ZS

Ivory Tower

By Eric Doyle

Brooklyn rooted avant/rock group hails from New York's thriving experimental scene, members of Zs perform and collaborate with other virtuosic artists like Mick Barr, Weasal Walter, Dave Longstreth, and John Zorn while keeping other projects, including solo projects afloat (Little Women, Yarn/Wire, Extra Life, Regattas). They've released albums on Troubleman Unlimited, Planaria, Zum, Gilgongo, Tzadik, and CardboardRecords. I caught them on their last tour with lead guitarist Charlie Looker who has recently left the band to pursue his solo project Extra Life. I spoke with Charlie and Sam about their music and how they perceive it.

Who composes the bulk of your pieces? Do you guys jam or improvise to find parts?

Charlie: We used to each individually write completely finished, fully notated pieces, bring them in and learn them. Now we write more collaboratively. We talk things out, come up with parts by improvising, etc. It has more of a "rock band" m.o. now, although we still use notation.

Ian: In the past, one member would bring in an entire composition, with parts copied out and all (usually on 11"x17" card-stock). We wrote the current set together though (the bulk of it at Sam's parent's house in D.C.). The material comes from us improvising together for some of the sections, and also group writing around the kitchen table.

What should a riff or motif consist of? Could you please explain the composition methods for Zs music?

Charlie: I don't think of what we do as "riffs", more as "repetition". There isn't any essential difference at all of course, but to me a riff means something which happens maybe 4 or 8 times. We rarely do that. Our earlier music would hardly ever repeat at all. The pieces tended towards a flow of continuous but self-similar variation. The flipside of this is that when we repeat, we repeat material many many times, so the section becomes a big block. We often refer to long repeating sections as "panels", I suppose in reference to Modernist art. Anyway, to me the role repetition plays in Zs is not about "settling in" to something. The vibe should be unsettling and trance-inducing.

Sam: I try and listen to the material. You start out with some stuff that you come up with and if you look hard enough at it the stuff will propose a direction. I try to go into the material, not away from it, use a really limited amount of stuff and go through it and focus on different aspects of it, and write stuff that brings out the character of what I'm working with. I have said to people that I'm like a guidance councilor for the material I happen to be working with, I like that way of putting it. I try to be really sensitive to the material and let it do what it wants; I try to leave myself out of it. I'm trying to do something for music not have music do something for me. There are absolutely no systems or crystallized methods of any kind; just intuition, sensitivity, and follow-through. Matt writes music where you have split your attention in like 5 different directions to be able to lock up correctly with the ensemble. One eye is on someone's foot, one eye is on someone else's head, you have to count, play, and do other stuff with your body because someone else is looking at you for a cue. The only way to do something like that is to totally turn the mind off. The way I use my mind when I play is less like a mathematician and more like a basketball player who can shoot 3 pointers time after time and get them every time. I don't get it every time but I'm working on it. The point is it comes from memorizing a group of sensations you associate with certain experiences and internalizing the information and then acting from a place of instinct not intellect.

Ian: I've actually never really thought of any of the Zs music as 'riffs' before, but then again, I'm coming at the music from more of a contemporary classical angle than a rock angle. I think of repeated material in the Zs set as loops. I guess a distinction between the two that I would make (and this is plays a big part in our current set), is that loops we play often generate material that follows, or that material that ends up being looped is a fragment of a previous through-composed section.

What is your musical education history? Institutional or self-taught?

Charlie: All the Zs guys know each other from Manhattan School of Music except me. I went to ....Wesleyan.. ..University..... I majored in music. But, Wesleyan is a liberal arts place not a conservatory so it's kind of a different environment, not as technically rigorous, more book-ish and humanistic. Most of the technical nuts and bolts I know about music, music theory, composition and guitar I taught myself, with occasional private lessons and consultations with a few deep gurus (Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier).In the end however, I think that no matter how deep one goes or doesn't go into institutional education, real knowledge always comes from within. All knowledge is do-it-yourself. One can interface with academia as much or as little as one wants, but nothing sticks or works if it doesn't speak to immediate experience, personal constitution, and real action, things which are always completely unique to the individual. The RZA says, "You have to DO the knowledge". I think real knowledge is active and emanates outwards from people intensely engaging their life; it's not an object to be consumed passively.Asking about education is particularly relevant to Zs because the sheet music, the sitting down, the saxophone and the relative complexity of the music, all scream out "schoooool"! In fact, education is usually the first thing people ask us about when they talk to us after shows. For me, Zs is doing something subversive with education and with people's ideas about education and knowledge. I think what we do with our training is a real challenge to the passive knowledge-consumer role which the ivory tower tends to offer students. I think this speaks to people because education is always bound up intimately with Power in general, and I think people enjoy seeing elements of school and education playfully fucked with. So I think there is a political current in the music as well, although it's not blatant or specifically topical. It seems that punk was/is often about rejecting the idea of education or knowledge, hating its institutional and hierarchical nature. I definitely can relate to this. However, nowadays so many kids who have a punk/DIY orientation do go to college, and actually finish with honors. And I personally had a blast at college. So I think Zs' participation in the scene we're in is relevant to the idea of subversion as an alternative to rejection of the world of institutionally produced knowledge (all due respect to dropouts of course, that's still super-relevant too!)

Sam: I've done all that school shit. I was studying from age 12 on, I was in college in high school and all that, went to a conservatory, and even entered a graduate program where I finally blew it off. School is good for accruing information and ability but art generally goes there to die. If you're not careful you can get shook by what people tell you and end up buried in a bunch of shit that is really beside the point. I've met a number of professors who are really depressing characters. One of them told me I had to choose between playing an instrument and composing. At the moment people look at school as something you can legitimately be doing like it's a job or something. If a barber went to school and only stayed in school and never worked at a shop or anything we wouldn't think of that person as real barber. The same goes for musicians as far as I am concerned. But, when you get up there in the higher levels of education you meet all these people that just want to stay in school forever. It's really sad and it was draining me spiritually so I got away from it. Morton Feldman put it best, "someone can be getting their tenure and be a drop out in art." Amen.

Ian: I did my undergraduate work at the Manhattan School of Music. I went there first to train as a classical percussionist with the hopes of one day playng in an orchestra. Towards the end of my time there, I became really interested in contemporary music and decided to pursue that instead. I'm at SUNY Stony Brook now, in the doctorate program. I've been in school a long time, but I've had only great expeirences, and in a few years I'll be done.






Your new album "Arms" has been released and nominated for a PLUG award. How was the studio experience?

Charlie: The studio experience was amazing. Colin Marston (Time of Orchids, Behold the Arctopus) is a master. I am more psyched about this record than anything I've ever been involved in.

Ian: The studio experience was great. Colin Marston is amazing in the studio! He was totally on our page the entire week we were in there - the album really sounds like it does because of him. I'm not sure what I would have done differently in the studio. Since the album isn't out yet and the whole thing is still kind of recent, I don't really have the distance I need yet to reflect, but I'd say the album release is what I'm most excited about in the next few months!

Tell me about your other projects, how they are different?

Charlie: I have a brand new solo project called Extra Life, which I'm touring with starting in February 2008. Ian play drums for it.

Sam: I play in a few improvised music projects and solo as Regattas. But Regattas does other stuff too w/ the trombonist Ben Gerstein as Moth, and with weasel Walter and Mick Barr of the Flying Luttenbachers and Orthrelm respectively as Walter/Hillmer/Barr. All of these groups work on developing a repore as improvisers. I also play with the Scenery Ensemble and the S.E.M. Ensemble which are more on the classical tip. The Scenery Ensemble is basically devoted to interdisciplinary stuff. We do a lot of work with a theater company in ....New York.... called The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf and also do some chamber music stuff. We're doing some of Charlie's music tomorrow night. I also am just about to start working with the out pop act Dirty Projectors. Dave Longstreth is an old friend, he just moved to ....New York.... and it looks like Charlie and I are joining the band. I am excited to be a sideman for once!!!

Ian: I'm in a percussion duo called 'Hunter-Gatherer', with Russell Greenberg (of Hi Red Center). So far, its straight-up classical chamber music (the other guys in Zs have written us pieces), but we're also going to do some writing ourselves and probably do some loft shows and mini-tours in the near future. The other project I work on a bunch is a two piano, two percussion quartet called 'Yarn/Wire'. We play classics of the genre as well as new compositions, many of them involving live electronics.

Has there been much hostility at shows from the audience in the past tours? What was the show you felt most out of place?

Charlie: It's weird, we never experience hostility! When we started this band, I thought we were going to get beat up after shows, but people dig it, even in random places where you wouldn't expect it. I think no matter how esoteric or rarefied your music is, if you present it to people in a positive, respectful, non-condescending way, it's likely that they'll get on your page. It's good to give people some credit.

Ian: This is my first large tour with Zs (I joined right after the last tour in 2003). I've never encountered hostility at a Zs show! We occasionally get some heckling, but it has always been good-natured. Sometimes before we play, I'll think to myself "this may not go over well here...", but it seems that if we present our stuff in a positive, non-confrontational way, people get into it.

How has your music caused you to personally grow?

Charlie: For me it's hard to answer this question because the music I'm involved
in is completely non-separate from my entire sense of my being in the world. I can't say that it affects me or my life, because it constitutes my life and self-hood on the most basic level. For me music isn't a hobby OR a profession. It's a way of being in the world. All emotional, spiritual, political, social and erotic currents which flow through me flow through the music at exactly the same time. Or at least that's the vibe I'm trying to get to...

Sam: Too deep...

Ian: My favorite thing in life is performing, and playing with Zs is a highlight of my performing life. Getting to know the people I'm playing with - their tendencies, strenghts, intuitions, unique time-feel, etc..., is really amazing, and I think the intensity of that process encourages the most growth in me. EG

zzzsss.com

http://www.myspace.com/zstheband