Talking with Wayne Horvitz about Mylab

Over on BoingBoing, William Gibson summarizes the creative process nicely. He writes;

Our traditional cultural models of creativity tend to involve the wrong sort of heroism, for me. "It sprang whole and perfect from my brow" as opposed to "I saw it mispelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me."

I've been saying for years that creativity is misunderstood as a dreamy, unadulterated thing that comes out of the blue, but I often chalk up 2/3rds of the true source to craft. Gibson is correct though- at least half of inspiration is that something strikes you as unique, beautiful or strange.


Naked City - Billy Liar [31] from SongsFromGrandGuignol on Vimeo.

Which brings me to Mylab, a unique band/collaboration/project from Wayne Horvitz. Wayne has been a force in the New York jazz and new music scene since the 80's, with an impressive discography including Naked City, a brutal jazz ensemble led by John Zornand one of my favorites when I want to jar my senses.

For Mylab, Horvitz collaborated with producer Tucker Martine using an interesting process. They started with folk recordings from the early 1900s in the public domain as inspiration. In an interview, Martine said, "We used those samples as the catalyst for starting a composition, then we'd start messing around and go, 'Shit, Frisell would sound great over that, and what about Skerik over this?" Those old folk recordings were like Gibson's mauve Krylon, the inspiration for a unique collaboration that I really dig.

Horvitz was nice enough to answer a couple of questions via email for me about the composition process. I was particularly interested in finding out how they avoided what I call "the groove factor"; that is, when you're composing electronically, it's easy to build a repeating loop with an interesting sound/texture, but it can be hard to make that into a true song with a song structure and multiple parts.



Horvitz replied, "It was a nice working relationship because Tucker and I both started together with loops and samples but even within that I tend towards 'song structure' so I think I brought a lot of that to the table, and of course tucker brought his awesome sonic and rhythmic vibe to everything."

The album is very lush sonically, and bends around a lot of different genres, including some African vocals, a twangy fiddle, and a skittering house beat. I asked Horvitz if the album turned out in the way that he had envisioned it. 

"To be honest, we didn't start with a vision, we started with a process." wrote Horvitz. "So basically Tucker was a big fan of some solo recordings I had made years earlier, with drum machines, sequencers but also a lot of live players. He kept saying I should do another, and I basically said I don't feel like doing it myself lets do it together.  But the process really was 'improvised' - start with a little idea, flesh it out, invite some friends, flesh it out some more, even the mix was a continual process of re-invention, more than just trying to get the 'right mix'."

The whole album is highly recommended, but my favorites include "Earthbound", "Pop Client" (see embedded video), "Land Trust Picnic", and "Fancy Party Cakes." You can hear sound samples of the full album on Amazon.