Ashley Paul & Eli Keszler interview

The following is a previously unpublished interview I had conducted with 

Ashley Paul and Eli Keszler from early last year, which was a continuation 

of a feature I had originally done on Keszler for Foxy Digitalis. 

Both artists, of course, have gone on to produce some of their most accomplished and 

well-received works since this interview was completed, with Paul's Line the Clouds 

being one of this year's standout releases thus far. Check out their Rel Records website 

for more information.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Partners and frequent collaborators, Ashley Paul and Eli Keszler, have been producing a steady stream of fascinating experimental sounds over the past few years through their various solo, duo, and other collaborative efforts that have appeared on their own tastefully curated REL imprint, as well as on such labels as ESP-Disk, Type, Orange Milk, and PAN. Both Paul and Keszler investigate acoustic-based sound from a multitude of angles that draws from elements of free jazz, modern composition, sound art, and even abstract songcraft. We had a chance to ask Ashley and Eli some questions about their individual musical and artistic development and how they feel they have been influenced be each other's work.

Ashley Paul

When did you pick up playing the saxophone? Was this the first instrument that you took an interest in?

I have been playing the saxophone since I was 10. I started piano at 3 and continued to study that pretty seriously through high school, but saxophone became my main instrument the second I picked it up...maybe even before…

I know that you had studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston. What were your specific interests that led you into that setting? How did your time there shape the music that you are making now, both as a performer and as a composer?

I had been living in New York for several years and really needed time to just write and play and think through what was in my head. It was to difficult to do that with life happening. I needed to go back to school to get all that in order...to be challenged and pushed and to play music all day. NEC allowed me to do all those things. I also met both Anthony Coleman and Eli Keszler there, two if my favorite people, both of whom totally changed my life in various ways, so that's not bad either.

How does your approach differ from your solo work to say what you do in Aster or Paul and Maurey?

Well, they are totally different - but not that different at all, really. I have to think a lot less with my solo work. I try to follow my instincts as much as possible and when I collaborate with other people there is much more advanced preparation. I have to collect the right words to communicate my ideas and that is often a major challenge. I don’t think about music in words, it is kind of sounds...and feelings. To try and describe, in language, what I hear in my mind is so hard. That’s why I play all the instruments on my solo records, I just want to get it done and out there. Playing with other people forces me to give up the reigns. Its fun and hard and frustrating and really satisfying when you realize you've made something together you could have never done on your own.

What went into the recording of your new Slow Boat album, maybe in comparison to your To Much Togethers release?

Slow Boat feels like a big change. I don't really know why. Leave Mine may have alluded to its coming — Eli tells me it's not so different. Things just felt more settled on Slow Boat. It is much more lyrical and has less (hardly any) saxophone and clarinet and a lot more voice. I didn't really plan it that way, it just sort of fell together. I think of each album as one complete piece. I often record much more material than what actually ends up on the record, saving tracks for later…or never…but put together the album as one work. I’m not crazy about albums that have a little of everything, they lose there intensity. I like them to flow and have a singular concept. In that sense, both albums are the same.

Given how closely you have worked together over the past few years on several collaborations, I’m just wondering how Eli’s music and approach has influenced your own work?

Eli and I could not have more different work styles. It is funny, really. We are polar opposites. I admire his work ethic immensely. I think the thing I take the most from him is that he just keeps going. He is always plowing away at something. He is a fountain of ideas. I watch him and can't help be inspired. I, on the other hand, often wait for inspiration and then become completely manic and work like crazy, can't think about anything else until it’s done. Watching Eli definitely keeps me going.

REL releases all come in these beautiful handmade, silkscreened editions, many of which I know that you’ve had a hand in. Has visual art been something that you had training in over the years or was this something that you picked on your own along the way?

I have been making art for as long as I can remember. My mother is a painter and showed me things from a very young age. I began art taking classes early and studied different mediums through my twenties. I love making things and find it really important to have music packaging be as detailed as the music itself. Its one unit to me. When Eli and I met we had that in common and almost from day one, started making packaging together. He had just started REL so I just hopped on board and helped.

What’s the status of your own Wagtail Records?

Over the summer Wagtail started doing limited edition screen printed bags and shirts. I am asking different artist to submit work and I print them. The first round was by Eli Keszler and they are amazing! I have couple releases coming up too. First ever Wagtail 7" by Reuben Son. It's really good, I'm super excited about it. Just waiting (and waiting and waiting) for them to get pressed and I'll be releasing a new solo something...cassette maybe…too, in late March.

Eli Keszler

When did you pick up playing the drums? Was this the first instrument that you took an interest in?

The first instrument I ever played was the piano and then I briefly switched to cello. When I was a kid it was pretty tough for me to read music and commit to learning an instrument like that. But I grew up in a really musical home. My father played a lot of instruments and there was always tons of guitars around – he was in the Peace Corps in Brazil and brought back lots of percussion - and had accordions and violins and all sorts of stuff lying around, so I used to mess around with this and that. But the drums were the first instrument that I ever really took to, I think because I was really an energetic kid and was into running around and all that so it clicked. That was around when I was 8 or 9.

I know that you had studied at the New England Conservatory, so I was wondering if it was during your time spent there that you began to look at a ‘drum kit’ beyond the typical rhythmic capabilities and towards something that you could use to create various textures and actually compose with?

Well, I never really hit on anything, let’s say, until I was there, but it was something I was working on beforehand. I grew up in Brookline, really close to Boston, so I could go into the city whenever I wanted and I used to go see a lot of experimental shows and noise shows – there’s just a lot of concerts going on there – and so I used to just go and check out a lot of things. Even though I wasn’t actively participating in it – I was thinking a lot about it – and I was playing at the time in all different types of bands and more conventional things. At the same time, I was really discovering all of this experimental music, both from concerts and going to the library and meeting people and listening to records. So by the time I got to NEC, I was trying to sort out all of these different things, like how do I balance the sort of energy that I really admire in rock and punk and all these things that I grew up with, with some of the more sonic and sparse elements of other types of music that I was starting to check out. And at NEC there is a lot of contemporary music being played - like Xenakis and things like that - and I used to go see those and it opened up my mind.

I was really working with the resources I had, so I started thinking more about the drums as a way of communicating my ideas versus just as backing. I think as I get more resources and can work with more and more, I’ll continue developing other areas, but the drums are like a home base for me. When I’m composing, I rarely think about “the drums.” When I’m making a record it’s about the music as a whole. Generally, the drums play a big part in that, but that’s only circumstantial and could easily change depending on what I’m interested in accomplishing.

How does your approach differ from your solo work to say what you do in Red Horse or Aster? Are these collaborative efforts generally more improvised than your solo material?

I would say that they’re not. Both of those projects are very collaborative, especially Aster is particularly collaborative because Ashley and I are working on it. I mean, I think there are a lot of connections, but I think there are some real big differences too. There is a little bit more nuance involved in putting the material together of Aster in a way that feels right to both of us. With Red Horse, we can generally work on the set-up and kind of agree on what the layout of the piece is going to be and then just do it. I think it gets a little bit trickier, especially with the new material that Aster is working on, combining some of this more aggressive, almost high-pitched experimental sound with more song-like structures that we’re doing. It can be a bit more complicated.

As far as improvising, there are elements of all parts that are opened, but in both of those groups, and definitely my solo group, I just don’t think that improvisation is exactly the word to describe it. It’s very much dealing with what’s going to happen and what’s going to happen next and what material will get the idea across in the most fluid way. We are planning from left to right always, and trying to develop something new. So much of what I do comes from speaking, and analyzing what’s happening around the music. I think it feels very natural when working on projects to do the same. Generally, improvisation is a funny thing for me. I love a lot of improvised music, but it seems to me like a lot of the great improvisers are much more like composers than they realize. So it’s a little bit tricky. I think that both groups deal with composition. With my own work, I notate and I keep tons of journals and sometimes if it’s the right musicians, I’ll just give them the score, if that’s the right way to work with them. If I had an idea with Aster, that just wouldn’t work. We work so closely together and the ideas just all build up organically together. With Red Horse also, it’s kind of the same thing. The nature of the presentation and material changes because of working with another person, but as far as the level of improvisation, I think it’s not so dissimilar in a lot of ways honestly.

I was really impressed by your partner and collaborator Ashley Paul’s To Much Togethers album from last year. To my ears, this is just a major work in so many ways. I’m just wondering how has Ashley’s music and approach influenced your own work?

It’s pretty hard for me to articulate Ashley’s influence on what I do, since she has really been around nearly from the beginning of what I’ve been working on. Her incredible ability to work with such little material and produce such strong results. I admire her ability to work with seemingly basic means and produce such powerful results; a little sound can produce an entire song or spring a whole melody form for her. A lot of things I love so much in her music are almost non-existent in what I do.

Also, on another level, her attention to detail has been such a big part of making REL’s designs possible, since she has awesome skills at printing, and crafts in general. A lot of the finer REL artwork is led by her. A lot of the printing, at this point, is done by her, while I organize the materials and all of that.

Musically, or creatively, I always shoot what I’m working on off of her and she’ll listen, say a strong word or two and leave, and I take the work off into the direction that it needs to go, really completing the process for me and making it what it is. She is always involved as a second set of ears and eyes for my projects.

When did you and Ashley actually start playing together as Aster? Was this sort of an outlet to put into practice some of the ideas and approaches you were both developing at NEC?

Ashley and I started playing together as soon as we began hanging out. I wouldn't say that our sound was formed in school, but we picked up a lot of new information and had some really supportive professors while we were there. We did take a lot in from different angles and tried to put it together, including everything that interested us rather then rejecting because they didn't fit in on first glance, or because other people weren't trying to do it. I think for both of us it was a relief that we could do what we wanted to do in a group, and not feel that we needed to take some specific approach just because 'that’s the way it is.'

I’m curious how the crotales become such an integral part of your sound?

One of the best things at NEC, which is really underused is the instrument library. You can go into the library and check out virtually any instrument from any where in the world you could possibly imagine. I had stopped playing the drums for about 6 months, experimenting with tons of ideas, trying to come up with something I felt good about. I was trying out a lot of different techniques and I stumbled upon the crotales. They immediately became an essential part of my music. They have incredible sustain and volume, and can be played flipped over to get a variety of clean pitches, in addition to being able to be bowed to create sustain. It extended the sound I was imagining coming from my playing, but couldn't sort out how to get there. They also solved a crucial volume problem for me. Because of their register and acoustic strength, they allow me to clear electric instruments in terms of volume while playing acoustically. Oddly enough, Ashley started using them at the same time before we started playing together.

You’ve mentioned elsewhere that musically you are interested in acoustic-based sound or in working with the rawness of natural materials. It seems like you have similar interests in terms of the artwork that you create for REL; there is a very organic quality to your visual art that seems to be inspired by nature or your natural surroundings. Would you characterize your artwork work along these lines?

I would say yes to this. But, similar to my music even though I engage with natural materials and am interested in natural patterns, I don't reject technology as some sort of unnatural phenomenon. I try to look at things in a way so that the work forms its own type of criticism. I try to take in little details that are sitting on the surface. Also from a distance there overall quality. These ideas formed simultaneously in my music and visual work. You can't call yourself an environmentalist or say your interested in nature to me without taking seriously the possibility that all the trash and culture is the environment. Real things interest me, and I can't help but get frustrated at the way we tend to engage. I'm very critical of the way we engage with technology. Electronic sounds just don't hit my body the same way, thats why I use acoustic material. I try in my work to approach this in a non idealized way, that doesn't deny the way things are but attempts a different type of connection with materials.

In FFFocus: Unstuffing Unicorns with Aloonaluna

Watery Starve, a San Francisco-based micro press started in late 2012, deals in “limited and unique releases of music, writings, and art.” Label curator and artist, Lynn Fister, marries all of these interests together in the beautifully packaged and thoughtfully presented 4-way split cassette release, Taxidermy of Unicorns, that just came out. Taxidermy of Unicorns features some of the leading female voices within the experimental cassette underground, including Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, Birds of Passage, and Fister’s own, Aloonaluna project. Over their respective c60 sides, each artist is able to stretch out their highly personalized take on modern folk song forms and abstract sound creation, yet a decidedly cohesive listening experience takes shape over the course of the entire release. This cohesiveness is also present in the artwork and in the accompanying booklet where Fister’s writings outline the connections between their work. We recently had a chance to ask Lynn some questions about the art, sound, and ideas behind Taxidermy of Unicorns.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the accompanying booklet for this release, you describe some of the shared qualities that you see between the four of you noting that, “These artists tend toward intuitive forms of music-making and delve into notions of the ambiguous female voice, whether through the vehicles of machine or body.” I would agree with that whole-heartedly and would say that this gives Taxidermy of Unicorns a very cohesive feel. In addition to these natural connections between the four of you, had you all discussed any sort of conceptual framework for this release prior to recording your individual sides?

Prior to this release, I think--all four of us--have followed each other’s music fairly closely. Well, at least I have with theirs, and each of us has collaborated previously with at least one of the group. I must say that Félicia, Rachel and Alicia are some of the most gracious musicians to collaborate with--as not only do they make time for so many projects, but I think they really consider the other people involved when working on their projects. They are all rather adaptive and mercurial . . . besides being really caring, friendly and sensitive people. So, this is to say that we all are pretty much in tune with the others’ work. To answer your question, there really didn’t need to be an overriding conceptual framework; I think it was more an organic development, though we all shared our music files openly with each other throughout the process of creating music for Taxidermy of Unicorns. I also knew I wanted the title to be this right away, without even hearing or working on the music yet. So this might of also set the tone.

Rachel and I have joked about us having a telepathic connection before. It’s funny, because I did have the title in mind from the get-go and had not shared what I planned to call it with anybody quite yet. Rachel wrote an email, talking about the four-split, asking about a possible title. She suggested it have something to do with unicorns, as she had just finished a Murakami book that inspired her to think about its symbolism . . . And I was like, yes, exactly. But, of course, I am a bit dark and I was picturing a dead unicorn, stuffed for all to see, and mounted as a trophy. Ha. I once passed a unicorn taxidermy at a novelty curiosity shop, just its head. I stared at it for a really long time, my reflection on the shop window morphing into the white unicorn. I felt half Echo/half Narcissus. I am now reading Murakami’s IQ84 as of late, waiting to hear about unicorns.

I think there’s so much weight to the unsaid. The natural compass when working with other people is often enough. Sometimes words are used to conceptualize a space. Sometimes they need not be there at all. I feel like textural music is a lot like that. The divisiveness between spoken words and the unsaid are blurred. With a space like that, I think it is up to the listener to make up how they would like to relate to it. There can be as much similarity or difference as you want. I think one reading of Taxidermy of Unicorns is that the music is all very similar. Another could be is that it is all very different from each other.

In an interview I did with Frank Baugh (Sparkling Wide Pressure) last year, he suggested that the tape underground “feels like a folk art movement.” You sort of allude to this as well within your write-up in the booklet with Taxidermy of Unicorms. How did you come to participate in this “movement” and, perhaps, how has it motivated/inspired you as an artist?

I would totally agree with the tape underground being a folk art movement! Besides folk as a musical style being echoic in the experimental underground, I think of folk art--as a subversive form or way of thought. It's music made for and by the common person, though of course you can also see/hear folk influence in academia and the conservatory as well . . . and vice versa. Things are not so dichotomous of course. I see cassette making being a cheaper analog way to present music, subverting the established, contemporary norm of a proper release on CD and/or vinyl. You don’t need a big pocketbook to release a cassette. You don’t need to be a virtuoso pianist or have a professional production studio to make beautiful or thought-provoking music. Some of the best music is being released on cassette now, given how much cheaper it is than releasing on vinyl. It also subverts the trajectory towards digital releases (which I really don’t care about; my mp3s are all dead to me, ha). This being said, I still like vinyl and would like to release some one day for others and my own music. But that doesn’t make the release better just because it’s on vinyl, just because someone spent more money on its release. It does look pretty sexy though! However, I still don’t know why people don’t take cassettes as seriously as a vinyl or CD release, just because of format and maybe limited distribution . . . I know, I know, I’m preaching to the choir.

So how did I get into this? Initially, I never really searched outward when making music past my immediate local community. That was before my move in 2010 to San Francisco. Where I lived for 10 years in Tallahassee, Florida, there’s a pretty strong and supportive music community, and I really didn’t have a desire to. When I moved to San Francisco, I lost this sort of artistic community I felt I had in Florida. I feel, and still do feel, very isolated in San Francisco, being a really established and competitive city. Today, I just got a letter from my friend Angela (I named a song after her on Taxidermy). She lived in San Francisco for a short time and is now back in Florida. She alluded to being back in the womb, and why, why would you ever want to go anywhere else perhaps. That moved me. She’s an incredible magic-realist painter and scientific illustrator and I miss her. I love Tallahassee. I loved it when I lived on a dock house with hardly any neighbors and moon jellies would wash up on the marsh.

Sometimes I’m here and I feel swallowed into a soulless void. These people are all trying to make it in a very beautiful, urban and very expensive context. It has become so unattainable for success/growth here, because it caters to an elite. Only the uber-rich can even buy a home in San Francisco. That’s gross. So, I found myself becoming more introverted and becoming less interested in the Bay Area art scene. I know I have only cupped my palm to my mouth and whispered at the surface, and there is definitely a lot of diversity here, but it doesn’t seem very community oriented at all; it seems very guarded. Ha, maybe I’m just bitter because no one seems interested in what I’m doing here. I don't know if it’s bitter or just an apathy that washes over you.

Because of my alienation toward my environment, I delved into my own head more. I've made more recorded music than ever. That’s also when I started to reach out to other labels and other artists for a sense of community. I am really grateful that Hooker Vision took me into their family! Because of them, I was able to start developing new friendships that have become very meaningful to me. I came to San Francisco not knowing anybody and with not a lot of connectivity, and I will leave here very soon with still not many close friendships in San Francisco, but so many have been built elsewhere. Weird how that works, but I guess that’s the internet. We can butterfly kiss with our eyelashes across oceans. And when I leave come summer, maybe only then I will finally meet and connect with San Francisco peeps. I’ll be like dayum, why did I move? Ha, probably not . . . I actually am really, really excited to move. New Orleans is whispering my name, and that city is so captivating.

The artwork and overall presentation of Taxidermy of Unicorns is impressive. Both the stitched and threaded elements on the cover and the collage art contained within are unique to every set of tapes. In an edition of 200, that must have been quite an undertaking? As a visual artist, does the immediacy and scale of things that tapes/tape culture provide(s) inspire you?

Yes, I’d say I’m very inspired by tape culture! I also really enjoy crafting, playing with glue, collaging, painting, etc. Curating a label marries these two deepset interests of mine: music and visual art. I don’t know if Watery Starve is forever, or even if playing music is something I’ll keep doing, but it keeps me alive and inspired for now.

In regards to the actual undertaking of making everything different in a pressing. . . Well, part of it is that I simply want every object to be special/unique to whoever’s hands it may land in. Someone throws it in the trash, someone finds it in the rubble. It was meant for them. It’s the only one. The other side of it is that I am really drawn to Gestalt psychology. Somehow, I think by creating relatively similar but unique artworks again and again leads to a more expansive whole as a larger artwork. Yip, I keep telling myself that with an edition of 200! 200 collages deep, a decrepit hunchback and my fingers rubber cemented together like I’m a crab.

I see the debate over there being “too much music” nowadays being played out over the internet on a regular basis. In the booklet, you take a favorable stance on the current musical climate stating that, “. . . access to recording and distribution via the internet has made art more readily available – and music is just getting better and better because of this access, as more voices than ever are able to surface hierarchical tropes.” What do you say to those who often cite the diminishing “quality” of music because of this access? 

I read somewhere once, that many people were really skeptical of the printing press when it first came out, because now anyone, anywhere could make books, print text, etc. They criticized the ease it would take to make a book, and now it gave access to more people to both write and read more books. I feel like privileged people always want to keep a lasso on the cultural canon, and a book-- a thing of the elite-- was now becoming a democratized vehicle for information. And people with cerulean or clergy blood running through their veins were crying because printing became vulgar. Hey, I don't have the time or the desire to read every book, sure, but I'm glad they are there. The more access, the more points of view . . . why would you want to exclude? Why would you want to hide your ugly stepsister under the stairs? Maybe I would find her beautiful? Maybe she just needs the sun to grow a little? Maybe we all do . . . 

Well, a definite parallel here to the printing press is the internet. Sure, the internet means that you can basically upload anything, (same argument for any form of media!) but you know you can pick and choose how you spend your time. It doesn't diminish the things you do connect with and learn from. I don't know, I feel really inspired by all these people creating. Even if I'm not a fan, I want them to create . . . and it's cool we can share it easily! I also do want to point out too, people also didn't suddenly stop making quality work, because it is easier to document and upload.

Anyway, I think it's sad that people think just because there's more, there's less worth. It’s like they want to harness a cultural canon or something . . . Keep the lasso on the moon! It's mine; it's not yours even though we both sit under it! Wow, it's a fantasy to think that only a few people are doing significant things. Geez, I'm such a commie, ha.

Not to change the subject, but what is documented really makes me think about what is undocumented. It's kind of like the unsaid. Maybe that's a different topic. Sometimes, though, it is nice to just go into the woods and play a song--or maybe not even a song per se--for no one but yourself and the trees. Ephemeral, undocumented moments. Can you believe it? Guess you'd have to go way far into the woods and under a canopy. Don't let the street or google camera catch you!

In FFFocus: Mazurka Editions

This past year saw a number of artists working in tape-based and loop-based sound design getting some much-deserved recognition. For starters, there was Aaron Dilloway and Jason Lescalleet, who both released arguably their strongest work to date with their respective double albums, Modern Jester and Songs About Nothing, not to mention their collaborative outing on Pan, Grapes & Snakes. Nathan McLaughlin continued to go to the center on his fantastic first solo LP release, The Refrigerator is Emotional, and over several tape and vinyl sides with Loud & Sad and Tilth, and his excellent split with Josh Mason, who also had a fine run of top-notch releases. And then there was Jeffry Astin’s Digital Natives, a project whose 2012 output is worthy of book-length analysis in terms of its sheer volume and methodology. The list could certainly go on . . .

Flying below the radar on the other side of the globe, a new Australian tape label, Mazurka Editions, was also doing their part to document similar-minded sound artists within their home country and abroad. Run by Jarrod Skene out of Newcastle, a town located two hours north of Sydney, which Skene describes as being “fairly quiet, provincial, currently in the throws of a process of gentrification,” but one that he further adds, “has gathered a bit of a reputation over the last decade or so as a closet for noise fanatics.” Newcastle, according to Skene, has been home to various members of the free-noise/improv unit, Castings, and their Spanish Magic label, which has likely contributed to this reputation within underground music circles. Currently, Skene points out, “the excellent Grog Pappy label continues to produce all manner of noise filth documents.”

Since starting to release tapes in mid-2012, Skene has established a consistent visual aesthetic with his Mazurka Editions releases using stark, yet elegantly abstract, black-and-white imagery printed on vellum paper. Like tape & loop-based music itself, there is something striking about the artwork in how it calls to mind blurred memories that are locked-in on a particular moment in time, playing on your perception of what the intended focal point is.

Sure, the majority of Mazurka Editions releases to date have been by artists that utilize tapes and loops in their repertoire to create various improvised and composed sound environments, both dream-like and disorienting. But, that by no means paints a clear, nor entirely accurate picture of what the label appears to be up to. The aggressive outbursts contained on the Teen Ax tape, akin to Wolf Eyes at their peak onslaught mode, alone proves that Skene’s interests are much broader. So far, with the exception of the latest Remnants tape, all of the artists he has worked with have been from Australia. He states that these are, “Artists I admire ploughing distinct paths through sub-genre quagmires.” He goes on to say that, “With Remnants, I'm a fan of both Ryan's solo work and also what he puts out with Imminent Frequencies. So I intend to release work from other overseas-based artists that follow a similar trajectory just as soon as I can.” 

Slated for release in the months ahead are tapes from the likes of Love Chants, Muura, mslmisslemsl, and Pleasure Bros. Skene also plans to get in on the action with his own solo project. “After many years of percolation, I finally have a (solo) project on the go. L.A. County Morgue made its live debut in December, and will have a release on Mazurka Editions sometime this year. Tape processing, loops, contact microphone effects/pedal gaze.”

For more information on Mazurka Editions, check out their website HERE. Also, select titles from the Mazurka catalog are currently available stateside at Tomentosa.

Here are some highlights from the Mazurka Editions catalog:

Mitchell Brennan eminent domain / mill no. 1 c16

Side A features a carefully constructed, multi-layered
synth piece, while on the flip-side Brennan weaves together
a tapestry of creakin’ and cracklin’ looped sounds built upon
the rhythmic churn of a printing press.

Cooper Bowman / Enak split c15

Cooper Bowman has a free-floating, plunderphonics/audio 

hallucination approach to sound composition on his side, dropping 

video game gurgles, snatches of dialogue of former MN governor, 

Jesse Ventura, giving props to Mean Gene back in his pro wrestling 

days, amongst other assorted sonic weirdness. Enak's side contains 

a jumbled mix of what sounds like competing AM radio frequencies 

vying for space in a crammed apartment.

Remnants surface tension c25

Imminent Frequencies label head, Ryan Marino, crafts 

loop-based pieces with the same sort of, yes, tension and 

disorienting force as Aaron Dilloway. A excellent 

tape in every way. 

In FFFocus: Crow With No Mouth 2013 series

(Jesse Goin, Keith Rowe, and Allie Goin; photo by Amy Myrbo)

The Twin Cities is blessed with an incredibly diverse, talented, and supportive music community. For fans of improvised and experimental music, the on-going efforts of the Tuesday Series at Madame Of the Arts and the annual Heliotrope Festival have been vital for showcasing local talent in a live setting. Through the work of crow with no mouth (cwnm) promotions, the scope of live performances within this area of music has widened considerably in recent years to include prominent national and international artists working in the field of electro-acoustic improvisation (EAI). Started in 2011, the cwnm series has slowly expanded into what will be a near yearlong series with monthly performances held at Studio Z in Lowertown, St. Paul. cwnm curator, Jesse Goin, who has written extensively about EAI on his cwnm blog, along with his wife, Allie, have assembled an impressive roster of artists for the 2013 cwnm series that includes the likes of Jason Lescalleet, Jon Mueller, Michael Pisaro, Joe Panzer, Vanessa Rossetto, Joe Colley and many more. We recently had a chance to ask Jesse some questions about this year’s series and about his motivations for doing this work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What was your motivation for starting the crow with no mouth concert series in the Twin Cities? Why were you interested in presenting this as an almost yearlong series as opposed to just doing one-off shows for electro-acoustic and improv performers? 

I need to say crow with no mouth promotions is me and my wife, Allie, who contributes great energy and personal resources to the crow activities. I could not put the concerts together without her.

For the sake of the readers, let’s use the inadequate placeholder name EAI (electro-acoustic improvisation) as a referent for the music cwnm is presenting in its concert series.

There is no one presenting this area of music in the Twin Cities, period. There have been occasional events over the past decade that have brought a few of the musicians cwnm has booked to Twin Cities audiences, but very occasional, very few – and unfailingly, in venues less than ideal as listening environments. This is an area of music easily in its 13th year of development, comprising many, many brilliant musicians, producing way too many releases, and in an authentic sense, global in scope, and it is never heard here.

I complained about this for a number of years before deciding to do something myself to address this lack of an infrastructure for genuinely new, creative and, to date, inaccessible music. 

That is, of course, what every unfunded, non-commercial and, at least initially, difficult music requires in order to be presented properly - an infrastructure. For me that means nothing more or less than the interdependent relationships between a knowledgeable curator, a suitable venue, a schedule of strong musicians, and an audience keen on listening. Every one of those elements is crucial, and as simple as this appears on paper, is quite difficult to bring together. Everyone who has worked on facilitating such an infrastructure - and there are numerous people in the Twin Cities who have done so in the areas of jazz, free improvisation and other exceedingly unpopular music – has struggled with sustaining one or more of these elements in their efforts. Venues made for listening are next to non-existent for this music - most experimental music is played in bars, noisy bars, or, occasionally, in over-controlled, claustrophobic art venues; knowledgeable people who are engaged in a critical way with the music, and attend to the details that bring both musician and listener to the performance are rare as hen’s teeth. None of this is offered as a complaint – I have said, since presenting the first cwnm concert in May, 2011, that it has to be done for fun and for free. This is simply to acknowledge why this sort of effort seldom occurs for long. Any other motivation than this – to generate the infrastructure in which great, otherwise unheard music can be heard, and to do it for fun and for free, is asking for trouble.

I moved to Minneapolis in 1979, and immediately sussed out where the interesting local music was happening; at that time that meant primarily free jazz, non-idiomatic improvisation, and 20th century classical music (as well as a few rock bands). From 1979 to around 1999, that was where I invested my time and attention, and I invested a great deal of both. Most, if not all, of those venues and curators are long gone.

In the late 90s, those areas of music had been pretty exhausted for me – not entirely, but, critically, most of what I had been listening to for three decades was sounding played out, codified and stagnant, even, as saxophonist John Butcher put it, like “museum music.” (Nothing wrong with that, it is the inevitable, eventual, organic stagnation all music reaches in time). Anyway, this sense of the music I loved sounding enervated and predictable opened me up to my encounter with EAI, and for the past nine years or so, that has been my principal, though in no wise exclusive, area of musical interest.

(Michael Pisaro; photo by Yuko Zama)

To your question about creating a series – I conceived of what I was doing from the first cwnm concert in May 2011 as a series, albeit woefully unfunded and so a truncated one. In 2011, cwnm organized four concerts, comprising 10 musicians; in 2012, seven concerts, 20 musicians. The 2013 schedule, to date, offers 10 concerts, involving 28 musicians.

There are a couple of reasons I wanted to attempt a series approach: first - and a critical point with introducing EAI to new audiences – there is a real learning curve involved here. This is a continuum of music seldom heard in performance outside of a few hubs of activity and interest (New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Berlin, for example), and, outside of Europe, is seldom the recipient of foundation funding. I am pleased that I was awarded a 2013 grant from a regional arts organization for the series, the first for this area of music. To engage new audiences with something they will never hear or hear about via the media, or read about outside of a clutch of dedicated blogs, takes time and patience. Additionally, a series offers the opportunity to present the scope of the music referred to as EAI, which is impossible to do with a smaller sample size, a one-off or very occasional events.

Had you done much in the way of organizing and promoting shows prior to this?

No – I helped set up a few shows prior to starting crow with no mouth, but nothing like what I have done the past two years. As I said, I spent an enormous amount of time from 2004-2011 investigating this music as a listener. In 2010 I started writing about EAI for several on-line and print journals, as well as starting my blog – yes, crow with no mouth – which is dedicated to feature-length, critical pieces about this music.

Perhaps for the uninitiated who might read “a concert series of electro-acoustic composition and improvisation” as something more buttoned-up and academic, how would you characterize the range of music that you are presenting in the 2013 series?

The range is extraordinary, sufficiently so, as I suggested before in calling EAI an inadequate signifier, to initially (and importantly) confuse new listeners. I am confident whatever criticisms, or simply descriptors, one might have about the music in the crow series, “buttoned-up and academic” will not be among them. This, despite the fact that a number of the participants in the 2013 series hold academic positions, some in music departments, some in other disciplines. There are equally a number of musicians who are as far outside the academic realm as can be imagined.

The music offered by the musicians I have invited to perform, whatever the divergences, stylistic tensions and contrasts (and there are, happily, many) is characterized, for me, by an essential vitality. This is a quality impossible to convey with limited space and time, of course. But it is this vitality I sought when I had reached the point of exhaustion with other approaches to improvisation, such as jazz, so it is essential for me, in order to connect with any music, that I feel that vitality is present.

The more overt characteristics of the music in the 2013 series are elements that I considered in my planning; for example, the dynamic continuum of volume - there are participants who make music so quiet you must change your way of listening to make that connection, who privilege space and silence as co-equal with intentional sounds; and there are musicians who create intensely dense, super-saturated sound fields that can push a listener as far as they would wish to be pushed.

Then, the business of improvised and composed music; EAI confounds that distinction with sometimes brilliant results. The 2013 series will present musicians who work in both through-composed and unfettered improvisation, and occasionally bend and braid those twin disciplines in ways listeners new to EAI often find compelling, and, crucially, confusing.

Finally, limiting my reply to only a few of the overt characteristics one can discover in the series, there is instrumentation. The 2013 season will present music made from sound generators as familiar as the vibraphone, grand piano and cello, as well as from cartridge-less turntable, hacked tape machines, computer programming written by the performer, and noise sourced from location recordings, sine waves and feedback.

I go to some length to describe the sorts of sounds the series comprises to return to the unifying principle for me, as curator – an essential vitality, a quality heard across the great range of styles, sound-sources and individual disciplines and origins of the musicians involved.

On your crow with no mouth blog, you borrow a quote from Michael Ventura and James Hillman’s book We’ve Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and The World’s Getting Worse that reads:

. . . And our job, every single one of us, is to cherish 

whatever in the human heritage we love and to feed 

it and keep it going and pass it on, because the Dark 

Age isn’t going to go on forever, and when it stops 

those people are gonna need the pieces we pass on. 

They’re not going to be able to build a new world 

 without us passing on whatever we can – ideas, arts, 

knowledge, skills, or just plain old fragile love, how 

we treat people, how we help people: that’s something 

to be passed on… and all of this passing things on, in 

all its forms, may not cure the world now – curing the 

world now may not be a human possibility – but it keeps 

the great things alive . . . 

Has this been sort of your guiding principle in your work with crow with no mouth, both the concert series and blog?

That is very intuitive, your asking that - here is a brief story as to why that particular quote owns a certain power for me, where the crow activities are concerned: in October 2011 the fantastic trio Haptic played the last crow concert of that year. Haptic – Joseph Clayton Mills, Steven Hess and Adam Sonderberg – were house guests of my wife Allie and I. As happens often with visiting musicians, we sat up following the concert into the wee hours engaged in conversations that link favorite authors, painters, filmmakers, philosophers, even musicians. Personal and more abstract pleasures and experiences are in those mixes, encounters as important in their way as the concerts that serve as the occasion for our meeting. Anyway, towards morning, Allie, Sonderberg and I were talking a bit about our engagement with the Occupy movement activities happening at that time in the streets of Minneapolis. In a way I cannot adequately convey here, the three of us – with quite divergent views on the efficacy of such actions as Occupy, and similar direct actions we were engaged in – came to a point where we agreed that, as Sonderberg put it, it is also in nights such as this one, in encounters such as we were enjoying, in the endless small occasions of sparsely attended experimental music shows, for example, that important things are sustained, kept alive – it was an indelible moment, one I have enjoyed many times with friends near and long-known, but was now discovering with people traveling here to play whom I would only know a few hours, before we’d all return to our regularly scheduled lives. I have enjoyed intense moments like this with, for example, Keith Rowe, Will Guthrie, Jeph Jerman, Nathan McLaughlin, and Joe Houpert…enough to realize that when I stopped complaining and started working on an infrastructure to support events that own the sort of vitality I look for in this music, what Hillman describes comes about.There is that old anarchist principle about making the world you want to live in, not waiting for someone else, not expecting anything to happen, not reacting to the enervated scenes around you – simply make something happen with like-minded individuals, for fun and for free.

I know that Michael Pisaro had debuted a new composition at a cwnm performance a few years ago and I see that right out of the gates in this year’s series you’ll be hosting Hong Chulki from Seoul, which will mark his first performance in the U.S. Are there any other noteworthy performers/performances/compositions unique to this year’s cwnm series that you’d like to or can mention at this stage? 

I can honestly say that I am excited to present all 28 musicians in the 2013 series; in 2012 I presented a local musician in his first public performance, and Keith Rowe, and I am confident both would say they felt that their work, and my preparation for their appearance, was treated with the utmost respect and enthusiasm.

One reason I introduce each set is to establish that ground in the room; I have gone to too many shows where the inexorable, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt creep of hierarchy is felt in the presentation of the participants. The key to maintaining equanimity towards all the music/musicians in the crow series is in this ground being established up front. For example, I recall shows locally in which local musicians were informed at the show that the touring musician would get the door, as they were, after all, touring. Hierarchy creeps into the damndest situations, so pervasive and inculcated is the rock star sensibility. I realize how silly this reads, as we are talking about concerts of maybe 20-30 attendees, with musicians paid from the door. Nonetheless, I see this hierarchical system play out on music boards, in small venues, and the like.

Do I have preferences, and anticipate some performances more than others? – of course! The practice of equanimity sits alongside my personal preferences, but I hope is never evident in the concert situation.

(Jason Lescalleet; photo by Yuko Zama)

World premieres (the Pisaro concert), Minneapolis/St. Paul debuts (Rowe, and many others in the crow series) are very satisfying. Also immensely gratifying are aspects of crow shows that specifically challenge the performers in ways that may not be clear to attendees, though I try to reference those dimensions in my introductions. For example, I was after bassist Brian Roessler for a couple of years, before I had a venue to accommodate it, to play a solo set of completely improvised music. He had never done that, until his stunning set in the 2012 series. Similarly, saxophonist Scott Newell has never offered a solo set before our December 2012 concert; I started attending Scott’s gigs in 1982! Thirty years later, we got that done; very gratifying for me, and, from the feedback I received, for Scott and the audience as well. My correspondence with Rowe was two years of exchanges; I drove to Chicago in April of 2012 to hear Jason Lescalleet and Olivia Block share an evening, but also to meet them and to encourage their appearing in the Twin Cities. (I have no doubt some of this year’s participants regard me as a pest).

You mention Hong Chulki’s appearance – his first visit to the U.S. will comprise only 6-7 cities, of course it’s fantastic we will host him here. I have corresponded with one of my favorite contemporary composers, Jurg Frey, who resides in Switzerland, intent on getting more music from the Wandelweiser composer’s collective into the crow series. He has graciously provided numerous piano scores for Shannon Wettstein, the pianist with the St. Paul-based Zeitgeist new music ensemble, to perform. Each musician owns a personal quality for me in this series that I want to share with listeners. Each musician merits this sort of explication and advocacy, or I wouldn’t have invited them. The only pangs I currently suffer are about the musicians with whom I have discussed appearing in the crow series, but cannot presently confirm, as I have exceeded our budget already. This is as good a place as any to mention these musicians, maybe 6-7 at this point, will be presented, should I be successful in gaining additional financial support. The current schedule stops at mid-October, so we have a couple more months in 2013 in which I hope to present more concerts.

If I thought your readers would indulge it, I would offer a concise paragraph on every musician appearing this season as to why I am stoked they have agreed to perform in the series. I don’t imagine many would indulge that; I am writing a little about each performer prior to their concert, as I have already done on Hong and Jason Zeh. Those updates can be found at http://cwnmconcertseries.wordpress.com/.

Finally, I assure you there will be some unique offerings this year, aside from many more debuts (Michael Pisaro and Jason Lescalleet, for example) – I want to hold some of these close for awhile, the element of surprise is potent.

The 2013 cwnm concert series schedule: 

February 15: Jason Zeh / Hong Chulki (two solo and one duo set) 

March 23: Jason Soliday / Jon Mueller 

April 12: Bhob Rainey / Bonnie Jones (solo and duo) 

April 20: Joe Panzner / Jason Lescalleet 

May 10: Nick Hennies / Xavier Charles / Frederic Blondy / Guylaine Cosseron (trio) 

June 7:  Tetras (trio) / Brian Roessler / Christian Weber (duo) 

August 9: EKG (Ernst Karel & Kyle Bruckmann duo) / Nathan Hanson

August 17: Graham Stephenson / Aaron Zarzutzki (duo) / Blake Edwards / Joe Colley 

October 5: Adam Sonderberg / Olivia Block (duo) / Shannon Wettstein (performing a Jurg Frey composition) 

October 19: Vanessa Rossetto / Michael Pisaro 

*Solo sets, unless otherwise indicated.
*All concerts at Studio Z, in Lowertown, St. Paul