Tone Glow 043.4: Rob Mazurek
An interview with Rob Mazurek for a special midweek issue
Rob Mazurek
Rob Mazurek is a multidisciplinary artist whose varied work spans electroacoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, film, and installation. Mazurek spent much of his creative life in Chicago and Brazil, but currently lives in Marfa, Texas with his wife Britt Mazurek. His newest album, Dimensional Stardust, is with his Exploding Star Orchestra, which features Nicole Mitchell, Jaimie Branch, Jeff Parker, Damon Locks, and more. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Mazurek on October 28th, 2020 to discuss his latest album, science fiction, his approach to all art, ribbon dancing, and King Hu’s A Touch of Zen.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Hey, is this Rob?
Rob Mazurek: Yeah, how are you doing?
I’m good! How has your day been?
Pretty good, everything’s been fine.
What have you been up to?
Just creating some things in the studio. I have the music studio, the painting studio here. I kind of just go back and forth all day between my paintings and sculptures and compositions. It’s kind of what I do every day. For years and years it’s been this searching for the sound and searching for the vision that is able to resonate strongly.
If you can think back… what’s the first time you created something of your own that made you realize the joy you get out of creating? And this could be with songs or paintings or anything.
I started composing at an early age. Well, that depends on what one means by an early age. I was 13, 14—around there. It was probably when I wrote my first piano piece. I was studying with my teacher [Ralph Dodds] who was teaching composition at Roosevelt University and I created this piece and I thought it was so beautiful and he did too. That might have been the first real time that I thought, “This is cool,” you know?
I did do some drawing stuff when I was a kid. I remember I got my piece of art in the paper in New Jersey. I was in Jersey City for the first ten years of my life and I drew this picture of a clown (laughter) and they put it in the paper and it was just so thrilling. I don’t know how old I was, probably seven years old. It was mind-blowing that this thing ended up in the paper, I didn’t understand it (laughter). It was super cool.
I started composing at an early age and I got the bug and the realization that I could make things. And that was more interesting to me than doing something that somebody else did. With the music, I started composing at an early age and as far as the visual stuff… I would go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I moved into the Chicagoland area in ’75 and in the early 80s I would go to the Art Institute at the instigation of the same teacher. My composition teacher insisted that I also become acquainted with other art forms, like visual art and poetry. He would tell me to go to the Art Institute and look at the art. It didn’t matter what I looked at but at the next lesson we’d talk about it.
One of these times I happened to look at a Rothko painting and it blew my mind. The reason that this is all tied together is because I went down to the bookstore because I wanted to buy a Rothko poster because I was into seeing that kind of thing, being blown away by these colors. So I was gonna buy this poster to put on my wall but something inside of me said, “Don’t do that—go to the art store, buy some paper and paint and make your own Rothko.” Although you have to spend a certain amount of time copying other things in order to learn, from pretty early on I had this feeling that I wanted to create something I could say was mine or came from myself.
You mentioned being in Jersey City for the first ten years of your life. What do you remember about it?
They were good times. That was a time when all your friends were on the same block. Right across the street there was this amazing pizza place and a little shop where you could buy candy and stuff like that. We’d go up and down the street in our Hot Wheels or whatever you call it… Big Wheels? We had some family around too—some uncles and aunts—and everyone seemed to be in close proximity. My father worked in New York for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company so he would take the train every morning. We would go to the Yankees games and stuff like that. I remember some of those things.
My mom and dad were super into polka music. We’d check out polka bands—kids could go to. We’d sit on the sidelines and watch them dance and listen to these polka bands play. I just remember being entranced by the clarinet so I wanted to play it when I was very young; when I was watching these polka bands, the clarinet had difficult and fast parts.
So you enjoyed going to these polka nights then?
Yeah, it was a blast! There’d be food out on the tables, and as kids we could just roam, check stuff out, eat food, maybe dance a little bit. It was an energetic situation. And then when we moved to Naperville in ’75, it was a completely different scenario. It was a desolate suburban town then. When you live next to a cornfield… there was maybe one kid in the area who was close to my age. There was nothing. No stores, no pizza joints, no polka (laughter). There was none of the stuff that made an impression on me from when I was really young. It was kind of a drag until I moved to Chicago in ’83. I started going into the city in ’81. I started playing the cornet in ’75.
Given these polka events, were your parents listening to music regularly at home when you were growing up?
Not really. I mean, my dad had Herb Alpert records, Tijuana Brass—that type of stuff which was cool! But he did have three of the hippest records of all time. He had this Dizzy Gillespie album, Gillespiana. Do you know that record?
I don’t know that one, no.
It’s phenomenal. It’s a larger group, with Lalo Schifrin in there. My dad also had another Dizzy Gillespie record called Dizzy on the French Riviera and I’d ask him why he had these amazing records and he said he saw Dizzy on TV and he liked how his cheeks puffed out (laughter). For my Dad It was more about him as a showman than a player. He also had the Stan Getz record, I think the one with João Gilberto. So he had a few hip records, which was great. At home, I’d be the one playing those records, and this was before I started buying my own records.
Was your mom into music at all?
Kind of similar to my dad. Not really. We weren’t a musical family or anything. I just happened to pick a cornet because, well, I was just picking an instrument at school at 10 years old. Pretty quickly it seemed like I was good at it so I kept going.
Do you remember some of the earliest records you purchased yourself that made an impression on you?
Oh yeah, the first record I bought was Charlie Parker where he’s live at Birdland, which is phenomenal, of course. Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Urban Bushmen. I read about Charlie Parker in Dizzy Gillespie’s book, To Be, or Not… to Bop. I got that real early. I think I got the Art Ensemble of Chicago record because it had Chicago in the title, and the cover art is so great. And I bought Bitches Brew. I remember bringing those three records home and I couldn’t understand why they were so different, you know what I mean? Those three records couldn’t be more different.
At the time, I was reading about Miles and his earlier period and I put Bitches Brew on and I was like, “Oh my god, this is like Led Zeppelin or something.” (laughter). “What is this?” The strange thing is that when I put on the Charlie Parker album, that seemed more avant-garde to me than anything I’d ever heard. So it was that Charlie Parker album that sounded so strange and bewildering and exciting for me. So, yeah, I think those were the first three. I remember going to Rose Records at the Fox Valley Mall, I think. I picked the Miles record up because of the record cover.
You talked about how you wanted to do things yourself. At the beginning were you intentionally learning by trying to emulate specific jazz musicians?
Oh, absolutely. And not just jazz because I was studying composition at the time too. I transcribed hundreds of solos by Miles, Kenny Dorham, Fats Navarro, Lee Morgan, Art Farmer, Chet Baker, Clifford Brown—everybody. I transcribed by writing down but also by listening. I had a private teacher who insisted that I learn just by listening. So I was constantly doing that while analyzing Bartók and Stravinsky scores. Schoenberg and Webern. And this was pretty early on. And I was really into Sun Ra as well—I heard him for the first time in 1981 at Chicago Jazz Fest. That was mindblowing.
I spent years trying to emulate the masters because that’s what you do. When I said earlier that I wanted to do things myself, that was ingrained in there, but of course the hard work is learning the vocabulary, and from different angles. I learned from different masters, be it jazz or classical or minimalism or painting. Of course, then, you eventually find your way or you just become somebody who copies somebody.
Was there ever an artist you tried to learn from but was beyond what you were able to understand? Where you couldn’t acquire their vocabulary?
No, not really. When I’m interested in something, I go all the way with it, whether it’s Miles or Bill Dixon or de Kooning. Some of the scores of Boulez, for instance, like his piano sonatas… I was always lucky that I had people I could go to who knew a lot. If I couldn’t figure something out I would take lessons or ask them. When I lived in Paris for a little while, I was good friends with Jean-Pierre Armengaud, a fairly famous concert pianist, but he also ran this residency I did at Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud. I was talking to him about Boulez because I had heard his piano sonatas and I asked if he had ever played them, and not only had he played them, he had the scores. So I found myself spending hours at night poring over these scores. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these scores but they’re laid out in such a manner that you can choose what parts to play at different times. It was very graphic-looking.
I’m only bringing up that story to say that I spent a lot of time poring over music and scores and solos and compositions from a lot of different people. And to go back to the original question, if there was something that confused me I would find out what it was. Of course when you first start learning about 12-tone composition or something like that, it’s a little baffling but after you analyze stuff and do your own compositions, you get it. A lot of my compositions now have those elements but for a long time now, I’ve never made anything where I was consciously saying, “I’m gonna make something like this.” I mean, I’m 55 now but I think I stopped doing that when I was in my 30s, probably.
I don’t think I even had to make a conscious decision. You just start using certain intervals and tropes and progressions and then you build your own synthetic scales and chord structures. You try to find your own sound or painting or sculpting or even making your own recipe—I love to cook. I want to be an original. I don’t want to be a walking clone of something. And it’s not about getting noticed, it’s about being a force for beauty and good. Generally, I stay in the background a little bit compared to others, but of course when you’re performing and showing things and making things, you want people to gain energy from that. Anyways, maybe I’m getting too far off from your question (laughter).
Nah, it’s okay! I didn’t know you were into cooking. It seems like with everything in life you’re always trying to study a lot, look into the best things, and then trying to do what you can with what you learn. With cooking, are you also experimenting with stuff? Like, not looking at recipes as much anymore?
My father was a great cook and I learned a lot from him. My mom was really good too but my dad would do more fancy stuff. He would make scallops and would flambé them. And he had to bread them just right. He had a great cookbook collection, and this is of course way before the internet. You had The Joy of Cooking and various other books to reference. I would see what he was doing and then I’d get my own books. My personal Bible for cooking is Paul Prudhomme’s book about Cajun cooking [Louisiana Kitchen]. I know so many recipes in there, and you learn how to make that hotness. You have to use all three peppers—you have to use the cayenne pepper and the white pepper and the black pepper—you have to use them in tandem to make this one thing.
You grab the things that you learn from there and expand that out into your own thing. Of course I still look at recipes, but now I look at a recipe for a minute and then do variations: add things, take things away, try new things depending on what’s seasonal. I’m not just doing it to be original, sometimes I’m looking for a taste that’s between hot and sweet and sour, you know? Knowing the differences between fat and acid and salt and how they react to each other. You have these different elements. I’m just as obsessed about cooking as I am about making sound or making paintings.
If you were to make a dish to impress someone with, or if you’d really want to treat someone you love to something great, what would you make?
Every Christmas I’ll make a turkey mole, like a black mole. I basically go off the original recipe from Oaxaca, which is from some convent there. It has so many ingredients. You’re dealing with, like, four of five different nuts for instance which you’d have to roast separately because some roast up quicker than others. And you have to roast them just right because that brings out the flavor of the things. And you have to do the same thing with four or five different peppers. You have to soak them, remove the seeds, and fry them in oil and cut them up in a certain way.
I’ve played hundreds of times in Italy and have very good friends there, and I enjoy making something simple like pasta with black pepper—cacio e pepe. And when you cook with just two or three ingredients it’s wonderful. But what I’m finding with my music and my painting is that I like having layers and layers of things happening. This black mole is the perfect thing where you just keep adding and cooking and adding and cooking. At the end you have 40 ingredients or something but everything’s working together perfectly. Then you roast the turkey in the oven.
I like adding something small. With the gumbos that I make, which I originally took from Paul Prudhomme’s way of making gumbos, you can basically make a gumbo out of anything. But of course I like a good cocktail as well (laughter). Like making a negroni and using different ingredients. I love using orange bitters and I started using orange bitters in my mole and my gumbo. If you get it just right, you get a little bit of sharpness from that orange flavor and it’s just brilliant. I guess my secret ingredient, more than a dish, it’s these orange bitters that I go to. Whether I’m making crêpes with crab, a chocolate chip pecan cookie, or gumbo or mole, I put a little bit of that in there and it makes it all explode.
Thanks for sharing that. I gotta try that in some dishes.
I just picked up some rhubarb bitters which seems very interesting. Do you know John Corbett?
Yeah, of course.
John Corbett is a good friend of mine. I saw him making a negroni with rhubarb bitters weeks ago and I was like, “I need to get some rhubarb bitters!” (laughter). I already tried it in a couple cocktails and it’s wonderful. It’s a little more punchy than the orange. I’m gonna try that in my next situation here.
I love how in all facets of your life you approach things with a similar zeal and in a similar manner. Orange bitters are the secret ingredients for your foods and drinks—do you think you have a secret ingredient for your compositions and your paintings?
Probably. In reference to the new record, Dimensional Stardust, everything was written in one fell swoop. As far as music is concerned, I love to use the idea of 12-tone composition. It’s not in the strictest form, but sometimes it is. It’s not always just note-after-note in the 12-tone situation, but you carry it over to dynamics and accents and all different parts of the music.
I love to do these things where I make these 12-tone modules where they don’t sound like they are. You can stack fourths up and then move a half-step and flip it, go fifths or… I’m trying to put this in words. I try to build these melodies using 12-tone modules that don’t sound like they’re 12-tone compositions. First I think melodically, not just numbers and math. But within those modules, you’ll hit on a section where it sounds like there’s consonant chordal harmony or a lydian thing for a minute.
I use stacked major sevenths a fourth apart quite a bit. You’ll hear it in a lot of my compositions. And then it’s a matter of extraction and if I’m gonna have something repeating or deal with some kind of harmonic situation. I’ll extract from that simple harmony and repeat it so it all comes from this nucleus of the melodic, seemingly-diatonic 12-tone situation (laughter).
I love this image of you constantly layering stuff, as you said earlier. Do you find it a challenge or does it come naturally to you nowadays?
It’s totally a challenge. Although I know how to do some stuff in a certain manner, I also have this thing where I’m always trying to find something that’s seemingly out of my grasp. It’s like I think I’m getting at it and then I make it and see it and hear it and it’s perfectly great, but there’s always the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. This is why I’m surrounded by modular synths, why I have these giant paintings I’m working on, why I have these rocks I roll around in the yard (laughter), why I buy strange peppers from the market here. It’s this constant quest of breakthroughs. It’s hard to explain but I want a breakthrough in something, be it in sound or vision or taste.
But it’s subtle. It’s not like I’m pulling my hair out. I have a good idea of what I can do now, which is a lot in different spectrums though I view all these different spectrums as one thing as well. It’s a constant search. I’m not into repeating myself and I don’t want to bore people with that. That’s why you’ll hear a Chicago Underground Quartet record where we’re playing songs and the next minute it’s something like noise and the next minute it’s minimal electric eels and the next minute it’s full-blown like Dimensional Stardust. All these titles aren’t just titles, either. It all has to do with the way things are moving.
I wanted to ask about the titles, actually. I know that some titles are listed as being parables. What’s the intention behind calling them parables?
I started using this idea of “galactic parables.” I’m very much into science fiction, the literature of Samuel R. Delany, Stanisław Lem—the great Polish writer, of course Solaris and all that but he’s written so many great books—and Octavia Butler as well.
I’ve been working with Damon Locks for a long time. I’m pretty good at coming up with what I consider to be interesting titles. I think the original thought was that we’ll use the idea of “parable” to expand on these titles. So I would give Damon the titles and he would make texts or parables based on the titles. And then it was like, ok let’s start announcing them in the songs. Galactic Parables: Volume 1 is I think when he started doing that. So the idea is that we collect these parables over a lifetime and that could be a book, and that book could be called The Book of Sound.
I’ve been thinking about The Book of Sound for years because I have this imaginary character called Helder Velasquez Smith. I was in Brasilia for a time, and I imagined this character who was somewhere between a Harry Smith, a Stan Brakhage, and a Jodorowsky. I wanted a character who was timeless, who was trying to find this hidden light source which is vibrant and alive and positive. I thought of this character as writing books, studying astronomy, composing music, making films, making paintings, studying the inside of the body, studying the soul, studying the universe and time travel. I kept adding to this idea as years went by.
I made a record a while ago with Dylan Van Der Schyff and Jason Roebke as Tigersmilk called Android Love Cry. There’s a quote on that record from Helder Velasquez Smith that talks about recreating this android and putting more human qualities in the android. The name of one of his main “imaginary” books is The Book of Sound. And when I say The Book of Sound, it doesn’t mean the book of “sound”; sound is an entity. It’s like in the center of the earth, reaching out into the farthest reaches of space—it’s like an invisible pole through the whole universe, a light source that everyone yearns to tap into to gain energy from.
So speaking of galactic parables, with all of these ideas that I’ve been working on for at least 15 years, it’s only fairly recently that they’ve been spoken by Damon Locks.
Obviously science fiction has been a big influence in your life—what do you feel is gained from incorporating these ideas into your music?
Science fiction or futurology or whatever you wanna call it, it’s all about what could be. It’s what could happen. Of course there are many scenarios that are very dystopian, and as you get deeper and deeper into science you realize that any of that stuff is possible. What’s exciting about it is the unknown. It’s about trying to think of scenarios or trying to break through a situation that feels deadlocked. We stand on this planet and there’s propensity for destruction, not only in humans but in animals and insects and plants as well—everything’s trying to stay alive. When you’re in the Amazon rainforest, which I had the privilege of being in a lot because I lived there, everything is fighting to survive. Even back before there were humans, there’s always been this thing of destruction, of one species trying to dominate another.
I like science fiction because I like to speculate about what could be. To go back to my statement earlier, I do this stuff not just to make things but because I’m trying to crack through something. It’s like, what are we really doing here? Is it simply a biological experiment that will end up however, that’ll end up like the dinosaurs? I like the idea of what could be and looking forward. I don’t like nostalgia. I don’t like getting caught up in, like, “Oh it’s ’80s night, I wanna go dancing.” (laughter). Create something new with this shit, you know what I’m saying?
I’m sitting in my living room and I’m thinking of what we’re talking about and right above me is The Golden Flute by Yusef Lateef, which is one of my favorite records of all time. I had the pleasure of playing with him for a couple concerts when I was in Brazil. Next to that record is the new Autechre record [SIGN]. What’s more futuristic than Autechre? They’ve created a whole universe and it’s so amazing. I’m looking at these two records and I’m like, that’s the shit. You learn from the masters, and then you take it somewhere else. You have to. That’s why I like science fiction, and of course a lot of people say reality is science fiction, but reality is reality. It’s science fiction-like. But where can you take it, what can you break open in the galaxial equilibrium to see a little more clearly. Even all of that stuff is in relationship to love and bringing a powerful and calm light.
Do you feel like learning things from one medium helps you grow in another one?
Oh, absolutely.
Do you mind sharing when you’ve seen that sort of thing happen. I know it may be abstract.
You’re dealing with the same kind of information. Instead of using notes, chords, intervals, space, time… well, you can use those same principles in a painting. How do you space things? How do you layer things? How do you balance a painting? There are paintings where I tend to trap light between two black areas. How do you make a chord sound like that? A bunch of paintings I’ll cut up as strips and tie them together and see what form it makes. This form also has the possibility to be lyrical. I think very deeply about all the paintings I make. If it makes a sound to me, if it resonates, it’s good. Until that happens, it’s still in the production stage.
When I’m coming back and forth between both of the studios—my painting studio is in an unattached building outside of the house, and the music studio is inside—I’ll bring what I did there into the music room. So a typical day is that I wake up and go to the music room. I start off with what I call a morning drone. I turn on all the synthesizers—the modulars and stuff—and I find a configuration of sound, an interval, a resonance, that sets the tone for the house. Sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes it takes an hour. When that happens, I make the coffee. The sound happens all day.
Then I go out to the art studio, and I take the synthesized sound in my head out with me. I think in terms of how I made that inside the music room and how that could be translated to color, form, layers, line. I’ve been thinking of granular synthesis so I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with spray. I did lithographs in France where I did this spray technique on the stone, and then copied that and shifted it so it’d be 3D. It’d be things like this. There’s a sound in the middle of that, that resonates.
What happened a few days ago was that I was making my own acrylic paints. I forgot that I had this fluorescent green from Sennelier, this great maker of dry pigment in Paris. I added that to the forest green and that green just popped like a motherfucker (laughter). It was like, oh my god. You didn’t just see it, you could feel it. It’s not just a technical exercise; it’s an exercise in the existential. It has to do with more than what it is, at least for me. And then I’ll bring that feeling back inside and play long tones on the trumpet or the cornet or the piccolo trumpet.
Oftentimes when I’m doing something in the studio with the modulars or the brass instruments, I’ll reach my left hand over to the piano, which is a charged instrument in itself—I inherited it from Bill Dixon—I’ll put it on the piano to see if I can find intervals and chords I’m not consciously thinking of. I’ll try to match, without looking. I can of course hear the intervals but I try to match that same fluorescent green color I hit upon outside. I don’t know if that’s a good example but that’s how it goes all day and night around here.
It’s totally interwoven.
It is. And then when I have to eat, I’ll be like, “I have a lemon and a chicken wing and orange bitters… what am I gonna do with this?” (laughter). It all goes together, and it’s the only way I work now.
I love that.
It hasn’t been just “one thing or the other.” I get questions about how I can focus my energy on painting and then composing but it’s like, no, painting is composing and composing or playing notes is painting, or cooking, or sculpting.
You’ve talked about always being on this quest, so I’m wondering, what do you feel like you did on Dimensional Stardust? How do you feel like you’ve gone one step forward?
I think on this record I was able to take disparate things and put it in this cohesive statement. These things are from seemingly, fairly different ways of organizing, and they make this whole. It’s about what I can kind of physically and existentially project at this moment in time. That’s an interesting question because I do feel like I’ve hit on something with this record.
Whether it’s a painting or a composition, the thing has to lift. I want people to experience the thing and feel like they can levitate with it. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, it’s just my goal. I want them to feel like the light is coming through and that everything is cool and that there is energy. I feel like I’ve reached that somewhat on this record. And I’m using a lot of things that I talked about earlier. The first composition on the record is dealing with these 12-tone things I was talking about, as well as the influence of Bartók and Boulez and minimalism, Philip Glass, etc.
I feel like I was able to use all these elements that I’ve been speaking about, whether it’s 12-tone or repeating things or the stacking of different instruments. A lot of things are in twos on this record: there are two flute parts, two violin parts, two cello parts, two trumpet parts, three drum parts, two piano parts. I was thinking a lot in terms of doubling sounds to make them bigger, which is not a new idea. I use it contrapuntally but also in unison. On some of these things there’s seven or eight parts all moving in a different way on each section. But if you listen to it, it doesn't sound like there are eight parts moving.
I want the complexity of the writing to be transparent. I’m not into complexity for complexity’s sake. With the 12-tone stuff in this music, there’s some interesting intervals and tricky lines and things happening. And then it hits a point where it’s absolutely tonal and sounds very simple. But oftentimes when it’s moving, it’s moving upwards while the rest stays the same, like in the last composition, [“Autumn Pleiades”]. The bassline and drums are just in there and it just stays there, and the instruments just keep repeating and this whole string section comes in and keeps moving up and up until Damon says the last line.
I guess I’m giving a very long answer to… something (laughter). But on the record it’s this whole idea—and maybe it’s pulled off here more than on any of my other records—that from beginning to end it keeps ramping up. Not in complexity, though. The most complex thing on the record is the first song [“Sun Core Tet (Parable 99)”]. It’s about lifting, it’s about light energy. Of course I don’t sit down and say I’m gonna write a 12-tone composition, it just happens because that’s how I think now; it’s a part of me. Am I answering your question?
Yeah, you are.
Okay, yeah, that’s a tough one.
What’s next, then? What do you still want to accomplish on future albums, or is it just pressing into this idea even more?
I have multiple compositions happening right now. There are three or four things that are 90% done. This means they’re on the cusp of something, and I just need to spend a little more time on them to make them resonate. So, I’m taking my time with that. I definitely hear some of this new material as being for a larger group or for a chamber orchestra. There are other things too, like building sound on the modular and regular synths. I’ve been using MIDI quite a bit, trying to build mammoth resonance that can cut through the cloud of deceit that seems to be all around us. Of course, a lot of that is coming from the incredibly fucked-up political situation. Hopefully we can push away from that. A cloud has been lifted which is wonderful.
There’s plenty of beauty and wonderful things happening in this world too and, I’m sure, in the universe. I just want to add to that and get this resonance that people can hear and gain positive energy from. I think with all the records I’ve done, I’ve had that in mind. And with Dimensional Stardust, it’s especially rich in this idea. I hope that’s just the beginning of pushing this resonance into a more positive, beautiful light. Is that too esoteric?
No, it’s all good.
As you can tell, I believe in all this stuff.
You believe in it and you take it seriously.
Yeah, I believe in it. I believe in everything, even the most evil things. The problem with evil entities is that they don’t believe in you. That’s the difference. I’m totally an advocate for getting rid of all separation. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting too emotional there.
What do you mean when you say you believe in evil but it doesn’t believe in you? Can you provide an example?
Yeah, sure. It’s like these fucking Trump supporters... Trump openly says that he doesn’t like people and that they suck and are evil. If you’re in a position of any kind of power, you have to use that power to help everybody, you know? One example would be if someone came up to me and said, “I don’t like you!” And I might not like this person either, but my stance is always going to be, “You might not like me, but I love you.” You know what I mean? Or it could be like, “You might not think I’m your brother, but I am your brother.” Think about that. That’s what I’m talking about.
Of course, if everybody did that then there’d be no evil (laughter). You know what I’m saying? I’m not trying to change that person, I’m telling them that I’m all for them. You might not be all for me, but I am all for you. Can you imagine how that’d feel to somebody if you told them that? I’m convinced that if that was the mindset of everybody that there wouldn’t be any separation. Of course that’s easier said than done. If someone’s shooting at me, then that’s a different story. This is all in theory. Not having been confronted with that or having been in war or being in a situation where your person has been oppressed and fucked with forever. Do you know what I mean?
It’s sort of like an unconditional love that you’re offering to people.
Exactly. And it’s almost impossible with these assholes in the government. And we could get into talking about evangelicals and everything. It’s insanity how these people are not practicing what supposedly they are preaching. I try to do exactly that with the sound and the art and everything. With my art, you might not like it, but this is designed to give you energy and light. That’s why it exists.
Thanks for sharing all that.
Maybe it’s a little too much.
Nah, it’s not too much.
It’s all or nothing for me, man (laughter). You’re gonna get everything.
Is there anything that you’re into that people wouldn’t expect you to be into? That you haven’t talked about really?
Ribbon dancing.
Ribbon dancing? Oh my god. That’s amazing.
Me and my wife [Britt Mazurek] keep buying ribbons. We haven’t had dinner parties this past year, but we’re known for having the dinner party where after a few glasses of wine, we get towards the hour of midnight and the moon’s out and we’re like, “Who wants to ribbon dance?” Of course everyone is like, “What are you talking about?” (laughter). But once everybody starts doing it, they love it.
It’s about using the ribbons to draw in space and it depends on the color and the brightness of the moon. It’s a wonderful thing to close the evening out. It’s dance, it’s about drawing its shape, about form and movement. It’s probably the last thing you would’ve expected to hear but I’m so into it, man.
Is this something you and your wife decided to get into it together?
I think I was first. I think at one moment I said, “You know, I think I like ribbon dancing!” I think I was watching the Olympics or something and it’s just beautiful… the nimbleness. They’re acrobats. What was more thrilling to me was how they would do these routines for the Olympics or for these competitions, they would do it to some of the most insanely horrible music (laughter). I noticed that they never danced to anything super cool or hip or weird. It’d be so amazing if they danced to a Björk song! Or something Jim O’Rourke made. Halfway to a Threeway? That would be amazing!
Of course that would never happen, but then I thought… what If I did that? So we ordered some ribbons and put on some Mouse on Mars to see what’d happen. And it was so much fun and it was exhilarating. I also like to paint very large paintings, so I like to use the whole body and the whole spectrum of my movement, which is like 7 or 8 feet if I lift up my arms.
I made these paintings called the Meteorite series. I brought them out one night when there was a full moon and I dipped the ribbons in the paint and had the canvas out, which was like 30 feet or something. I went at it for hours with the ribbons, and I had rocks I dipped in the paint, and I would roll as well. I just felt so good, man. Afterwards I bought some small meteorites and I filed them to get meteorite dust and had that in some of the paintings. But that was just one extension of the original idea of, “Let’s ribbon dance to some experimental music!”
And then it got to a point where you didn’t need music, because the ribbons make such a beautiful sound themselves. It’s very slight but the way it snaps and moves through the air… I have to say, man, I’m a ribbon dancer.
I’m so into it.
I guess that would be the best example. I could probably give you more but I don’t want to scare you (laughter). Ribbon dancing is one of my passions.
Would you ever want to incorporate that in a live performance?
In some of these livestream things I’m doing from my studio, I came close to picking them up but because there isn’t so much room there, but also how you do something and how you present a thing is very tricky. I didn’t want it to be funny, although… it is funny (laughter). But there’s a time and a place. I want to do it in such a way that it’s interesting first. If it was fun or funny after that, then okay.
I love the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra and I love the idea of costume and everything. I love mixing the theatrical stuff with sound and everything. Even when I’m painting sometimes I’m like, “Can I wear this thing?” I made a whole series of masks once when I did these black and white paintings.
So far, it’s been a situation where I haven’t been able to make the idea of it to be the thing first. Like, when you see the Art Ensemble or Sun Ra, you’re not laughing at them, you’re like, “Whoa, this is wild.” And then it’s interesting because you start getting into the intricacies of why they’re dressed that way.
I’m super into Japanese cinema and the color of royalty is always gold, red, and purple. Purple always symbolizes a higher thing but how do you make red, purple, and gold not seem… like I said before, I’m not into separation. Everyone should be able to wear purple or gold or red. Of course, if it’s 1400 and you’re in Japan, you’d get your head cut off. You can’t wear a purple kimono (laughter). A guy would come and kill your family or something. Anyways, all this plays into thinking about how you change these paradigms. You’re making me go in all directions.
I love it. It’s good.
Recently I discovered this director, King Hu, he did A Touch of Zen. I think Tarantino was really influenced by his movies. There’s this King Hu movie I just saw for the first time last night, Legend of the Mountain. The way he uses his effects works on a magical level that’s unbelievable. I’ve only seen one other film like that, it was in Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema box set. And there’s Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. Zatoichi’s my hero, man. He’s incredible. He’s part of the yakuza but he does good for everybody. He tries to make everything right.
Anyways, I watched A Touch of Zen last night and [spoilers ahead; a note of when spoilers end is mentioned below] in the movie there are these Zen monks who live in the monastery on the mountain. The head of these monks is super badass, super relaxed. People are trying to kill people and he’s just putting his hand out and they go flying back and shit. Beautiful.
Towards the end of the movie, there’s this particularly evil character who keeps trying to fuck with him, keep trying to kill him. It becomes super obvious that this guy’s gonna do anything, and then he does. At the end of the movie, this evil guy gets on his knees and says to the head Zen monk that he’s repenting and wants to come into the monastery. He’s seen the light and wants to dedicate the rest of his life to this Zen practice. As the Zen master monk goes to grab his hand to pull him up from his knees, the evil guy stabs him.
I was like, “This is unbelievable. This is the worst movie ending in the universe.” (laughter). I was like crying. And then this director is cool with how he’s editing and using smoke and light. And there’s some negative film stuff. The Zen monk was walking up a hill, slowly, and all this psychedelic stuff is happening and at this point he’s not facing the camera. He pulls the knife out of his stomach and he’s bleeding fucking gold. He’s not an emperor, and he’s not an arrogant monk, he’s just a badass fucking monk. He’s bleeding gold! And I thought that was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.
Then he goes walking up the hill and you can’t figure out if he’s going to die or not but he sits on top of this mountain for a few moments and in the last moment of the film he stands up, which I took as him having reconstituted his inner body in this righteous way, and that he would continue. And at this point I was the happiest guy in the universe! I was like “Oh my god that is the most amazing ending!” (laughter).
[spoilers end]
Those movies and the Zatoichi series… I’ve been into Tōru Takemitsu’s music for a long time and have studied it. But even before I visited Japan and the Japanese gardens, I was thinking about what he talked about with them. With how you place a stone and how moss grows over a certain area, how a leaf falls in a certain way, and how he composes with this in mind. That has been a gigantic influence on me in how to put sound together.
With a few of the compositions on this record, I move with intervals in a slower manner during the intros, and I was definitely thinking of architecture, of placing things in an environment, and it’s because of Tōru Takemitsu. And he’s also how I got into Japanese cinema.
Also, I bought a bokken [a Japanese wooden sword], man (laughter). I got this wood bokken from this specialty maker somewhere and I had them inscribe ‘energy’ on the side of it. So along with the ribbon dancing, one of my favorite things as well is to do some bokken training in the yard. It feels good and there’s a certain physicality to that I really like. I don’t really feel like I want to fight or even spar anyone; I just like the idea of being under the moon and making these moves and cutting space. It feels like I’m cutting space and time. I know you didn’t ask for a second thing that people wouldn’t know about me (laughter). That was a very long-winded story all to say that I enjoy wielding the bokken (laughter).
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