Whether we wish to admit it or not, the human mind yearns for the familiar. The core of art’s genrefication lies in comparing new experiences with those of old. We often instinctively draw lines to place what we hear within the strictures of time, place, and cultural and ideological lineages. And while context is important, this perspective often limits full appreciation of the art before us. How does one escape from these comparisons? The treatment of building blocks of music – melody, harmony, and rhythm – more as nebulous abstracts than concrete principles on Dougie Bowne’s The Stars are Indispensable (Tzadik, 2024) serves as a shining light in these regards. 

One could envision Stars as the soundtrack to a science fiction film telling the tale of an astronaut who crash-landed on an uncharted – to him – planet filled with advanced life. In reality, the record would likely prove horrible in such a capacity because it would overpower the visuals on the screen. Stars’ juxtaposition of the familiar and the foreign depicts a vivid scene that is equally mesmerizing and disconcerting. You are too scared to look yet too fascinated to turn away. On “Mechanism,” the ship’s creaking engine refuses to ignite to allow our explorer escape as his radio frequencies find nothing but emptiness. Each stroke emanates electrofluorescent buzzing. Suddenly, garbled transmissions come across the radio. But are they comforting messages from home or just more confusing sounds in a world of chaos? In the distance lie the echoing folk songs of a recently unearthed extraterrestrial civilization. Their tunes anxiously and urgently probing but also suggestive of a shared peace and cross-cultural concepts of virtue.

Yet there remains a boiling uneasiness. Things are contradictorily atmospheric yet imposing, with scattered percussive shots throughout. The music is continually driving in even its droniest of moments. The voices of instruments are disguised from their comfortable realms. The ensemble – a duo of Bowne on drums and guitar and Matt Nelson on bass – often recalls instruments, from the cello to the prepared piano, that are nowhere to be found.

But is the lost traveler starting to acclimate to his new surroundings? Distortion and feedback sound almost orchestral at moments. On “Basis,” the urgent stringed cries recall zithers and pizzicatoed plucks. With “Duplicity,” a hypnotic rhythm suggests drum circles. A longing string sound on “Mechanism” evokes Eastern music. Hues of minimalist-infused repetitive motifs emerge. Is our traveler finally finding the hope he sought, or is he simply trying to make peace with his surroundings?

Bowne is a great explorer of this chasm between the known and the unknown. Listeners of improvised music are likely familiar with his works even if less so with his name. Even those attuned to the brilliant Downtown scene of the 1980s – a space sometimes overlooked in the historical wars between neotraditionalist snobs and avant-garde warriors – may be unfamiliar with him despite his central role in it. Bowne’s high-profile collaborators over the years have included John Zorn, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cassandra Wilson, Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, and Arto Lindsay. He was also a longtime member of the iconic John Lurie-led band, the Lounge Lizards. Add to it that Bowne’s approach to his primary instrument – the drums – is distinctly his. Early on, he was self-taught. After suffering a traumatic brain injury in late 1996 that limited his ability to play, he was forced to reteach himself yet again. Bowne can keep up with any other too drummer out there, even as his idiosyncratic approach is inescapable.

Part of the underrecognition of Bowne’s contributions by the broader world comes from the limited number of releases under his own name. Stars is only his second album in an over four-decade career; the first was released almost thirty years ago. The wait between records was more than worth it. The Stars are Indispensable challenges the listener to find humanity in even the most seemingly foreign. The more you listen, the more that is revealed.

PostGenre: The Stars are Indispensable is your first album under your own name in twenty-eight years. Granted, part of that time was spent recovering from your traumatic brain injury, but why did so much time pass between your other record – One Way Elevator (1997) and this one?

Dougie Bowne: You know, I didn’t think about that until Sam Amidon put a tweet out on X that said, “No big deal, but this is Dougie Bowne’s first album in twenty-eight years.” It feels like three weeks ago that I did One Way Elevator.  I am always working on something, including writing music for plays and films. I just hadn’t returned to making a record under my name until now. 

PG: So, how did this album come about then?

DB: During the [COVID-19] lockdown, I figured it would be nice to put music up for internet collaborations. I called the series of collaborations  ‘Uneal Time’ both because the other musicians and I were not real-time playing together and because we were living in a period that seemed unreal. One of the people I worked with on that project was Matt Nelson. I met Matt at a house show and talked to him. We found we had some mutual interests in terms of composers, particularly spectral composers. Years ago, Eyvind Kang introduced me to the works of [Gerard] Grisey and Tristan [Murail]. 

Matt and I became friends. During the [COVID] lockdown, we did one of those little ‘Unreal Time’ videos. About a year later, Matt reached out to me to tell me he had been thinking about the video we had made and that he thought we should make more together. He sent me some stuff, and I played along with it, and that is how this album started to take shape as a unique thing of its own. It was clear pretty fast that our collaboration was something I wanted to pursue further. 

PG: As far as the album’s title, where did it come from?

DB: Oh, The Stars are Indispensable comes from a quote from the last line in a Philip Roth book. The character, a kid, talks about how he thinks people become stars after they pass away. I thought it was a beautiful thought. Matt and I were originally going to call the record ‘Transient Luminous Event’, which is the name of our duo, because we are playing astronomical notes in an event like lightning. But we ended up going with The Stars are Indispensable instead. 

PG: How did the record end up on [John] Zorn’s Tzadik Records?

DB: I sent our recording to John and also to Elliott Sharp for their thoughts on it. Both thought they had not heard anything else quite like it before. But I have to say that the idea of making something that doesn’t sound like anything else is not something you really set out to do. If you are going to make something innovative, I think the concept of “I’m going to set out to make something innovative” is insane and a waste of time. But the idea of music as a kind of transportation vehicle is very important to me. I wanted to make a record that would be something that you spend time with. When I was a kid, I lived in records, you know? I was transported into the world of each album. Some were more important to me than others, but I just played them over and over again. I think there is something beautiful in that, and that’s something that guided our creation of this record. 

PG: The record does sound unlike anything elwe out there.  It is honestly very difficult to describe the record because there is not much out there you can compare it to. Why do you think it does sound so different? 

DB: Well, I listen to music. I listen to everything. You can say ” Well, this has an ambient or country influence or uses funk rock beats” or whatever. Usually, you can identify where an idea comes from. But now we’re in postmodern times regarding genres or styles of music. I mean, your site is called PostGenre. Does that mean we’re just mixing up all the genres or does it mean something more than that? If you’re lucky, you can enter a space where the criteria used to judge the merits of music are thrown out. A place where whether something is thought-provoking, beautiful, and moving is much more important than where it came from. And, honesty, concepts like rhythm, harmony, or melody matter less, too. On the record, there are no repeating rhythms, and while there are notes and harmonies, they are not used in the traditional way that you would put music together. 

PG: Do you feel those nontraditional approaches to ideas of melody, harmony, and rhythm are shaped by the fact you play both guitar and drums? It is uncommon for someone to play both instruments, and you certainly approach the drums in a more melodic way than most drummers.

DB: As you know, I’ve played in so many different settings for a long time, with everyone from Cassandra Wilson to Iggy Pop. And after my head injury, it took a long time to recover and play drums at all. I had to learn how to approach the instrument differently than how I played before my injury. And as I found that new way, people like Paul Motian became especially important to me. 

But I have viewed the drums in those terms before my injury, too. There is something melodic in how I approached the drums [with the Lounge Lizards] for  “Big Heart“ or “Voice of Chunk.” And I got that from listening to musical drummers like Mitch Mitchell, Ringo Starr, and Levon Helm. A pitch is just one of the elements of music, and I’ve always played notes with mallets or with my elbows. Rhythm is an element of music, but it’s only one element, along with melody and harmony. It’s all a part of the same language. 

And by the way, I have to say- I’m a terrible guitar player. Certainly nothing compared to Nels [Cline], Marc [Ribot], or some other guitarists I have worked with.

PG: If you are unimpressed with your guitar playing, then why play it?

DB: I hardly play it. I mostly use the instrument to generate sounds. Half of the time, I just use it to generate electronic sounds that I play through the computer. I use it to make sonic territories. And that’s what I’m more interested in. Also, in response to my physical situation, I spend more time making sounds than playing riffs.

PG: Since you will be performing live at Big Ears, how do you feel the duo’s live performance may most differ from the recording? 

DB: Since I play both guitar and drums, often on the album, there are moments where I have two things happening at once but I did not really do them at the same time. But I have the little mothership here. I play a Roland VG99, which is not made anymore. It is a guitar modeling system. It is real-time and you play harmonics and bend notes. It’s not a MIDI guitar, which is a whole other world. I play pads and have my guitar on my lap and can play both at once. But I’m not really a guitar player. I’m banging on the guitar often and rubbing things against it. I’m also looping but not in the traditional sense of people looping drumbeats. It’s often not in time and we’re building a wall of beauty that has more to do with Morton Feldman than beatboxing.

I’m feeling loud and aggressive lately, just because of the moment. Ribot wrote about the album that it is rock and it is often confrontational. But I also love people. I used to play at my band at Tonic with Chris Speed, Cuong Vu, and Jamie Saft. People would often come up and tell us that they cried from what they had heard. If the music can be moving and compelling, that is all I care about. My music is not a display of any kind. If it can be moving and indeed beautiful, I’m happy as long as it’s not background.  

PG: Going back to emphasizing the melodic elements of the drums, you were self-taught on the drums. Do you feel the less formal training may have made you more open to approaching the instrument in a manner beyond the stereotypical rhythmic one?  

DB: No. I just figured you could do whatever you want on an instrument. I always saw the drums as having pitches. Hearing people like Ringo, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, or Ginger Baker exposed me to where drums are part of the orchestration of a song. And that always seemed natural to me. In a way, the melodic element did become more important after my head injury because I couldn’t play certain things, but if that melodic element is available to us, why not utilize it? 

PG:  Do you feel your head injury also changed how you compose? 

DB: Probably. But I used to play too many notes anyway. In the past, I wrote tunes for my piano trio with Fred Hopkins and John Medeski. I had a quintet with vibes, clarinet, trumpet, bass, and drums. Now, I probably write less stuff. But I don’t know if I think about it all that much. I have written for strings and some film scores, but how I approach the drums does not really impact those because I can’t play strings anyway. 

PG: But you have worked with one of the great contemporary string and film composers, [Ryuichi] Sakamoto. How did you get connected with him?

DB: Yeah, I went on tour with him as part of his Beauty Tour. I  forget the exact details, but I think Arto Lindsey may have told him about me ‘cause they were friends. They were close, and Sakamoto was a hero of mine. I especially loved the work he did with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. I think Sakamoto came to a gig of mine after hearing about me from Arto and then hired me.  I think the drummer with him before me was the amazing Manu Katché, which was crazy. And it’s kind of funny because I like playing a little wilder with Arto or the Lounge Lizards, that kind of thing. And Sakamoto’s music was much more reigned in. We had to be around the same [beats per minute], every show, that kind of thing. So, it was different from a lot of the music I make. But it was an amazing tour. Beautiful. I love Sakamoto. Very important guy. 

PG: Since you mentioned the Lounge Lizards, what do you feel you enjoyed most from your time in that band? 

DB: I mean, I was in the Lounge Lizards for most of my young adult life. I was in that band for a long time. I loved that band and turned down many other gigs to be in it. I first saw the band at one of their early gigs and was fascinated by what I had heard. But then John [Lurie] broke up the band for a year or so. After a year, Peter Gordon of the Love of Life Orchestra told me that John was looking to restart the group, had heard about me because I had played with so many people at that time, and wanted to meet me. So, we met, and I found that John was a sincere and beautiful guy. 

The first version of the Lounge Lizards I was in was with John, Peter Zummo, and Evan [Lurie]. We also had Tony Garnier – probably best known as Bob Dylan’s music director and the person who’s played with Bob the longest ever – on bass. It was great. 

But the second version of the band I was in was where things took off. That was when Marc Ribot joined the band. I had introduced Erik Sanko to John and he ended up joining us on bass. And we had Curtis Fowlkes and Roy Nathanson too. All of a sudden, we truly took off. 

You mentioned earlier how the new album sounds nothing like anything else out there. That’s how the Lounge Lizards was. There was nothing else remotely like it at that time. Back then, though, half of the people couldn’t stand us. But people like Butch Morris and Henry Threadgill loved what we were doing. We had the energy of Iggy Pop but could swing. We were not fully in either the rock scene or the jazz scene. We played to the fullest of our emotional and physical abilities, and people picked up on that. So many people cried at our performances because of what we were able to make together. Our creation was beautiful and exalted every time. There’s no two ways about it. It was very intense. 

PG: Even today, the recordings show a band that sounds incredibly unique.

DB: Yeah, I think that is because of how the band was a collection of individual talents. Curtis, Roy, Ribot, Erik Sanko, E.J. Rodriguez. Everyone was unbelievable. Playing next to them for that many years, we were like family. We’d go up and give the best show we possibly could. Our performances weren’t just gigs. But everything I have been involved in has been pretty intense. I didn’t take gigs that were just about money. As a result, I was always broke, but the music and memories are incredible. 

PG: You mentioned a minute ago about how certain people in jazz music opposed what the Lounge Lizards were doing musically. At least some of that would have been when the neotraditionalist jazz crusade of people like Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis was at its height. Do you feel that movement tied into some of the opposition the band encountered?

DB: Stanley Crouch was Stanley Crouch. He hated everything that I loved. There were a whole bunch of characters involved in authoring criticism and thinking about the music scene who were not Stanley Crouch. Greg Tate, for one. Stanley hardly mattered to what we did. He fought his battles within the jazz community. To people like Ronald Shannon Jackson and Butch Morris, Stanley Crouch really didn’t matter to what they were doing either. You know, that battle between defining the music and creating new expressions has gone on forever. Someone in Downbeat even called John Coltrane “anti-jazz” for what he was doing. It doesn’t matter.

My interest in criticism lies in the folks who write and introduce me to thinking about things that I might have missed. They share with you things you should understand. I’ve been introduced to so much music through language; through talking to people, or reading. That sharing of deeper knowledge is what writers should strive for. The adherence to some narrowly defined concept of music does not work. I’ve similarly met people who have no idea why classical music should be acknowledged. And it’s all just ignorance. When adhering to narrow definitions, you’re missing a beautiful and important part of the human endeavor of music. It’s a shame when people miss out in that way. 

As a funny example, the Lounge Lizards played at a festival in Rio [de Janeiro, Brazil] called the Free Jazz Festival. It was a big festival. It was not named after free improvisation but, instead, a brand of cigarettes down there. It would be like the Marlboro Jazz Festival.

PG: Or the Kool Jazz Festivals that used to exist.

DB: Right. Before our performance at the Free Jazz Festival, the Modern Jazz Quartet gave a press conference. In it, they said that our band shouldn’t even be there. It was a big scandal and in all of the [news]papers. Not long before the festival, [Jim Jarmusch’s film starring John Lurie] Stranger than Paradise (Samuel Goodwyn, 1984) had just come out, and John had a lot of publicity because of that.  

But we played and people went nuts and loved it. Tangentially, Tony Williams played right after us. He started his set with the last thing we played, a figure I did in “Big Heart.” It was jaw-dropping. I couldn’t believe it. Here was a hero of mine playing my part. I met him the next day, and he told me he loved what I do and asked me to sound-check for him. It was amazing. So, the press hated us because we were “anti-jazz” and the Modern Jazz Quartet mentioned us because we weren’t jazz. But on the other hand, you have Ronald Shannon Jackson, Butch Morris, or Tony Williams. As far as the criteria you have to fulfill to be this kind of music, who cares? 

And because of that, it is the nicest thing that you said you found the new album difficult to describe. I like the fact that I also can’t describe it even though I can usually easily describe things. 

PG: To ask you about a hero other than Tony Williams, how did you get hooked up with Bernie Worrell? 

DB: Interestingly, we met through the band, the Plastics. They were a new wave group during the ‘80s that had opened for the B52s and Talking Heads. They – Chica Sato and Toshio Nakanishi – were one of the first bands making that kind of music to have come out of Japan and tour the States. Chica and I ended up dating. When the Plastics broke up in 1982, Chica and Toshio formed a new band called Melon that had me on drums, Bernie on keyboards, and Percy Jones on bass. Do you know Percy?

PG: Yeah, from Brand X. Didn’t you, him, and [Bill] Frisell used to have a trio together, too?

DB: Stone Tiger, yeah. But as far as Bernie, he was a hero of mine, as you mentioned. I had listened to tons of R&B, including Parliament. I remember I was driving in my car in [New] Jersey [the first time] I heard “Flashlight,” I had to pull over on the Parkway to listen. What was this music? This is what I’d been waiting for. It changed my life.

But, yeah, I met Bernie through Chica, and Bernie and I immediately hit it off. We became friends and then over several years, we played together several times. When Yuka [Honda] and I got married, we had a big jam session, and he was playing Yiddish wedding tunes. I also ended up writing the riffs to a couple of songs for his album [Funk of Ages (Gramvision, 1990)]. It was an honor to have them played by Maceo [Parker] and Vernon Reid. Vernon and I knew each other from the Downtown scene back when the scene was very small – it seemed like only ten people: Zorn, Vernon, Melvin [Gibbs], and a small number of others. But Bernie was like family. 

PG: In terms of the 1980s Downtown scene more generally, what do you feel is its legacy decades later?

DB: You know, I don’t really think about those sorts of things. But I will say that when it was going on, there was an undeniable feeling. It was like Paris in the ‘20s or Athens, Georgia in the ‘80s. Or like Macon, Georgia, when the Allman Brothers were coming out. All these bands were coming out of one town at one time. For us, New York was it. There was definitely something in the air. It wasn’t like we walked around thinking we were doing something revolutionary. But we did share an interest in finding innovative, challenging, and beautiful things to make. We all just loved the endeavor of music. We read a lot of the same books, watched the same films, and shared a lot of the same interests. You could go out every night and see some shit that was definitely new, but it wasn’t like people were going around decreeing that the moment was alive with newness. 

PG: Although no longer there, it seems those from that scene – yourself included – are continuing to reach for those new and beautiful things.  

DB: I mean, that’s our job. Ribot is a mentor and a best friend and has been for decades. He’s also one of the smartest and nicest people I ever met in my life. He would tell you he is a worker; this is his job.  If we’re lucky enough, through a million things that came together, to be able to make music, of course, you do something with it. I was genetically disposed to make it. I could play faster than the other kids when I was ten. And then I was, luckily, exposed to so much great music over the years. 

But while making music is our job, it’s also important how we think of music. I don’t think music is just entertainment, nor does John Zorn or Ribot or so many others. [Igor] Stravinsky said: “I consider that music, by its very nature, is essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. . . . Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence.” Now, [Duke] Ellington felt that intent, meaning, and purpose are very important. Music, to him, could express emotions directly and, also manipulate and create emotions in listeners. I agree with Ellington. But Stravinsky is right. Writing music with no words is not about anything. If you look at the titles of the songs on this new record, they mean something to me. They have to do with the world now. The use of titles like “Alliance” and “Sovereignty” is not a mistake. I’m not just looking at a thesaurus. They have a clear story in mind, but I don’t think the listener needs to know that story to appreciate what they hear. Thinking about music is too grand of a gesture, and it doesn’t need to have boundaries set. It can transport people to different places. 

PG: With thise different interpretations, not weakening or undermining the emotive or true importance of the music. 

DB: Yes. If music-making is just a job, you can just retire from it one day. But I have always believed that music is necessary and important. There’s still work to be done, and hopefully, music can play a part in that work. Music itself is indispensable. 

‘The Stars are Indispensable’ is available now on Tzadik Records. You can order the album from the label’s website. Dougie Bowne will perform with Matt Nelson at the Big Ears Festival on March 29, 2025.