Rob Mazurek - Future Sounds and Abstract Sonics

Aside from being label-mates on Thrill Jockey, and being two of the most interesting, challenging acts on the Chicago fakejazz scene, both bands share Rob Mazurek, who plays cornet and handles electronics in each. I had the good fortune of sitting down with Rob for a few minutes in the plush Knitting Factory, Hollywood, to get the skinny.

We've all heard about the van crash, is everybody recovered from that?

No, actually Dan, one of the drummers hit his head pretty hard against the window had a bunch of stitches, some muscle neck trauma. So that was like really a drag. He played with us last night in San Francisco, but he's not going to join us until Phoenix... He has stitches all over his head and face and neck and muscle neck trauma and stuff. He got his mouth bashed in too. His tongue is swollen, and he had a really hard time swallowing food for a couple of weeks, and they thought it might be permanent damage, but since it's getting better it's probably not permanent.

What about your equipment? Did it survive?

All except Matt's bass. Matt also broke three ribs. The neck on his bass snapped. Everything else came out OK. We're all super, super lucky.

On the Isotope 217 website there is a description of the band as being an "eclectic avant funk ensemble dedicated to the Phonometric system of universal thought" or "a freewheeling trans-moleculer unit dedicated to the betterment of all worlds."

Or both.

Would you care to define "Phonometrics?"

Phonometrics is an actual concept that Erik Satie, a great French composer came up with. It just has to do with measuring sound on the metric system.

Is there a process by which it is employed?

We employ it freely so we're not . . . well I shouldn't say that, a lot of our music is thoroughly composed and real precise, some of it, and the other half of our music is totally abstract, what we like to call "abstract sonics." The Japanese word is "onkyo." But as far as the actual measurement of sound, we all do it in an improvisatory nature, in an organic type of way, not in a strict measurement type of way.

Does it allow for more freedom within the structure of the song?

Well, it kind of allows for both, it allows for more freedom, and it allows for less freedom. It's really just the groove, which is the same concept. When you're really disciplined I think that you become more free. It contracts and expands at the same time.

Comparing Isotope 217 with Chicago Underground, Isotope 217 seems to be more formal, more traditional, as opposed to Chicago Undergound which seems more varied, more free. Do you employ some of these ideas with Chicago Underground also?

Yeah, I think so. In different ways. What makes all the bands different is the interaction of the personalities involved, making the music. In Isotope, there's five people, so you have five people interacting and all the combinations of those five people interacting. In the Duo it's just me and Chad, so we have the perspective of two people's experience of life instead of five. In Isotope there's the possibility to multiply by that number. I can only respond to what Chad is doing in the Duo, and he can only respond to me. I get to respond to four different people sometimes simultaneously in Isotope.

I would have made the assumption that in Chicago Underground there would be more freedom as to where you could take the music because there are fewer people involved. But the way you describe it, it sounds like because there is more input coming from a larger group, the group dynamic creates greater possibilities.

I think it's both. One person can expand to infinity, and five people can constrict to nothing, as Isotope often does, as the Duo often does too. It's more of a time and space thing.

In your work with each of these two groups, do you see them as representing distinct sides of your musical persona or is there overlap? If you have an idea, do you say "this is an Isotope idea" or "this is something I'd rather do with Chicago Underground?"

Yeah, that usually happens. At least with the music that's written, it's completely from the perspective of the sound of the specific group. Me and Chad both know what the Duo sounds like. The Duo has a certain sound that we base everything off of within that context. And the same with Isotope. It took us a year to figure out even what that sound was. But when we figured it out, it was like "OK, this is what it sounds like." Now the challenge is trying to expand it. You know you can do it, now you want to try and do more than you can do, or less than you can do and see what happens.

Isotope 217's first record, The Unstable Molecule, has a more organic, live band feel than your later releases. You can easily identify the melodies and the rhythms, it's more straightforward. But with each subsequent release, the band seems to become more challenging, more varied, and using more electronics. Was this a conscious decision to take the music in a more challenging direction?

Not really. I mean yes and no. We never sit around and say "lets do this for this record" or "lets do this for this show." It's always just an expansion of what happened the previous time. We've got a more organic, evolving process. The stuff is getting more open and more free, and we trust each other more.

The change in sound from the second record, Utonian Automatic, to Who Stole the I Walkman is a very dramatic change. Is there anything particular that you can identify that precipitated that change?

Not really, once again it's just trying to expand on something, within the universal truth of what we're doing. The next record--we have a lot of new tunes we're playing on this tour--is going to be a lot different from Who Stole the I Walkman. It is by choice because that's what we're playing now, but it's not a conscious choice; it's how the chips are falling, how the notes are falling, how people's personalities are moving.

Do you have plans to get back in the studio with Isotope?

In the end of January. We'll finish up the tour in the end of January. We will have toured three months, the States, gone to Japan and back. We like to record after we've played 60-70 gigs. The only reason we're doing it is because--we're not doing it to make another record--we're doing because of all this stuff that is ready to go or will be ready to go. It's best to keep the momentum.

Jazz is a word you hear thrown around a lot when you talk about music, would you consider your work with Isotope 217 to be jazz or something different?

No, for me, there are just so many influences in the group that it's impossible to call it one thing. There are people in the group that have a pretty solid jazz background, there are people in the group that have a strong punk background, there are people in group that have a strong house background and all the things that go with that. Going back to that Japanese term, "onkyo," which means "abstract sonics," I think that's the only name of what we're doing that makes sense. When we were just in Japan last month, they hipped us to that. That's the work they use to describe most of the music that's coming out of Chicago right now. We asked "What does that mean?" They said, "Abstract sonics." We're like "Man, that's it!" That's all it is.

As I was preparing for this interview, I was reading the liner notes to Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters, where he talks about how before he made that record he was listening to Sly Stone and recognized something in that music that he wanted to do, but he instantly had an unconscious first reaction to the notion of playing funk, falling into the hierarchical mindset of placing jazz on a pedestal and putting rock and funk on a secondary level. This was about 30 years ago. Would you say that at this point, at the end of the 20th century, can we still make such hard distinctions between music categories?

Some people can; man, I can't. For me, it's just sound now. Sound is sound, whatever genre, where ever it's coming from, sound is sound. It either sounds good to a person, or it doesn't. That's all I'm concerned with, and that's all anyone in Isotope, the Duo, Chicago Underground, is concerned with. It's just all about sound, nothings better than anything else. There's only good sound, and there's bad sound. That's all there is. You can say "Oh well this is cool for Brazilian music" or whatever it is [referring to what is playing over the PA], but there's no reason to even go there. Does it sound good? It's just sound.

The notes on the back of the Chicago Underground Trio's record Possible Cube are about how, for that band, lines of demarcation have become lines of convergence. I had that in mind as I listened to Who Stole the I Walkman, and it seems as if Isotope 217 is not making efforts to cross boundaries so much as you are stepping back from that and play as if none of the boundaries ever existed. Was there any articulated intention to play this way?

It's completely organic. Whatever happens in the moment. How we approach things live, stuff people compose, ideas people bring into rehearsal, the way the group as a whole will deal with somebody's idea, add stuff, take stuff away, we're like communal. It's a communal type of thing. Sometimes someone will bring in a tune that's completely composed, beginning to end. But there's never a conscious thing. The only thing that's conscious is we really strive to hit as many different elements as possible that we consider applicable in the formation of sound: the use of harmony or non-harmony, or melody or non-melody, or free playing, or the way certain instruments go together, the idea of high pitch/low pitch. All those things come into play so we like to, especially for a record, we like to build something that is exciting all the way through, where you're going to hear something that is different, go "Holy shit, what's that?" Doesn't just sound like the traditional situation of guitar, bass, drums, trumpet and percussion all the way through. Try to push sound and the idea of sound as far as we can.

It sounds like critics like to specifically analyze your music more than you do.

Usually when people get that in depth in telling us what we're doing, the further they get into that, the further away it actually is. We've read reviews that are not even close to the way we do things, but the critic will insist that he knows that this is what we're doing and thinking. That's so wrong.

Here is a question that will show what a novice and what a hack I am: what is a cornet? Is it just a small trumpet?

It's the same length of tubing, it's jammed together into a shorter length. It has a slightly different tone quality, and it plays similarly to a trumpet.

Why did you choose that particular instrument?

It's the same instrument I started on when I was 10 years old and then I switched to the trumpet, and the trumpet, I played it from, whenever, when I was 15 until six, seven years ago. I played it for 15 years or something. It always felt awkward to me, and it felt too long, it felt like not an extension of me, but an appendage that was cumbersome and a drag. I tried this particular horn out, kinda by accident, and from the first note I was completely blown away. I bought one, and I just love how it feels in my hand and how it sounds and it's beautiful.

How did you get into working with electronics and incorporating them into your music?

That happened when I met the Tortoise guys, six, seven years ago, saw what they were doing. That was very interesting. I'd been playing a lot with Jeff Parker, too, and he was into that stuff. I don't even remember, it just kind of happened, I just started trying stuff. Picked up that Moog Source that I use and I love and started messing around with a mini-disc player and chopping stuff up and whatever. I just went and got a Mac laptop, learning all these music programs on that shit too. It's more the constant need of just creating stuff that I've never heard before. I want to hear shit that I haven't heard, I want shit that is dealing with the future. Future shit, shit that I haven't heard before. That's really my shit right now. That could mean a different sound from the cornet, a different sound from a processed sound to the computer, that could mean something on my Moog--it could mean anything. When I hear something, a person walk through hallway, whatever, that's what I'm interested in now. It's just an extension of really being into how things sound.

How long have you been playing with Chad Taylor, the drummer for Chicago Underground?

I first played with Chad when he was sixteen, then he moved to New York to attend the New School, a college there. He was there for a while, then he came to Chicago to play in the Underground and whatnot. He's a special player. He's a great, great drummer. He's a spiritual individual. Very subtle. He has the capability to explode too. One night we just decided to do some playing, just the two of us for a period, and it turned out to be half the music on the first record. We just immediately clicked. I remember playing with him when he was 16 and I remember just really digging it. We just click on many different levels and he's probably the most interesting drummer I've ever played with.

In three years, the Chicago Underground have put out five records . . .

We have the Orchestra record, two Trio records, two Duo records, that's five, and there's going to be a new Chicago Underground Quartet record coming out in April.

You seem to be incredibly prolific.

A lot of people write and a lot of people have ideas so as long as . . . I'm amazed that it's still happening. I'm scared to death of there all of the sudden being nothing happening. Seems like we're lucky in some sense that we are able to keep coming up with what we think is interesting sounds.

How much of your songwriting with Chicago Underground in improvisational or born out of improvisation?

Fifty-fifty.

How do you decide whether you want to do a record with the Duo or the Trio or whatever?

It's like a certain pattern. It's basically when records come out and when you can do something. Me and Chad have been touring with the Duo since the record came out, six months ago, pretty much nonstop. Now we are getting at the end of that and we have a bunch of new stuff because of that. So we'll do another Duo record. When we get back from the Duo thing, a month later we go out on a Trio tour because a Trio record just came out ["Flamethrower" on Delmark Records] so we rock the Trio for a couple of months, come up with new stuff while we're playing and then when we get back we'll probably record another Trio record. So it all has to do with the material you have and everybody just knows. It clicks when you can hear the record, and you can hear that you have enough elements to have on the record. That's when you decide to record. It's similar with Isotope: we have all this new stuff that will be ready to go in January just because of this tour, so you have to do it. You have no choice.

Chicago Underground splits releases between Delmark and Thrill Jockey. Is there a qualitative difference between the records you release on the two labels?

Not necessarily. The only difference in the way they promote their records. Delmark is more of a jazz label, and Thrill Jockey is more of a rock label. As far as the music is concerned, the music is shaped around the individuals in the group and that's it. That's all it is. Both labels give us complete freedom and that's how we approach it.

What's the deal with the song "Jetty" or "La Jetee"? There are four versions of it now on different recordings. What is it about that song that everybody has to record it?

One of the baddest tunes of all time, dude. One of Jeff Parker's tunes. One of the most beautiful tunes I've ever heard. It's amazing to take a song like that, that's so wonderful and to mold it into the sound of each different group. If you listen to the version of the Trio, the version of Tortoise, and the version of Isotope 217, they are completely different versions. You can recognize the tune but, it's yet another example of what can happen when you have different personalities dealing with a sound source. You're going to have different arrangement. It's a special tune. We all love it.

One last question: are you hear to get your party on?

Oh man, you kidding me? Every night!

That's what I'm talking 'bout.

That's what I'm talking 'bout.