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On Saturday, September 12, six days before London experimental-pop artist A.G. Cook released his album Apple, the founder of label and collective PC Music assembled more than 20 like-minded acts for a livestream festival called Appleville. Hosted by a custom website with an embedded Twitch stream, this self-described “tribute to live computer music” starred Cook, kaleidoscopic indie trio Kero Kero Bonito, bedroom-pop phenom Clairo, irreverent dance duo 100 Gecs, and bona fide pop star Charli XCX (who’d hired Cook to be her creative director in 2016). They represented a cross-section of a largely online underground scene with an international audience that skews heavily Gen Z. And if you clicked in during the first hour, you got to see one of that scene’s newest darlings: Chicago-based artist Fraxiom, singing to an audience for just the second time ever while they swayed from foot to foot in front of a crude green screen made by hanging up a tablecloth from Party City.
Wearing a slim, square-neckline dress covered in a pastel collage of pixelated faces, Fraxiom stood in their Humboldt Park apartment and sang into a microphone run through the Auto-Tune function of Ableton Live. They performed four songs, three of them still unreleased at the time, that demonstrated the joyful, messy, smart-assed sound that’s earned the 21-year-old a cult following: unpredictable pileups of synths that juxtapose chromium gloss and digitally destroyed crunch; cartoonish percussion that sometimes feels like a joke about trap, gabber, or house; and light-switch jumps between hyperactive rapping and tender, earnest singing that share an almost inhumanly intense euphoria.
“I did it all on my first take,” Fraxiom says. “I didn’t mess up, like, too badly–I only missed one line, but I was like, ‘OK, let’s just keep going.’ Actual shows are one take, so I was like, ‘OK, if I don’t collapse and die, it has to be one take.'”
Fraxiom prerecorded their performance and used the tablecloth green screen to add a video background. When they opened with the collision of 2000s emo and oddball dance music called “This Guitar” (released the following day on the EP Feeling Cool and Normal), an innocuous YouTube ad for an acoustic guitar from Musician’s Friend played behind them. And Fraxiom backed closing number “Ride” with sped-up footage from the music video for a different song: “Thos Moser,” their breakout collaboration with producer Gupi, aka Spencer Hawk (son of skateboard legend Tony).
Since it came out in February, the cheeky, mercurial single has made Fraxiom and Gupi stars in the admittedly tiny hyperpop universe. Atop a driving house beat accented with blown-out hi-hats, Gupi rotates through a whimsical menu of squelching synths, changing the track’s mood so often that it’s impossible to get comfortable with any one of them. Fraxiom matches the shifts in the instrumental with a saucy performance full of deadpan raps and frazzled Auto-Tune outbursts; they name-check Caroline Polachek, reference a crazed 100 Gecs show at New York University, and tell off Elon Musk, DJ Zedd, and Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson. “Thos Moser” has racked up respectable numbers, considering the size of its niche–just shy of 350,000 YouTube views and more than a million Spotify streams.
Artists in this Web-centric, queer-friendly scene draw on dance music and hip-hop, but the results are usually strange enough that few fans of commercial radio would call them pop music. PC Music and 100 Gecs (aka Laura Les and Dylan Brady) are pillars in this community, but it makes room for such a hodgepodge of styles and approaches that no one word could encompass them all. “Hyperpop” has become the de facto label, partly because Spotify uses the term for an increasingly popular in-house playlist (which of course features “Thos Moser”).
“We just knew we had something crazy,” Fraxiom says of the track. “Once Dylan Brady loved it, we were like, ‘Yeah, Dylan Brady likes it.’ I’ve always stanned Dylan–him and Laura have been my favorite musicians since high school.” Brady released “Thos Moser” on his label, Dog Show Records (an imprint of Mad Decent). Gupi also included the single on his debut album, None, which came out on Dog Show at the end of February–he says he wanted to give Fraxiom a bigger spotlight.
“Dog Show, it sort of let them know, like, ‘Oh, these two can deliver a song,'” Gupi says. “It established some trust as an artist, in that sense, which was cool, ’cause now we get to do the album with them.”
“We” refers to Gupi and Fraxiom’s new duo, Food House, whose self-titled debut full-length comes out on Dog Show next month. They dropped their first single, “Ride,” in late September, but hyperpop superfans had already heard the sugary club cut in Fraxiom’s Appleville set–and in April, when the duo DJed 100 Gecs’ Minecraft festival, Square Garden, they played an early version. They followed it with a remix of “Thos Moser,” which Fraxiom interrupted to declare, “My life has not known peace since this song came out.”
Fraxiom grew up in Kingston, Massachusetts, just outside Plymouth and less than an hour south of Boston. In high school they sought out outre pop, video-game music, and similar sounds through Soundcloud and Datafruits.fm, a U.S.-based Internet radio station specializing in Japanese indie music. Fraxiom was particularly drawn to nightcore, an electronic subgenre that “remixes” recognizable pop songs by slightly speeding them up (and often not much more).
“I love pop music, and it was faster, better, and higher pitched–it was awesome,” Fraxiom says. “I was also coming to terms with my sexuality and my gender identity and shit, sort of through nightcore.” In 2016, Fraxiom began to experiment with recording vocals and pitching up their voice. They wouldn’t publicly release any vocal music till 2019, but these early sessions–and the influence of nightcore–helped them figure out their style. “Nightcore is canon to a new universe, where society is awesome, and there’s lots of vivid colors everywhere, nothing is gentrified,” Fraxiom says. “Nightcore is literally the soundtrack to a different universe, which I would rather be a part of, and that’s why I used it as a soundtrack to my exploration.”
Soundcloud nightcore communities introduced Fraxiom to 100 Gecs three years before the duo dropped the 2019 crossover album 1000 Gecs. “100 Gecs had their first EP out at the time–that was super popular in that circle, and everyone was fucking with it super hard,” Fraxiom says. “It was the music I would cry to before school started.” And nightcore provided the score as Fraxiom started meeting their Soundcloud and Twitter friends in person.
In the first half of 2017, Fraxiom released two vivid instrumental tracks reminiscent of nightcore and another electronic subgenre called future bass, which tamps down the overdriven dick-swinging of mainstream dubstep with cute synthetic flourishes. “Grand Prix” and “Dream Colors” came out on a small electronic label inspired by PC Music, fittingly enough called Hyperpop. Fraxiom had gained enough of a foothold in this small scene by August to get booked at an Orlando rave called Play It Loud! that month. That’s where they met Gupi.
At that point Gupi had already released an EP (through a friend’s label, Rora Team) and was preparing to drop another one in fall 2017. At the end of August he started his first semester at Berklee College of Music in Boston, which put him closer to Fraxiom. “We were like, ‘Well, I guess we should probably hang out,'” Gupi says. “We did, and it worked out. But it was definitely an obligation at first.” Gupi realized he’d found a good friend the first day they met up in Boston. At a Newberry Comics store, an employee pulled a “How do you do, fellow kids?” by attempting to compliment Fraxiom’s “vaporwave aesthetic,” and Frax bolted out the door. “As the day went on we were both like, ‘Oh, we’re fuckin’ weird, OK,'” Gupi says.
They didn’t collaborate on music at first. Gupi had a couple roommates his freshman year, and he felt self-conscious about working on bizarre pop music around them. “I just felt like a nuisance, making music with another person in there, even though it would have been fine,” he says. “But imagine the music we’re making and then imagine, like, Berklee students in the same room.”
Instead, the two of them mostly goofed around and bonded. “I got him to listen to 100 Gecs for the first time and smoke weed for the first time,” Fraxiom says.
Fraxiom and Gupi would also DJ from time to time. For a couple years running, they’d spin at parties during the Music and Gaming Festival at a suburban D.C. convention center and hotel. Other producers from their Internet community–including Pooldad and Ricco Harver from Canada and NYC-based PC Music artist Umru–would also spin at a MAGFest side stage in the hotel’s Pose Nightclub. “It’s the one big hub where we all meet up,” Ricco Harver says.
Fraxiom and friends threw their own unofficial MAGFest gatherings too. “We had a Pepsi party, like a party in the drink-machine room,” Fraxiom says. “We just did the craziest not-real things at MAGFest, like parties in places that are generally uncomfortable and boring–which I think is cool.”
On April 1, 2018, Umru tweeted photos of a new book, Thank God Umru Chimed In, along with a Big Cartel link for an indie publisher called Swess Press. The back cover included blurbs from several of his friends, including Pooldad and Fraxiom, both of whom also tweeted about it. But anyone who tried to buy the book encountered a listing saying it was sold out. It wasn’t–neither it nor Swess Press had ever existed, just like lots of things announced on April Fools’ Day.
The artists in Fraxiom’s circle share the kind of offbeat sense of humor you’d expect from people who make pop music so deliberately askew. “I think that’s sort of why we became friends,” Pooldad says. “We just want to make jokes really hard.”
Those jokes sometimes manifest as something more earnest. The highest-profile example is a group of friends who operate as Open Pit Presents to host music festivals in Minecraft. Founder Max Schramp had thrown a Minecraft fest for his birthday in 2018, and the following year Open Pit grew out of that. Pooldad has helped design character skins for some of the performers, and Umru helps book acts. “We just think, ‘Who could we get to play? Who does everyone in this group know? Do you know someone who knows someone?’ And so on,” Umru says.
Open Pit is a pragmatic response to the performers’ circumstances. Musicians in the hyperpop scene are spread out across different time zones, if not different continents, and they don’t necessarily have travel budgets. Some were already familiar with Minecraft–Pooldad started playing it nearly a decade ago–and the video game gave the musicians an interactive gathering place that’s easy to access. For a typical Minecraft show, the artists’ blocky characters congregate on a stage while their prerecorded, edited-together set plays back. In this context “performing” often just means making your character jump up and down, since it’s tough to mime any more accurately without hands, elbows, or a mouth you can control.
What began as an inside joke became a cross-genre phenomenon after the pandemic obliterated live music, and Open Pit has been able to book bigger artists, including some from outside the organizers’ social circles. In April, second-wave emo legends American Football headlined Nether Meant, an Open Pit festival named after the band’s best-known song.
Fraxiom has appeared at a few Minecraft festivals during the pandemic, mostly with friends. Fraxiom and Umru DJed together at Mine Gala in 2019–they even made some Minecraft-themed covers of 100 Gecs songs–so when the two of them booked another joint set at Lavapalooza in August 2020, they decided to collaborate on new material for it. “I was like, ‘Hey, these are actually good outside of Minecraft–can we make it into an EP?’ And Umru said yes,” Fraxiom says. “And that’s why Feeling Cool and Normal exists.”
By the time Lavapalooza arrived, Fraxiom had also spent five hours creating two buildings in Minecraft. They built an IHOP, and their partner helped construct a house with lyrics to Frax’s songs inside. Both buildings remained undiscovered throughout Lavapalooza. “I’m honestly sort of pissed that no one found the lyrics,” Fraxiom says. “We made, like, Spencer’s room too–it was this shitty little room under the stairs, and Spencer was a llama. It was awesome.”
Gupi and Fraxiom didn’t collaborate on any music till “Thos Moser,” which they finished together on Halloween 2019. Gupi didn’t think it would reach beyond their friends. “It was gonna be an inside-joke song,” he says. “We literally were releasing it or making it with the intention of, like, ‘Oh ha ha, so and so’s gonna get a kick out of this’ or whatever, like our group chat. We were very pleasantly surprised, but yeah, good first song to do.”
That fall was the tail end of an aimless period for Fraxiom, during which they’d worked on what became their debut EP, Music. “I was making Music when I was in my parents’ house, working a really shitty job, depressed as fuck–wearing a name tag with my deadname on it,” Fraxiom says. “My only escape being hanging out with Spencer in Boston on the weekends, writing really sad music in my dad’s garage all the time, and just smoking a bunch of weed.”
One of the things that put Fraxiom back on the rails was getting accepted to the School of the Art Institute to study in the sound department. They moved to Chicago in January 2020 to begin classes. Fraxiom’s partner also lives here (they met at MAGFest), as do lots of their music-scene friends and acquaintances (though 100 Gecs’ Laura Les has since moved to Los Angeles). Chicago also had more to offer than Boston. “There’s so much music happening all the time,” Fraxiom says. “I just wanted to be around it.”
Fraxiom had already shared “Thos Moser” privately with friends, who’d responded so strongly that Frax hurried to put out Music. “I wanted to have one more thing out before ‘Thos Moser’ raised the bar and made me scared to release things,” they say. Music came out February 15, three days before Dog Show released “Thos Moser.” And on Friday, February 21, Fraxiom sang the song live for the first and so far only time at Subterranean, when Gupi came to town as part of a tour with Dorian Electra.
“I had not Auto-Tune live sung before, ever–that was literally my first time in front of all of those people,” Fraxiom says. “Everyone knew the words, and it was so crazy ’cause the song had been out for three days. That was like, ‘Quick, become a pop star! No time to explain! Grab this, go!'”
Almost immediately upon arriving in Chicago, Fraxiom heard from Reset Presents, a local production company founded in 2018 by Loyola graduate Camden Stacey. Stacey had a lot of friends who made music but weren’t getting booked much in the city. “I wasn’t really seeing us represented in the live-music scene–especially in the live hip-hop world and live electronic world–in Chicago,” Stacey says. “So we just kind of started taking it upon ourselves to book such shows.”
Umru had played a Reset Presents show in March 2019, and he suggested that Stacey book Fraxiom. Frax performed at a Reset Presents aftershow on February 6. “The kid is a really inspiring performer and goes about making their music in such a genuine and organic way,” Stacey says. He’s since befriended Fraxiom and spent some time watching them work. “They’re a joy to be around, beyond a creative level and a professional level,” Stacey says. “They’re by far one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
Fraxiom took maximum advantage of Chicago’s underground nightlife scene almost immediately, even though they couldn’t know they’d only have the chance for two months. Near the end of March, their SAIC dorm was evacuated due to the pandemic. “I had to go back to Massachusetts,” Fraxiom says. “I was like, ‘OK, well, if I’m already going back to Massachusetts, and Spencer’s still gonna be in Boston the whole time, we might as well just stay with each other–quarantine with each other–and try to make an album.’ And then we did.”
Fraxiom crashed in Boston with Gupi most of the spring, working on Food House. “Being removed from my partner and all of my friends with literally no warning was super fucking me up,” Fraxiom says. “I was going through it as hell. I didn’t want to be back in Massachusetts around a bunch of stuff that I don’t like, and seeing my family and stuff–I feel like a lot of that came out in the album.”
In June, Fraxiom moved into a Humboldt Park apartment, returning to Chicago in time to participate in some of the first wave of protests. Their community here continues to expand despite the pandemic. At the end of the summer, Dog Show artist Folie, a friend of Gupi’s from when they both put out music through Rora, moved to town from New York. “We’d actually not hung out a ton, like, just us, until I moved here to Chicago,” Folie says. “We hang out tons since I’ve been here–we just had a session with Alice Longyu Gao, and that was really incredible too, to see Frax actually work in person.”
Gupi has decamped to Orlando for the moment–his partner, who booked the 2017 Play It Loud! event, lives there–but he’s considering moving to Chicago too. “I’m probably just gonna end up wherever Frax is, to be honest,” Gupi says. “Which I hope is Chicago, ’cause Chicago seems cool in general too. Just cold–that’s the only thing. Cold and police officers.” v
Fraxiom jigsaws pop into a new frameLeor Galilon October 15, 2020 at 6:00 pm Read More »
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A global pandemic. The loss of NBA legend Kobe Bryant. Fires. Hurricanes. The year 2020 sure has had its fair share of bizarre events. And now, thanks to a few high school athletes and their parents, you can add an IHSA lawsuit to the mix.
On Tuesday, September 29th, a group of Illinois high school student-athletes and parents filed a class action lawsuit against the IHSA. Their goal for the suit was to force the Illinois High School Association to reinstate fall sports. This comes after the IHSA’s decision to modify its sports schedule for the 2020-21 school year. In July, the board of directors decided to move all of the fall contact sports to the spring. This meant that team sports like football, boys soccer, and girls volleyball would all have delays in their season. Unfortunately, their decision wasn’t taken very lightly.
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Approximately 20 students are listed as plaintiffs in the IHSA lawsuit. According to the suit, they claim that the decisions made by the IHSA to postpone certain fall sports has “caused mental health issues and financial hardships” for athletes and their families. And there might be some truth to that. Most student-athletes are extremely dedicated to the sport they participate in, and many look forward to starting a new season along with the school year. The IHSA’s decision makes it hard for athletes eager to play after a summer of lockdown, and it can be even harder for those in their senior year. For the upcoming graduates, the fall sports season is potentially their last shot at giving everything they have in their sport. Some may have been working towards earning a scholarship to go to their dream school. Others may be looking forward to taking the field one last time with their friends. Regardless of who they were, it’s clear that many student-athletes were hurt by the IHSA’s choice to postpone certain fall sports.
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Unfortunately for the student-athletes, DuPage County Circuit Judge Paul Fullerton denied their request for a restraining order to reinstate the fall sports programs. His reasoning for the decision is largely due to the circumstances surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. “We are in a pandemic and I think what the IHSA did was within their authority under the [organization’s] by-laws and constitution,” said Fullerton when speaking on the IHSA’s decision.
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While it’s not the ruling that the student-athletes were looking for in the IHSA lawsuit, hopefully, they will come to terms with the judge’s decision. They might not get the fall sports they were looking forward to, but come springtime there’s a good chance that they’ll forget all about it when they take the field.
At UrbanMatter, U Matter. And we think this matters.
Tell us what you think matters in your neighborhood and what we should write about next in the comments below!
Featured Image Credit: IHSA
What You Need To Know About The IHSA LawsuitDrew Krieson October 15, 2020 at 2:10 pm Read More »
Tap dancer Jumaane Taylor, 34, made his professional debut in 2001 with the company M.A.D.D. Rhythms, where he now serves on the board of directors. He teaches at the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, and Roosevelt University. He debuted the John Coltrane interpretation Supreme Love in 2015, and as a 2017 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist he assembled the Jazz Hoofing Quartet. His current work in progress, Ugly Flavors, uses the music of Ornette Coleman and Igor Stravinsky.
Before my mom had kids, she’d already decided that her children were gonna be going to dance school. A six-year-old hearing “tap dancing,” what is tap dancing? I had no knowledge of what that is. You’d say, “No, I don’t wanna do tap dance. I wanna go outside,” or “I wanna roller skate.” But my sister joined this school and took ballet, and when I saw the show and actually saw the tap dancing, I was immediately hooked–just could not look away from what I was witnessing. And my mom signed me up. I have not stopped since.
Where I come from, the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre, they’ve been around for 80-plus years–the directors and the founders have a legacy in show business. Walking into the building that they first had when I was seven years old, there was a huge door-size poster of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and he’s the reason we have National Tap Dance Day. Then when you walked into the lobby area, you’d see a picture of the Nicholas Brothers–but still not as big as Bill Robinson! The creators of the form were just plastered all over the building.
At that time there was Bril Barrett teaching at the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre, who was the founder of M.A.D.D. Rhythms. And one of his teachers was Ted Levy–and Ted Levy was one of the guys who helped Savion Glover choreograph Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk that was on Broadway. Folks were just handing down information, whoever wanted it the most, or whoever needed it or seemed like they were hungry for it. At the beginning, we were looking at Stormy Weather, with Bill Robinson and Lena Horne, and the Nicholas Brothers, of course, with–some people call it one of the best dance clips of all time, when they’re doing the splits down the large stairs. That’s what we were watching at seven!
Every now and then, Savion Glover, when he would come in for a show, he would come to the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre and teach a workshop, and have whoever was in his cast also come teach–so Dianne Walker, Jimmy Slyde. A lot of great, masterful dancers were able to come through that school.
It feels comfortable saying tap dancing was birthed in America, with the birth of jazz music. With the African way versus the Irish way or the two coming together, it’s really tricky because sometimes it feels like folks just want their credit. “I’m part this, and I want my credit here.” All we have are these folktales, or a couple of books here and there, or the conversations we’ve had with some of the men and women who were actually there, before they transitioned. Some of the dancers just really want what’s good for the dance, period. If the Irish is gonna get some, cool, as long as we get to dance and we respect the tap dancers. The Africans get some, cool, as long as we get to tap dance. But dang, we can’t even get respect within the jazz community. And that’s where I feel we really start off.
When we think about tap dancing now, as far as tap dancers, I think they all relate more to its evolution period in America, with the birth of bebop. My statuses on most of my social media handles are “What I do comes from the bebop era,” and that’s just a quote from my favorite tap dancer, Baby Laurence.
Ugly Flavors: A work-in-progress presentation from Jumaane Taylor
Sat 11/7, 7 PM, livestream hosted by the Dance Center of Columbia College at dance.colum.edu, $20, all-ages
The Chicago Dancemakers Forum awarded me a grant for $15,000, and I used that to investigate improvisation with musicians. I put together a band–I called it the Jazz Hoofing Quartet. It was Makaya McCraven on drums, Justin Dillard on keys, and Marlene Rosenberg on bass. I loved it! It was heaven, because Makaya was so hot at the time, and anything he played was just on. And then Justin–I had known Justin since the Fred Anderson days at the Velvet Lounge, just years of jam sessions. And then Marlene, she has a history of playing with tap dancers–she knew and had met a lot of the masters that I would be mentioning in the post-talk, after we would play. I would show footage of Jimmy Slyde, and she would listen and be like, “Oh, that must be Jimmy Slyde!” Just by listening! It was this magical group.
We did some things at a couple of Rebuild spaces, and we were able to record at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I was making an argument about tap dance and jazz music, and those two cultures being able to create and invite each other regularly.
The tap-dancing guy engineered this through Rebuild Foundation–not, like, the AACM. I wish I could be down with them. I’m the black sheep, brother. Even Ernest Dawkins, he’s all up in that organization–before I did Supreme Love, I was in a trio band with that guy. It would be myself, Ernest, and a vibe player. We would be playing sets! Before I had the quartet with the guys and Marlene, before I did any shows, I was literally with these guys. Corey Wilkes–I was in a band with Corey Wilkes!
It’s no drama, no beef. If I see anybody from the Jazz Institute, from back in the day, it’s so much love, it’s so much happiness. But there’s no work! Unless I have another musician leading the project. When I first did Supreme Love, a great saxophonist, Rajiv Halim, he was leading the musicians. We were getting different gigs through the Jazz Institute, through the Hyde Park Jazz Fest.
When I’m by myself somewhere, doing some solo performing, it’s all about improvisation–that free form of expression with the tap. That’s really why I wanted to put something together like the Jazz Hoofing Quartet, to always have a way to explore that improvisational aspect–outside of doing class after class after class of choreography or what’s necessary for the musical-theater students or for the seven-year-olds.
Bebop is always at a fast tempo. Usually I feel like musicians hear the rhythm of the tap to up-tempo songs. I was talking to another tap dancer about this, one of my teachers almost, coming up in Chicago–Jay Fagan, who has a school in the west burbs. He was asking me if I ever heard of the tap dancers being responsible for the bebop sound. They used to say that the tap dancers started bebop, because the drummers weren’t hitting certain rhythms that the tap dancers were.
When I really listen to tap dancers dance improvisationally, with or without music, versus when I’m listening to jazz drummers play improvisation, sometimes the jazz drummers are playing things–even during the Charlie Parker era–that I’m still working on, let alone have ever heard any tap dancers playing. So within my study, I feel like the musicians may have started that bebop thing!
In the 30s the tap dancers just had their routine. “We’re gonna go out here, do the show, do these steps, we’re gonna do a flip, split, maybe sing a song–boom-bam, keep it moving. Another show!” But Baby Laurence really talked about the influence of Charlie Parker. He is the only tap dancer to my knowledge who has a record tap dancing with musicians. I think the album is called Dancemaster. It’s on CD, on vinyl–tap dancers these days, because that’s the only one, they just frame that vinyl and have it as an art piece.
There’s a famous piece that Duke Ellington did with a tap dancer, Bunny Briggs–it’s called “David Danced Before the Lord.” There’s very few archival videos of these tap dancers dancing with musicians, even Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers. A lot of tap dancers throughout time just adapted this way of dancing with musicians–“All right, we’re gonna do a song with the musicians, it’s gonna be ‘Take the A Train.’ Gimme some stop time so I can tap, and then I’m gonna be outta there in two or three minutes.”
I wanna be into playing sets with these musicians–45 minutes, and then another 45 minutes. That just means more exploring. The stuff that I’m trying to get into, the improvisational stuff, is really studying the music on my own, studying the John Coltrane albums, the Miles Davis albums, the Charles Mingus albums, even going back to the way Ella Fitzgerald would scat.
I’ve been on this back-and-forth with trying to represent tap within the jazz scene, and get people to just hear the natural sound of the metal on the wood. When I connect with musicians, it’s still a learning thing going on. In the past, I would mess with two different types of wood–maybe the first wood would rise a little bit, so I’d have a little bit more air underneath, and maybe the second floor would be straight flat on the surface. And then I would maybe change shoes, just because some of the shoes built these days, you can add another sole which would make it a little louder or a little deeper.
I’m very careful, man–I don’t wanna be too loud, I don’t want to overpower any musician. I just want to be right with them.
I’ve been on this journey to be able to present within the jazz community, to be able to play at the Jazz Showcase. There’s always been this little thing where folks may say, if you have another type of attraction there, the tap dancer could take the focus away from the music. I don’t want to take any focus away! I want to be playing with you all. To be a union of creative beauty.
Thinking about Fred Anderson, and even thinking about Von Freeman–they used to have the sessions at the Apartment Lounge. Von Freeman would yell out “Baby Laurence!” Yell out names of the masters. Yell at certain young musicians if they were playing too loud over the tap. I feel like if the Fred Andersons and the Von Freemans were here, it would be more extensive than me just trying it out here and there when I can.
Now I’m in this studio at the Dance Center at Columbia, figuring out this next new show that I’m working on, with Ornette Coleman‘s music and Igor Stravinsky’s compositions. I’m calling it Ugly Flavors.
I’ve been listening to the music heavy, and the history behind The Rite of Spring just puts me in the mind of “ugly flavors,” with the riots and all that. And Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come is what I’m trying to choreograph to. I just don’t know how the jazz community might have received The Shape of Jazz to Come, with him even using that word “jazz.” Calling my group the Jazz Hoofing Quartet, I don’t think the jazz community received that well.
I’m just excited to do something that has no musicians but deals with some of the most legendary music that I could find. The Shape of Jazz to Come, I want that as the first half of the show, just because I know the ballet lovers are gonna be amped, and I don’t want them to leave after The Rite of Spring if that was the first half. I know they’re gonna be ready to criticize, ready to ridicule–I don’t even know, but I’m ready for it all.
Hearing about that premiere happening in Paris, and how the people received it–sometimes I feel that’s how the jazz community receives me! Just cussing out the performers in the middle of a ballet. I feel like, under their breath, the jazz directors are cussing me out: “What is this! This isn’t jazz music! And he’s calling himself the Jazz Hoofing Quartet?”
Chicago Dancemakers Forum are allowing me to do a streamed work in progress November 7, at the Dance Center at Columbia. They’re allowing me to just have a theater to work with, and they’ve got some mikes set up and some different floor options so we can get the proper sound. I’m using that to invite certain presenters, invite certain institutions–and maybe the Dance Center will want me to premiere the full work later next year. v
Jumaane Taylor, tap dancerPhilip Montoroon October 15, 2020 at 11:00 am Read More »
Listening to modern traditional metal can sometimes be a little like meeting up with a special old flame. It’s a blast until you’re eventually reminded why it didn’t work out for the long haul–you moved on with your life while they seemed to stay suspended in time, and the little things you once adored now feel stale or ridiculously corny. But every so often, a band knock it out of the park so hard that they prove 70s-90s metal sounds to be every bit as timeless and cool as James Dean in a pair of Levis (or insert your own iconic imagery here) even as they expand its language. Which brings us to Enlightened in Eternity, the new fourth album from Spirit Adrift. Launched in Arizona as the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Nate Garrett in 2015, Spirit Adrift expanded into a full band for a couple of records (including 2017’s Curse of Conception) before paring down to a duo of Garrett and drummer Marcus Bryant. Though much of their early material was soaked in somber, bludgeoning doom, they’ve gradually added influences from throughout metal and rock history, most notably on last year’s Divided by Darkness. But that trajectory couldn’t prepare audiences for Enlightened in Eternity: it arrives like a bolt of lighting in an otherwise clear sky. From triumphant opener “Ride Into the Light” onward, virtually every one of the album’s eight tracks is an impeccable stand-alone banger with swagger for days. I can’t believe it’s possible to sit still through them all without being strapped down or sedated.
Earlier this month, Garrett told Heavy Blog Is Heavy that he wrote these songs during a good place in his life, but his world came crashing down around the time he went into the studio, which made for a more emotional recording process. You don’t have to know the details to feel the urgency that pervades the riotous single “Harmony of Spheres,” and his crushing vocal performance on “Screaming From Beyond” makes him sound like a man exquisitely exorcising some personal demons. Spirit Adrift embrace their doomy roots on album closer “Reunited in the Void,” where Garrett pours his heart and soul into bittersweet lyrics about suffering, loss, and eternal love. But rather than end on a downcast note, Spirit Adrift build to a steadfast rock beat and guitar solo in the outro, with the sounds of rattling chains and a slight western twang lending the dusky ambience of cowboys riding off into the sunset. That’s all to say: You want to slay a dragon? You want to muster up the strength to make it through another day of the most batshit year we’ve collectively experienced as a society? Enlightened in Eternity might just light the fire that’ll power you though the fight. v
(Photo by David Banks/Getty Images)
The Chicago Cubs appear to be at the end of the best run in the history of the organization. They have made the playoffs in five of the past six years under Theo Epstein but with their current situation, the window seems to be closing. Theo’s contract is up after 2021 and there is a very low chance that he returns after that. He likes to take on new challenges every ten years and this would be the end of his current run if he sticks to that word.
