Mysterious Textures: A Conversation with Brandon Seabrook

Youthful zeal often brings a desire to show your technical capabilities. Young athletes try to sprint as rapidly as possible, while their musician counterparts often try to fit in as many notes into a solo as possible. But age frequently leads people to realize that while such showcasing skills are great, they are mere tools in a larger kit. There is a time to run and to rest. While referring to Brandon Seabrook’s earlier works as juvenile is fallacious, one cannot help but sense a new level of maturity in brutalovechamp (Pyroclastic, 2023).

Seabrook has made a name for himself through precise artillery barrages of notes; perhaps some modernized avant-garde development of Coltrane’s sheets of sound. Long impulsive runs have been a central part of such groups as his trio Seabrook Power Plant, a group once donned by the Village Voice as “a manic clusterfuck of merciless banjo torture.” The guitarist-banjoist is also an incredibly physical player, often seemingly possessed by the music as he contorts and twists his body to reflect the resonances of the strings in front of him. Seabrook’s ruthless approach to performance emerges directly from the punk ethos of his musical upbringing. And it’s certainly worked well for him, as he has used the approach on several excellent records under his own name and in working with such creative music heavyweights as Anthony Braxton and Elliot Sharp. But how long can it last as the artist approaches forty? Perhaps just as importantly, how can one fully appreciate the destructive nature of a curtain of fire without seeing the barren ground without it? 

Brutalovechamp finds Seabrook with his new octet, Epic Proportions. The group’s name is fitting as they produce an immense work; one big in both ideas and sound. The album’s eight through-composed pieces cover a significant musical expanse with a focus on different sound textures. The title track’s use of mandolin and recorder speaks of Medieval Folk Rock ala Fairport Convention before it evolves into a thrashing funk groove. The first of the two-part “I Want To Be Chlorophylled” shifts between mesmerizing walls of chords and staccato guitar lines. Throughout the album, Seabrook does not shy away from his characteristically smoldering runs. There are still blasts of sound and, at some moments, even screams. But these elements are but a few of the colors he uses. The album makes ample use of space and silence, causing the scorching moments to burn deeper. In this sense, “From Lucid to Ludicrous” is downright atmospheric and probably the track most likely to surprise the bandleader’s followers. 

But what emerges through the album is the confirmation that Seabrook is more than just a gifted performer. With brutalovechamp, the guitarist-banjoist announces his significance as a contemporary polystylist composer who gives equal weight to the ideas of giants like Gordon Lightfoot, Jimmy Smith, and Alfred Schnittke but binds himself to none of them. We sat down with Seabrook to discuss the octet and the album.

PostGenre: Brutalovechamp sounds very different from some of your other works. 

Brandon Seabrook: Yeah. Well, I had more time to work on it than I usually would for an album. I wrote the compositions over about seven months and then recorded them in three days. It was pretty luxurious to have three whole days in the studio. 

Musically, I didn’t want to leave the same kind of hailstorm of sound on the audience that I usually do in my music. I wanted to get in touch with some more space and lyricism; things that I love but which haven’t been represented much in my other works. 

PG: What pushed you towards a more lyrical sound?

BS: Much of the music I listen to has a lot of space in its melodies. I don’t always listen to the most dense, fast-moving, wild stuff all the time, even though those aspects show up a lot in my work. With this record, I wanted to slow things down and be more vulnerable and okay with settling into a form. Brutalovechamp has more melody and harmonic chord changes than most of my projects. The form itself comes a little more from rock and roll music, the type of music I was first drawn to. In my other music, things are often put together in chunks; into different sections. While that also happens with this music, I wanted the sections to sit in a space for longer and to explore that space. I wanted the music to stay in an area and deeply explore it.

PG: You seem much more comfortable with space on this album than on your prior projects. Why do you think you were less likely to use space in the past?

BS: Right, on this album, there’s certainly a lot of space; breathing room. I think I didn’t include it as much before because I felt like it made me more vulnerable to include space. I always felt like I had to fill up all the space. Or have a histrionic kind of shredding. That impulse probably comes from my background in punk rock, where you aim to fill as much space as possible. With brutalovechamp, I aimed to slow things down. I’ve learned from other projects that you can use space in a meaningful way. It took me a long time to be okay with putting space in the music and not just creating with intense energy all of the time. For a long time, I felt like if I wasn’t completely drenched in sweat from every pore of my body after a performance, I didn’t give the music my all.

PG: You are a very physical player.

BS: Yeah, I am. But thinking about how to keep playing into old age, I am starting to adjust and slow down physically. I’m finding ways to reinvent myself and try to prolong my musical life, which means being a little less physical in my playing.

PG: Though there are still sudden textural shifts in the music. 

BS: Right, there are still many jump cuts and stuff that is a part of my thing. Sharp turns left or right into other things. But I feel like this record is more rooted in particular feelings or textures. This group allows me to go deeper into textures and I look forward to seeing where we go.

PG: So, you plan on doing more with the group?

BS: Yeah, we are going to play some shows and have some gigs booked into 2024. I want to keep expanding the group’s scope and continue to write for it. But we’re just scratching the surface in terms of what I plan to do with this group.  

PG: Was it particularly difficult to write for this group given how different it is from your other projects?

BS: No, not really. It was actually a little easier because there are so many different personalities to write for with an octet. It wasn’t like dealing with a solo or small group project where you sometimes second-guess yourself about how you composed a particular part. With a group as large as eight, there is so much going on that you are less likely to question yourself. That’s not to say there aren’t things I wish I could have gotten into more, but I wasn’t questioning every small moment. 

PG: What was behind the decision to have two bassists for the group?

BS: Well, this band used to be a six-piece group. We put out a record in 2017 under a different name.

PG: Die Trommel Fatale (New Atlantis, 2017).

BS: Right. That was six of us, and then I added Henry Fraser as a second bass and John McCown on woodwinds. We also changed the second percussionist from Dave Treut to Nava Dunkelman. But, as far as the decision to have bassists, I’ve always been into exploring the subterranean textures. I’ve always been drawn to lower textures. The bassists in the band play very well together but have very different approaches to their instruments. I knew there was a whole world – a whole spectrum – that I could reach with two bases that I couldn’t with only one. I went to see the New York Phil[harmonic] the other night, and they had six basses, and it got me thinking that maybe two is not enough. I need more. [Laughing].

But in general, there are a lot of colors flying around on this record. Sometimes I think many listeners don’t really know what’s going on instrumentally. For instance, whether a part is played by the drummer on the kit or by the percussionist with hand percussion. I like to leave some of that mystery for listeners and create a palette where you’re not really sure what’s coming from where. I feel like that sense of mystery used to be much more common on records. Martin Bisi is an engineer I’ve worked with before, and who has done millions of records with various people, including Sonic Youth. Martin once said, “When we used to make records, we used to want [people to wonder about] the sounds. What is that?” I think people do still wonder about what they ate hearing, but it’s not quite the same as it was back in, say, the early 90s.

PG: And one of the more mysterious sounding textures on the album comes from your use of bowed banjo. You played solely guitar on Die Trommel Fatale. What was behind your decision to add banjo to the octet?

BS: I wanted to put the banjo in a context it’s never been in before. Also, while I don’t always bow the banjo, bowing it can give it a strange violin-like character. You’re not entirely sure what it is when you hear it, but you don’t jump to thinking it’s a banjo.

PG: How did you start bowing the banjo? 

BS: Oh, you know, I pretty much steal everything from all the other people that I see. [Laughing]. I saw a great guitarist in Boston, Pete Fitzpatrick, bowing his tenor banjo and was surprised by it. After seeing him perform, I went home, got a cheap bow, rosined it up, and that was it. I tend to think texturally, and the bowed banjo is a pretty distinct and powerful sound. 

PG: Audiences must be fascinated when they first see and hear you use the bow on the banjo. 

BS: I’m trying to connect with the audience more than I have in the past and I think people appreciate it when you put a banjo into a weird context. People see me about to put the bow on the banjo and find it funny how unusual it is. And out comes this cool texture that doesn’t sound like a violin or a viola. It’s a little scratchier. The bowed banjo almost sounds more like a Romanian string band. I love that. I love Eastern European folk and have played a lot of it over the years. 

PG: Actually, wasn’t it klezmer music that got you started on the banjo as well?

BS: Yeah, it was. I played with the Klezmer Conservatory Band for many years, which was one of the first revival Klezmer bands in the early 80s. I was in that band for a few years and the tenor banjo was a big part of the klezmer sound when it came to America in the 1920s. Klezmer groups, like Dixieland jazz bands, used the tenor banjo like a drum. The musicians for both would smack the banjo and use it very rhythmically. There is only one song on brutalovechamp that uses the banjo in this rhythmic way as I mostly used it to provide texture.

PG: How do you feel the sculptures on brutalovechamp‘s cover further your focus on the texture?

BS: The John Chamberlain sculptures parallel the use of texture on the album, for sure. He worked with these materials and blasts of color and distorted metal shapes. There’s so much beauty and roughness in his works. The works are rough, beautiful, imaginative, and repurposed. I definitely see a parallel there with how I put different musical ideas together and reshape them into something else. 

PG: The titles of Chamberlain’s works are also imaginative. Your composition titles are similarly very distinct. Where do you get your titles from?

BS: I don’t know. I just love the written words and reading. Every time I see a word or read something, I’m trying to grab stuff from it. I love putting together titles. I just love words and making different combinations with them. It’s really kind of like the textures in the music; I try to create titles that help with the narrative of the song.

PG: Going back to how you play banjo differently than it is used in bluegrass music, there is nevertheless a folk music influence on brutalovechamp, particularly on the title track. Do you feel your experience with banjo and mandolin gives you better insight into folk music?

BS: Absolutely. I don’t play bluegrass at all but more of the Celtic or English folk movement with people like Bert Jansch or Fairport Convention. Oh god, yeah. I love that stuff. Also, just straight-up singer-songwriters. I’ve been on a big Gordon Lightfoot tear the last few months, before he recently passed away. Lightfoot used acoustic instruments beautifully to create textures that always stood out to me. Then, of course, Kurt Vile used the tenor banjo a lot, and Brian Wilson did too. And, as far as the mandolin, my family’s all Italian, and I love those Neapolitan mandolin songs. The music on this album is kind of a mix of those all. 

But I’m also not very conceptual. I’m much more technique-based and process-based. I’m just take things I hear and love, and plug them into my music. 

PG: And those things you love include jazz. Your first attraction to jazz music was the works of Kenny Burrell and Jimmy Smith. Do you feel those influences come out more on brutalovechamp than in your prior works?

BS: Yeah, I tried to make my influences, including jazz, more apparent on this record. Some of the songs have harmonic shifts you would expect in jazz. Usually, a lot of my music lacks a tonal center. It is very serialist or atonal. A lot of my music has historically given rhythm precedence over pitch. Pitch was there, but it was not the most important thing. For this record, I wanted to bring pitch more to the front and have harmonic chord progressions and moving harmonies that are a little more lush. I definitely want to go more to the lush side of things moving on.

PG: You also explore opera on “Compassion Mintage.” Where did the decision to bring in operatic vocals come from?

BS: I love The Marriage of Figaro and other operas. I also wanted to have a conversation between two voices. The next step would be to write lyrics. I would like to experiment with writing lyrics in future compositions.

PG: When you compose, how do you determine how these seemingly disparate pieces will best fit together?

BS: Well, I hear them like that. I just hear things – music and textures I like, make note of them and try to put them together in an organic way. 

And I use compositional techniques like canon and serialism from 20th century composers like [Arnold] Schoenberg and Webern. I also use tonality; triadic tonality and seventh chords. I use things and just expand on them. I’m lifting stuff from how Gordon [Lightfoot] approaches strings or how Maria Schneider voices some chords. Or how Julius Hemphill wrote for his big band. Those are all textures that I love and try to incorporate. I also like to combine things from disparate genres. It just makes sense to me.

When I write something, I like to take a kernel of a musical idea and find a way to go in a different direction with it. So, for instance, I may have a twelve-tone row but will use it with big drums and a more rock-based texture than a classical one. I use those drums to contrast with some lyrical and lush string chords. I don’t just slap things together but try to combine them in a way that makes sense in the sense of a storytelling arc.

PG: There is certainly some cinematic quality about a track like “I Wanna Be Chlorophylled I: Corpus Conductor” in particular. 

BS: Yeah, I mean, I love Alfred Schnittke, the Russian composer, who did a polystylist thing, where he would take a folk tune and make it very dense; he turned it into some classical modernist thing. The first two chords of the first part of “I Wanna Be Chlorophylled” are pretty much lifted from one of Schnitke’s string quartets where he goes back and forth between incredibly dense, serialist, canon stuff, then back to a romantic classical thing. I kind of wish I pushed that general concept a little bit more, but it took a lot for me to write and orchestrate it.

PG: Since you are planning to continue the octet, do you think you will push this Schnittke-based concept further as you continue to perform together?

BS: Often you learn more about your music after you write it and listen to it many times. I wrote and rehearsed music but sometimes it was difficult to make sense of the entirety of the pieces as I am writing them. After a year of listening to the record, we are looking to rework and expand on some ideas from the album. My music is always morphing. It’s always changing.

PG: Do you think those changes will incorporate more space for improvisation? The tracks on brutalovechamp present compositions that are generally through-composed.

BS: While there is not a ton of improvisation on the album, I do want to open things up a bit more in live performances. If and when we do another record, there will be more sections open. But this group is eight people from all different backgrounds. Some in the band are hardcore improvisers like [percussionist] Nava [Dunkelman], [bassist] Henry Frazer, and [woodwindist] John McCowen. Others, [bassist] Eivind Opsvik and [cellist] Marika Hughes are more classically trained and don’t improvise as much. Then you have Chuck [Bettis] on electronics, who is a musical auto-didact. Everybody has a different approach to music, and it’s generally better to have things more organized and through-composed when you have that many musicians together.  

I give people moments to stretch out more in live performances, but for a record, I often prefer to condense things and present them in a way that is not just improvisation for the sake of improvisation. We are not just going to freely improvise with a group of eight musicians. I respect melody too much to do that. 

PG: One last question for you. What can you tell me about Champ, for whom the album was named?

BS: I didn’t really want to make it a big thing for the album, but the producer talked me into bringing Champ into it. Champ was a beautiful nine-year-old pit bull I had rescued during the pandemic. He passed away right after the album was done. Champ was with me the whole way as I made the album. Champ taught me a lot about empathy, passion, being open and vulnerable, and caring for something other than yourself. You can learn a lot from an animal.

Brutalovechamp is now available on Pyroclastic Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information on Seabrook can be found on his website.

Photo credit: Reuben Radding