#nmperign

Nmperign / Jason Lescalleet - Love Me Two Times

After essentially two decades, it seems almost contrary to supposition for a musician/composer who’s had his hand in so many pots to be only now announcing his “first” solo (electronic) album.

Of course, Rainey’s done a ton of collaborating throughout his generally improvisation-minded career, and From null lands led, starrily — the new album out October 2 courtesy of the dynamic Anòmiaoutfit —…

so bummed i won't be able to see bhob rainey this year. a true visionary. since i won't be able to attend his performance due to work .. i'll post here an interview i did for a fanzine that was never published. this interview was written sometime in 2007.  ********************************************************** 

Bhob Rainey's music is difficult to describe to the uninformed. He tends to be one of those performers who needs to experienced to be truly appreciated or even partially understood. His kean ear for raw sound can at times seem unrivaled - he's been known in his solo soprano saxophone performances to treat the ambient room sounds - perhaps a buzzing light fixture... or humming air conditioner - as a partner in a duet rather than an annoyance to be played over. Mark Sarich, cellist, composer, and curator of the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, often cites Rainey as a prime influence on his writing. He has recently contributed to a compilation project entitled "Music Overheard". The first disc, on which he plays solo soprano, asks the question of how the instrumentalist reacts after being exposed to electronic/electro acoustic music. How the indelible impact of these sounds in modern music effects their playing. A concept custom made to his approach to playing.

But aside from being a pivital figure in 21st century free improvisation, Bhob is also a tremendous storyteller, Neil Hamburger fan, and all around hilarious and approachable guy. Thanks again to Bhob for taking time out for this interview.

Q.) briefly explain how nmperign began. how crucial has greg's (kelley) support been throughout your years of playing together as it relates to growing as an artist/composer/improviser.

I'm pretty sure I've told my version of how nmperign started elsewhere. As far as Greg's influence on me, let's just say HUGE. I certainly have had other influences and ideas that I'd like to think are unique to me, but there's a huge part of what I do that is not easily separable from the influence playing with and knowing Greg has had on me.

Q.) if you could only suggest one nmperign recording to somebody to represent the group, which release would be the most vital? this leads me to a further question: what for you qualifies as a quality recording of free improvisation?

Probably whatever the next one is. But, for duo work, the LP "We Devote Every Effort to Offer You the Best You Deserve to Have for Your Enjoyment" is my personal favorite, and "Love Me Two Times" is maybe the perfect documentary of our work with Jason Lescalleet during our first five years together.

In recordings, I listen for compelling musical content and a piece of the energy that went into making the music - something that reveals the process without using the process as an excuse. Interestingly, I think some judicious editing can highlight the spontaneity of improvised music on recording and make the music speak better through a set of speakers pointed at your couch as you sit there trying to quietly crunch potato chips. I also like to hear a certain character in the recorded sounds: maybe a special sounding room or a particular fidelity that colors the music and situates it in space and time. That said, I have no hard and fast rules except I want to be able to listen to something over and over again and still hear some magic. 

Q.) from previous conversations i understand you to be an avid fiction reader. what are you reading now (or what have you read lately), and what influence, if any, does literature have on your playing/composing?

I picked up a copy of _Sacred Games_ by Vikram Chandra in lieu of the recent Thomas Pynchon. I was hoping for something contemporary, ambitious, and labyrinthine, but was skeptical that I would find Pynchon as enchanting as I did when I was 23. A few hundred pages in, I'm not sure I got what I was looking for. _Sacred Games_, though unquestionably contemporary, has a heavy, 19th century feel to it, bogged down with psychological clues and family histories that I could do without (though they may be necessary to the novel).

Still, I'll finish it. I'm frankly happy to be reading fiction again. After a couple years of being uninspired to pass page 10 of anything literary, I've been on a streak with _No Country for Old Men_ (McCarthy), _Headlong_ (Frayn), _The Ark Sakura_ (Abe), _The Twenty-Seventh City_ (Franzen), and a few short stories and novellas along the way (including the devastating _Dark Spring_ by Unica Zürn). Mostly, the stuff is good company and a great defense against the TV when my head is too jumbled to do any more work. But I can't say exactly how it affects my music. Generally, any good experience I have with art makes me want to make more art. Reading might also be a supplement to the friends you keep; another voice that drives you and sets a higher standard for your own work. Apparently, Wayne Shorter was asked for advice on becoming a better musician, and his answer was "Read, read, read."

Q.) i also understand you work with computers for a living. does your technological knowledge play a role in some of your electro-acoustic work? do you approach playing the saxophone differently from working with electronics, or do you have a similar mentality or overall effect you're trying to present with both media?

I would prefer to think that my musical life affects my programming work. I'm certainly not a traditional programmer. My coding style is pretty intuitive and improvisational. That said, a lifetime of playing a mechanical instrument designed specifically for making music yields a very different approach from the still quite slow and clunky world of computer music programming. My approach to computer-generated sounds is similar to my approach to field recording: I tend to work with environments exhibiting random/chaotic behavior and observe them. In the digital domain, that translates to a certain amount of savvy programming, but I don't think it's too far from the preparation involved in capturing sounds from the outside world. In both cases, you have your experience, your gear, your ears, and some luck to guide you towards something compelling. You may have to sneak around an active beehive or brave the cobwebs of your mind to find the math you haven't used in decades; either way, you end up crawling into unexpected corners for sounds that might light up your imagination.

No doubt that playing the saxophone also involves creative listening and circumspection, but it is so very much a physical activity that it can hardly be compared to sound gathering or computer programming. It's closer to wrestling or tightrope walking and, for me, is a considerably more invigorating process. Despite all the frustrations inherent in playing an instrument, I find it endlessly fulfilling, even when the music is not so hot. That's not the case with me and the computer.

Q.) keeping on the topic of your electro-acoustic work, you recently released a stunning album in collaboration with ralf wehowsky titled, "i don't think i can see you tonight." explain how this collaboration came to be, and what you had in mind with its creation.

This collaboration probably started the first time I heard Ralf Wehowsky's music and thought, Damn, that's fine! I put a bug in Ralf's ear around 1999, and, two years later, he approached me to say that he was ready to begin. The two of us happened to be making significant musical transitions around that time (I had decided that I would be working quite seriously with electronic sounds and field recordings), so the project started slowly and carefully with some inevitable duds but also with a sense of naive exploration that ultimately brought out music neither of us could have predicted at the outset.

As far as having something in mind, we had to do some waiting. We needed to find something that would get us excited to do more. I think the real beginning was a vaudevillian saxophone improvisation, followed by Ralf's compelling tape collage of it. From there, it was about listening to what we had and figuring out where it wanted to be, what it implied, how it could work in a broader context. Not that it was a terribly simple process, but I personally find it much easier to work from a strong, existing proposition than from zero. This is not so much different from improvisation, where a more than adequate silence is constantly ruined by a problematic noise, and the more perplexing the problem, the greater the potential for rich music.

Q.) lets discuss your saxophone playing for a moment. what originally inspired you to start playing, "outside the box", so to speak? who were major influences early on for you? what types of exercises do you do to maintain the level of control you exhibit in your live performances.

I have always been attracted by timbre. Really, for me, it was about slowly opening gates to types of music that really exploited, even relied on, timbre. I didn't grow up with the internet and was not exposed to some of the heroic catalogs and 'zines that advocated adventurous music around that time. So, I began discovering things in the music library at the University of Miami: Webern, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Babbitt, Martino, a ton of Ornette Coleman, Weather Report, Takemitsu; anything that might blow my mind. I got into free improvisation through musicians like John Coltrane and Paul Bley and missed the entire European improvisation movement until it was too late to be significantly influenced by it.

Later, I studied with Joe Maneri, whose music was a revelation: complex, studied, absolutely modern and yet dripping with guts. I set out on an obsessive study of microtones that led to a new relationship with the saxophone. I felt like a kid with a fingering chart trying to figure out how to play the thing, except I didn't have a fingering chart. On the way, I found microtonal fingerings that produced pleasant timbral shifts and unexpected multiphonics. I was beginning to make the sounds I had been hearing in my head. I found fewer and fewer reasons to think of music as rhythm, melody, and harmony. It was becoming timbre, character, time, memory. Or something like that. No sum of nouns will get to the core of music, but this shift in thinking was significant enough to drive me "out of the box". As Joe commented, "When Bhob first started studying with me, he was 90 years old. Now, he's about five."

I keep in shape with tried and true, mundane exercises, mostly long tones and overtones. Balancing that with a good deal of performing and recording generally leaves me feeling pretty limber. I'm often reminded of a (perhaps apocryphal) story where Dave Liebman, during his stint with Miles Davis in the 70's, told Elvin Jones that he was getting sick of his own playing. Elvin replied, "Man, you ain't sick enough!" When you get sick of all your little tricks and idiosyncrasies, you stand a better chance of focusing on what the music means to you.

Q.) many young and aspiring free improvisers such as myself look to more experienced masters of the craft for advice and guidance, what do you think is the most important advice you can give to those who are just learning the art form?

Find out what you really want to make with your life. Look for your own desire, not some inherited, prescribed desire. Don't worry about whether something is cool or whether you will be perceived as weak or incompetent. Pursue what appears to be your truth. Make it a priority and you will seek out the technical skills to realize it. Take risks, make tons of mistakes and feel bad about them. Don't be intimidated by knowledge, and be prepared to feel that everything you thought before was wrong.

Q.) all right, now a question so folks don't think this is completely heady/nerdy/intellectual interview (and because i doubt anyone's ever asked); teenybopper time : what's your favorite ice cream flavor, and why?

If someone can make ice cream so chocolately that I forget everything else it's made of (cream, sugar, coldness), I'm happy. Unless it's transcendental Italian gelato, forget the fruit. Ice cream can maybe attract my attention with a lot of textures, but that rarely wins my undying love.

Q.) thanks again bhob for the interview, real quickly let us know what is on the horizon for you and what info listeners should be privy to.

Currently, I'm working on a collaborative project with Jason Lescalleet. We're still in the early stages, but already we're in unfamiliar territory and loving it. I'm also just about finished doing arrangements for Damon and Naomi's upcoming album. This time, we've added strings and oboe to the sax and trumpet parts, and the arrangements are more involved than on the previous album. Should be delicious. Personally, I've been working to put together a very small studio for recording acoustic instruments. That's pretty much done, and new solo, nmperign, and other duo recordings should start to surface in the coming months. Whether any of those will be released is uncertain and is not really a concern of mine right now.