Turning the Page / Scene Report

Dear Friends -

I made something yesterday.

Since losing the job that I loved in early June when UArts abruptly shutdown, I have been lost. Everyone’s job is a huge part of their identify, but for creative academics, the relationship somehow feels closer. It’s taken me the last six months to reclaim the parts of me that are still my own.

For as long as I can remember, I have always known what my ‘project’ was. I might not have been able to work on it everyday, but it was always there - I knew what I wanted to be doing creatively.

While I was on sabbatical in the spring (when you last heard from me), I turned a big page creatively. I figured out a way to reconfigure my practice as a composer to incorporate my newfound love for frenetic, gestural guitar playing with the production skills that I have acquired over the last nine years. I began composing, arranging and producing ‘backing tracks’ to support a live set of glitchy, free improvisation with my modified guitars.

I haven’t officially recorded or released these new pieces, but I did have the chance to perform them a couple times and I put together this little reel for a few job applications this fall -

What I like most about this set up is that incorporates all of things that I’m interested in - performing, composing, producing - and rolls them into one solo project. I was coming off of sabbatical with laser focus and a new playbook.

However, for the past six months, I have been busy processing, scrambling, wandering, grieving, imagining possible futures and searching for work - but creatively, I have been inert.

Where I have found some solace is in going to shows. I have been all over Philadelphia in a hunt for the heaviest music I can find: hardcore, death metal, punk, grindcore. Wherever I can find it (from house shows to church basements), the immersive, communal, chaotic live experience of this loud, noisy music is making a lot of sense to me right now. It is not music which is meant to be considered and observed at arms length; at its best, it’s music which surrounds you and you participate in, actively.

The thing I started working on yesterday is in response to all of these experiences - my second riff on my new set up. I don’t have the words to describe how good it feels to have a project again, some small (yet still fragile) sense of direction. I feel more like myself than I have for quite a while.

I hope to return to performing and to share this new work with you soon, but I have also been musing on our obsession with goals and outcomes, especially as creatives. Sure, there’s a need to finish things and push them out into the world, but more and more, I’m coming to believe that the real art is not in the products of our creative efforts. Instead, the true work of art can be found in a life well lived - a life that embraces change, integrates pain, savors joy, and finds beauty in all of it.

SHARING

When I was creating my History of Rock course in 2021, I was focused on discovering underground voices that were innovative, diverse, or both. In seeking out shows to attend, I’m looking for the same qualities. All of following bands somehow fit that bill and are acts which I have seen live in Philadelphia over the past few months -

Willzyx from New Hampshire immediately caught my attention for incorporating modular synthesis and free improvisation into a genre (mathcore) where neither is typical.

HONG KONG FUCK YOU from Tijuana also has an interesting instrumentation - three basses(!), no guitars. Their sound is massive, guttural, and confrontational.

Violencia is another hardcore band from Tijuana featuring an incredible female vocalist - pure, raw, unabated energy.

KORRODED from Memphis is pure grindcore - the fastest, hardest hitting form of metal. I got interested in their use of lo-fi samples, which they also incorporated into their live set. The samples serve the same purpose as an acoustic guitar interlude on a Black Sabbath record: by contrast, everything else sounds that much more brutal.

SLANT from South Korea is just good old fashioned punk done right - exuberant, catchy riffs delivered without any frills.

Kārtël is a hardcore band based in NYC comprised entirely of Latinx immigrants. The vocalist is an incredibly captivating live performer and their songs have an urgency to them which reinforces their topical lyrics.

Coffins is a death, doom metal band from Japan that’s been around for a while, but their blues tinged sound is still as powerful as it gets. Their live set was like a punch to the gut. (I was actually at this show on election night, which somehow helped to soften the blow.)

Finally, SOJI from Philadelphia is dedicated “to disrupting existing punk spaces in favor of centering more Black Queer and Trans punks.” With song titles like, “Doug Burgum Better Sleep With Open Lids” and “US Healthcare Is A Scam”, the messages behind their music and the delivery are clear-eyed and vital.

Despite my own personal struggles over the last six months and the unending stream of increasingly troubling headlines from around the globe, attending these shows has given me optimism for the future. If we can find productive ways to channel anger while building community, we can at least continue to cope or - at best - rise above.

Happy listening!

more soon (fingers crossed) -

Paul

*if anybody out there needs an old guy to do a noise set on your show, hit me up.