using only 5 notes and keeping it interesting? Can I play for half an hour using only three notes?
Before I play there is definitely a lot of mental work going on, but usually it is not so much a plan, but more finding the strength to give myself permission to just do play. Beyond that, I make sure that I am in an ideal state of mind for being open to creativity (usually a yoga set and meditation before hand gets me there). Once I begin playing I am generally in a state of allowing all sounds. Whatever comes up, it comes up for a reason. I don’t freak out if I get a surprise in my loop. I either try to see where it will lead me or it acts as an indication that it is time to change what is going on. It took me a long time to not feel attached. It is amazing how much one second of a 40 minute set can affect me when I am attached.
I play a lot of different instruments and each of them gives me a different feeling when I am improvising. The hammered dulcimer is probably the instrument that I improvise best with. There is something about bringing rhythm and tone together that just propels me into some really interesting moments. I think it is also usually the best listening experience for the audience. Sometime I just like to drone on with my other instruments. Those “songs” definitely create a space and put people into a certain state of mind that I am very much an advocate of. When I start playing the dulcimer, it really brings the room together in a completely different way. First of all I experience a ton of adrenaline as I play it. I usually have a minute or two where I am just burning it off so that I can get my hands steady. It is not quite shredding, but I guess the closest that I can get to that sort of thing. Finally when I get in the pocket and my hands are really able to articulate what I am hearing inside my head, my entire consciousness changes. I feel like the audience starts traveling with me and as I discover some new idea or nuance they are right there with me.
I suppose improvising is not really supposed to be about comfort though. When it is working best, playing with someone else can really take me to some new spaces that I may not have found on my own. I have had some amazing experiences where I am really in the moment with another musician and our forces combine perfectly in a state of listening, responding and mind reading. It is one of the highest experiences I have ever known as a musician. That is what I yearn for with another musician. When it is good it is really good! It can also go completely the other way, especially if I am in my ego and unable to let go.
I do love collaborating with others even though I play solo most often. Perhaps it is a control issue, but I find the results to be better if we are improvising with an intention or in order to compose or if we are improvising on a theme or a set of limitations. It is easiest for me with a plan. Sometimes a key is all I need. I often like having a band leader or being the leader myself. I love being an accompanist as well. I am most comfortable with knowing my role in my collaborations. Then I know how to listen. I know how to respond.
My favorite way to collaborate/improvise is usually in a duo. There is something about just putting my ideas together with one other person that really appeals to me. I love bouncing ideas off of someone and entering into a complete understanding with them (or at least trying to). I also really love hearing someone's vision and right then know how to help take it further. I find that the interesting mind-reading moments happen a lot easier in a duo. I really do not like noodling and being aimless, which often happens when I am playing in larger improv groups. Being in a situation where only one other person playing usually keeps me really on my toes in both listening and in playing. I am able to leave enough space for both of us to be heard.
From time to time over the last three years I have had the opportunity to be one of the backing musicians for a few different mantra singers/bands. It is really beautiful to do this and also very punk rock in a way. It is like a giant loop repeating again and again that just builds up an ecstatic force over time. It is amazing to play into 500-2000 people chanting. It is amazing to play into 10 people chanting too! Playing this sort of music is really opening for me. I have been making mostly instrumental music for most of my life. In these collaborations I am playing more to support the chant. It is not about me at all really. I am really happy to help support the mental space that happens for everyone chanting. It is a great service. I have never really rehearsed before these performances. I am lucky if I have a chord chart when the song begins. Sometimes my dulcimer is in a completely different key and I figure out a way to serve the song by just playing the two notes that I do have that work with the song. My wife and I have also started a psychedelic mantra looping band that is really far out and fun. Some of my parts are totally written with that, but I always leave space to allow the moment to really takes me.
I am also all about complete freedom in improvising, but sometimes in my experience it has worked better in theory than in practice. It is still totally exciting for me even if it does not work. I guess as my tastes have grown or perhaps as I have gotten more comfortable with what I like/do, complete chaos does not interest me quite as much (especially not as much as when I was growing up). I try to keep it from ever getting to that point, or if I do bring it there, I try to allow it to be just one color in the entire pallet of sounds.
There are so many things that can go not as planned when playing with others. This is a lot of the fun but at the same time I find that the feeling of non-attachment that I get when playing alone is a lot more difficult for me get into when improvising with others. I think it is mostly me really. Sometimes I can be very guilty of being a selfish musician as far as space is concerned. Sometimes I just let the loops or my volume take over because I am not really listening to what everyone else is playing or I feel like my idea is best or whatever little power trip might come up. I hate when that side of me comes out and I definitely am a lot more careful about it now than I was 10 years ago. It is a good lesson for me.
I am aware of my improvising indiscretions and I am in the process of healing a lot of that now. I think this healing has been the result of improvising with my wife so often. We have been playing metal instruments together for almost the last four years: gongs, singing bowls, bells, etc. It is fairly safe for me to say that I do not approach these instruments from an ego space. It is something completely different for me. The first reason for this is that we have a clear intention of what we are doing with the gongs and the bowls. The second reason is that my wife has been helping me to soften up a ton. Creation is so feminine in nature and in the past I may have approached some of my collaborations with some really intense competitive vibes. The third reason is really just the nature of the instruments. The sound of the instrument is the experience. My job is simply to excite the instrument and allow it to do what it does best: vibrate. If I come at it trying to show off, it usually sounds terrible and loud and it is not pleasing for anyone. Playing with Gallina has brought me into a space of sacred improvisation. It is completely in the moment and completely elevating. I find it very easy to be in a neutral state of listening and responding to how the entire room is vibrating. It is like the instruments just tell us what to do. I think I really needed that in my life and looking back at my life as a musician, I was probably always on this trajectory. It is cool to be here now working in this space. It is just total sound and vibration. My entire body shakes, my entire house shakes. People lie on the floor when we play and they just feel the sound. There is no better form of listening to me than to just be still, close your eyes and allow the sound to envelop all of the senses.
You can listen to 20+ albums for free on Mike's Bandcamp page, including his latest release, "Presence."
