Unmined Field: A Conversation with Kate Gentile on ‘Find Letter X’

For centuries, the letter “X” has represented the unknown. On a pirate’s map, crossed diagonals denote some undiscovered treasure. In algebra, students must determine ”X” as an unrevealed variable. In an episode of the Simpsons – a consistent bellwether of Western popular culture over the last three decades – even the imbecilic Homer knows it is apt to use the name “Mr. X” to provide himself some anonymity. Even the letter’s use to represent the unknown adds to its mystique; some trace such usage to the twelfth century and others to Renee Descartes four hundred years later. Drummer Kate Gentile’s Find Letter X (Pi, 2023) attempts to solve its own mystery: how far can close collaborative relationships take an ensemble musically? 

The eponymous debut of Gentile’s quartet with pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Kim Cass, and woodwindist Jeremy Viner comes after seven years of the band’s existence as a working group. Further, even beyond the specific band, Gentile has collaborated with other band members in several other projects, most notably Mitchell. These longstanding relationships provide an enigmatic magic to their music. Together, they take the drummer-leader’s selection of unusual rhythms and tempos to produce music seemingly untethered to traditional notions of melody and harmony or perceived differences between electric and acoustic sound. 

 Due to both its sheer volume – it is a three-disc outing – and its continual shifts in textures, Find Letter X is an unpredictablely compelling high-energy experience. The first third of Find Letter X‘s voluminous collection of tracks, “Iridian Alphabet”, takes acoustic jazz and marries it with other stylistic impulses, from pyschedlica on “Laugh Magic” to punkish protestations on “Recursive Access.” The album’s middle segment, “Senselessness”, seamlessly blurs the aggressive edges of avant-garde jazz and death metal. Compositions like “r.a.t.b.o.t.B” and “nine fog” raucously combine the furious flurry of electronic screeches and feedback with heavy grooves and free improvisation to create an explosive whole. The album’s closing third, “The Cosmic Brain”, builds upon its predecessor parts to dive even deeper into textural shifts, at times even incorporating elements of contemporary classical music, an area Gentile recently explored for her “b i o m e i.i” with the International Contemporary Ensemble. At times, these segments also, in stark contrast to “Senselessness”, make delicate use of silence and space reminiscent of an ECM recording. 

We sat down with Gentile to discuss the album and how it came to be. 

PostGenre: About a third of Find Letter X was recorded remotely because of the pandemic.

Kate Gentile: That’s right. 

PG: Was it more difficult working remotely compared to studio work? 

KG: Not necessarily. I liked working remotely because it made it easier to take my time. Normally, with a studio recording, you have to do significant advanced preparation to limit your time in the studio. Most things must be figured out well in advance of recording. 

At first, when the pandemic started, it felt like remote recording was something people were settling for; something not as good as working in the studio but, at that time, the only way to record. As people started making more and more remote recordings, I realized there are a lot of interesting aspects of recording remotely that are worth doing despite the pandemic. Working remotely provides the opportunity to record at any time, even in the middle of the creative process. That aspect alone makes remote recording interesting. I think it also would have been difficult for the group to record all of the music on the album in only two days in the studio. We would need a lot more time. Recording remotely can be a good way to approach certain music and certain projects. 

PG: Studio recording sessions can also bring surprises. When the quartet went into the studio, [bassist] Kim [Cass] had COVID, right?

KG: Yeah. By the time we recorded, he was basically over the virus. It was a little questionable whether he was still contagious. I gave everyone an out, but everyone was still down to record regardless. I was expecting that people wouldn’t want to go forward, but everyone was game, and nobody was worried. Nobody ended up getting COVID from the session because we were all very careful. Kim was very vigilant about wearing a mask. It was a close call, but everything worked out. 

PG: You mentioned the length of the album. Find Letter X is three discs long, and Snark Horse (Pi, 2021) is six discs. Why do you release so much content with each album? 

KG: The situation with Snark Horse was different from that for Find Letter X.  Snark Horse was long because all the tunes were one bar, and we made many of them. We weren’t initially planning six CDs for that project and instead thought we would record everything and then pair it down. But we ended up liking everything and ended up releasing it all. By contrast, I always envisioned Find Letter X as a three-disc album. 

PG: So, the decision to make Find Letter X three discs was always an artistic decision, not an economic one?

KG: Well, once I recorded my first album, Mannequins (Skirl, 2017), I started thinking about my next project. I thought about how expensive it was to release Mannequins and how I write enough music to put out an album a year but can’t afford to release something every year. I considered putting out multi-disc albums to get all of my pieces out there while not costing as much as releasing an album each year. It turns out it’s not cheaper to put out a triple disc at once.

But that thought process led to my idea of using the triple album form. It led me to pull together ideas about how compositions could musically connect across the album and the overall arc of the album. So, the fact it is a triple disc release started due to financial concerns but turned into something substantive. 

PG: As for the overall arc, each disc has a general thematic point that unites its tracks. Were those themes something you planned from the beginning?

KG: I had a loose idea of what I wanted as the feel of each disc. However, I decided that I would change things as the project progressed. I had initial ideas about the form, but some changed based on what I ultimately wrote. But yeah, a lot of it was in place from the beginning. 

I originally wanted to make every third track a short interlude with fifteen tracks per disc. It would have been a rigid pattern. I still incorporated some of that idea into the album, but some compositions were longer, and fifteen tracks per disc would have been too long. That is certainly the case with disc three, where there are fewer tracks than the other two discs because those on disc three were longer. I generally had ideas in mind about the overall form of the album, but they changed based on how the music ended up coming together.

PG: What is your process for composing for the quartet? Given the significant stylistic differences between the three discs, did you approach your compositions for each disc differently?

KG: My approach for each was so different. Every time I write something, I use a different method. There are some things that I do use more than once, but most of the time, I use a completely different process for each tune that I write. 

Even my starting point for composition is never the same. That starting point could be a pitch, a collection of notes, or a rhythmic idea. It could be an idea about a form. Or it is an idea about a feeling, imagining something already really clear in my head. I hear something, and then I have to figure it out. I might use a retuned guitar or a keyboard. I might go straight to pencil the paper. It is all varied. My approaches have also changed over the years. 

PG: Right, you started composing pieces for this quartet several years ago. Do you feel the more recent ones are stronger than the older ones because you have continued to develop compositional skills over that period?

KG: I don’t necessarily feel like they’re stronger, partly because they all fit into a conception I had at one point in time. To me, they’re all sort of the same era. I don’t feel like the compositions I wrote last year are very recognizably different from those I wrote back in 2016. But as a group, I think all of the compositions on Find Letter X are very different from those I’ve written before, as for Mannequins.

PG: Of course, the instrumentation and personnel play a role in how different this album turned out than your other works. You have worked with Matt [Mitchell] on many other projects and have also previously collaborated with Kim and Jeremy [Viner] as well. How important are these longstanding relationships to executing your vision for Find Letter X? 

KG: Incredibly important. I wouldn’t be able to make this music without having a band like this one. All three are some of my very best friends, and I think that’s the only way that it’s possible to make this music. There is so much involved for someone to learn this music. Something comparable would be from the New Music world, where it is not uncommon to have fifty hours of rehearsal for a performance. In the improvisation-based music world, it is far less common to have that level of preparation.

PG: What causes the different levels of preparation between “New Music” and “improvisation-based music”?

KG: Well, for one, there is more funding for New Music, which makes more rehearsal possible. We do not have that level of funding for improvised music. The fact Matt, Jeremy, and Kim are game to spend the time needed to make this music a reality is essential to its existence. 

PG: Was composing for the quartet drastically different than writing for the International Contemporary Ensemble?

KG: The two were very different experiences. With b i o e m i.i for the International Contemporary Ensemble, around 80% of the music is composed and 20% improvised. On Find Letter X, the music is equal parts composed and improvised. The quartet is a band of equally strong improvisers who can also skillfully play challenging composed material. While the International Contemporary Ensemble has many improvisers as members, the group focuses more on taking a nuanced approach to composed material. Musicians in the Ensemble would ask very detailed questions on how to play certain parts. So, I focused more on ways for the Ensemble to thoughtfully interpret composed material. 

PG: One interesting element is that the quartet does not improvise over chord changes. Instead, improvisations are built on fragments of music. Does stepping away from chord changes make it more difficult to improvise?

KG: Well, chord changes originated simply as a way to describe what was going on harmonically in a more basic way. In that sense, using fragments of music as a guide instead of chords is not significantly different because we’re still improvising based on the harmonic material even though we do not use shorthand to describe it. We avoided using chord changes partly because there aren’t existing simple chords that cover the specific voicings that I use. 

There is also a whole spectrum of tonality and atonality. On one end, you have diatonic Western music, and on the other, there is no tonal center. I think far too often many people to incorrectly say something is atonal solely because it is a little more complex. 

PG: Like its music, Find Letter X’s album art also seems complex. What was your inspiration behind the visual presentation of the album?

KG: Well, the band name comes from a story from when Matt was a toddler. In the middle of the night, he sleepwalked downstairs, pointed toward a window, and said, “Find letter X.” With the artwork, I wanted to reference that story visually. That’s why there is a kid on the cover with vague, tilted, window shapes. I don’t know about you, but I remember having the craziest thoughts and the craziest dreams when I was very little. And it seemed like anything could be mysterious. I wanted to fit some of that experience with the music.

PG: And what are your thoughts on the intersection of your music and visual art in a more general sense? Do you feel your work with visual art influences your music or vice-versa?

KG: It is hard to say. I think about music as having visual aspects. When I am improvising, I think of a certain texture. As I perform, I may see a visual equivalent of the music in my mind. Maybe I am just a visual thinker. I try to fight against that inclination to think visually by always trying to learn things by ear to make sure I’m not relying on things like imagining notation in my head. But I still think my natural inclination is to think visually. I think statistically, most people are. Something like 80% of people are visual learners based on a study I once read.

PG: As a final question, Find Letter X incorporates many stylistic influences. Disc two, “Senselessness” heavily underscores those coming from both jazz and death metal. Do you see a connection between death metal and jazz? 

KG: Absolutely. The connection with jazz comes from improvising with material. There has been significantly more improvisation in brutal death metal in the last five to ten years than in the past. There are so many jazz musicians who love metal. I was surprised to learn that love goes the other way too. 

PG: What do you think causes the shared admiration?

KG: I think it’s just because both have a bunch of great musicians who are open-minded, are interested in finding new things, and love music. For example, Encenathrakh with Weasel Walter, Colin Marston, and Mick Barr has been pioneering improvised brutal chaotic death metal. 

But there’s still a lot of unexplored territory. Dan Weiss’ Starebaby comes from a similar approach [as my quartet], but his synthesis of jazz and metal sounds very different from mine. I think there is room for so many different ways of combining jazz and death metal. That combination is still a very unmined field, and I plan on delving deeper into it in the future. 

‘Find Letter X’ is now available on Pi Recordings. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. You can learn more about Gentile on her website. The quartet will be presenting re-imagined version of compositions from the record at their album release at Roulette Intermedium on October 31, 2023. The performance can also be viewed remotely, or after the event, on YouTube. Additionally, the group will be hosting an online listening party for the album on November 7, 2023.