Ches Smith & Shara Lunon: dismantling musical conventions

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

LP: Let me dig in about Laugh Ash and maybe use that as a springboard into other conversations. One thing that struck me about the record—and I was telling Ches over email—was the vocal work. I typically have a hard time when there's a vocal presence in new music or whatever we want to call experimental music.

I find it takes me out of the moment sometimes, maybe making it literal for me. I'm not entirely sure. It's just something I struggle with as a listener. I very much enjoyed the substance of the vocal presence and the vocalizations. But as the record progressed, what sounded to me—and what I wanted to ask about—was the processing and the use of the voice as another instrument.

I'm curious initially: how did you two come together on this project? Then, I want to ask technical questions about how the voice was incorporated. So I'll open it to either of you to give me the background.

Ches Smith: I met Shara through something to do with The Stone during COVID. It's just a short thing I did there. I liked her work and what we talked about. We did a gig at Nublu, the newer one in New York, with Nick Dunstan, which was improvised. That gig struck me. We were just showing up to play, and Shara brought her processing stuff and effects, but I hadn't heard her do that.

At the time, I was thinking about this record, and I had thought it would be cool to have vocals, but I was on the fence. I was like, well if the right person presents themselves, that'll be that. And then that's exactly what happened. I was into her music, what I'd heard. And I knew she wrote lyrics and poetry as well. So I was interested in all that and just finding some way to make it make sense in what would have been an instrumental ensemble otherwise.

Shara Lunon: There is always a weird interaction or a thought about vocalists in general, particularly in the new music and improvised world. Many people are afraid to approach vocalists because either they're afraid of words or think that attention is going to go straight to a vocalist, though I argue that would happen to a horn player, too.

LP: I think that's fair.

Shara Lunon: What I appreciated about how Ches approached me and how we worked together is that he thought of the voice as an instrument, not just as a facilitator of a message or like a front person. He dug into it and asked me for my opinion on implementing the voice into the instrumental work.

LP: Hearing just a little bit that the two of you have shared is helping me sort of name the struggle I've always had with it. Especially in live environments where I've watched the interaction between instrument-playing and vocal musicians, I've found that often it's very hard to capture the same level of listening and responding.

I wonder if it's a merit of the human voice that we're just drawn to it more. I think we hear a voice, and that's where we go. And I don't think it's about the vocalist and an ego. I think it's about the listener and a primal response to that thing happening. I wonder if that resonates at all.

Ches Smith: I think maybe I'm unusual. I've listened to so much instrumental music, and most of my groups have been that, except for We All Break, which was the first thing of my own that involved quite a bit of vocal. I don't think this is great, but I usually first hear voice as an instrument. Lyrics are the last thing I get. And for songwriting, that's like a travesty with that attitude.

It can be the last thing I check out, honestly, the lyrics or that someone is saying something. Just to experience the whole scope of music over the years, I've consciously worked on checking out the voice as I think it is. When I assume others, that's the first place they go, hearing it as a message and as words and almost like someone communicating something directly to you.

LP: So you're almost saying it is another instrument in the palette from your perspective. You hear the sound and what you can do with it.

Ches Smith: That's how I came up listening to all kinds of things. It's just how it's always struck me, for better or worse.

LP: Shara, something I'm interested in, and I feel weird opening the conversation this way because it's like I'm othering you as a vocalist. Still, I just don't talk to many vocal musicians, so I'm curious about your perspective. Some people double up and, like, you'll find a horn player that can play clarinet, saxophone, flute, and whatever it is, just as a way to be a working musician.

And I wonder, as a vocalist, do you find you have to create your work and be a composer? Or are there opportunities for other ensemble players to fit into other people's things or to keep working? Do you have to generate it?

Shara Lunon: As vocalists across the board, we have to generate our work most of the time. No one just calls a vocalist as an instrumentalist. Very few do. If they do, it is something that a lot of the vocalists I'm friends with talk about at length—about how it's not necessarily equal for a vocalist as it is for other instrumentalists.

But I want to stress how much the voice is an instrument and that many instruments were created to mimic or try to sound like a voice as it is the oldest instrument, and then drums. I was having a conversation with my duo partner, Lesley Mok. And she's surprised that I've never been to the Eastern central part of Europe. I've traveled to other places in the world, but I've never been to France or Germany.

And she's like, "Oh, how have you never been on tour?" I was like, no one takes the vocalists on tour. (laughter)

LP: Yeah.

Shara Lunon: So, I'd say I generate much of my work. I am a composer, and I was also talking to Piotr at Dada Strain, and he was interviewing me about that, like, how many hats do I have to wear? I was like, ask vocalists how many hats they wear. I guarantee you it's a lot.

LP: Yeah, on top of what most musicians, unfortunately, have to wear today in general, which is you're not only the music maker, but you're often the producer, the mixer, the engineer, the mastering engineer, the marketer, the packager, you're in the warehouse shipping out the CDs, the warehouse being the linen closet or whatever it is. It's so difficult. I empathize with that.

But in another way, you know, a lot of the artists I speak with here, as part of doing this, get to create their universe of not only their work but who they choose to work with. And there seems to be a level of intentionality now that is exciting because if you have to do it all, you have to think about what you will do. Like, "Am I going to take on this project?"

I feel like there's a level of, not a passion or intensity, but just, like, you have to want to do it and believe. There's very little throwaway, nothing trite in the mentality about how you would approach a project. And I wonder how those realities manifest for each of you. Are you everything from composer to distributor?

Ches Smith: I can be, but the last three records I've done, there's been a sort of an infrastructure around it with whether I'm getting grant money or that record—Kris Davis's label Pyroclastic, that's great because even just the publicity is such a help just having it get out there and then not to mention the manufacturing and distribution. Normally, I've hooked up with labels that do that anyway.

I have a lot of friends who don't; they'd rather do all that themselves. And that just seems crazy to me, but I understand why they're doing it. They want zero compromise or even possibly even collaboration about those kinds of details.

LP: Controlling the business is a control of the artistic vision and the implementation.

Ches Smith: I can see that for them in their specific cases. But I like to collaborate as long as I like and trust the people. And Kris is 100 percent that, of course. They've done great. And speaking of this, I knew I could write for Shara as an instrument, but I also wanted her to bring in things, especially lyrics.

I don't deal with that. If she said she didn't want to bring in lyrics, I'd just have to start looking for lyrics elsewhere, where I could find text and put things in, but I was really happy that she was able to do that. I like to have a kind teammate with whom I want to work and invite them to bring things in, too.

LP: Shara, how much gets used when you bring in lyrics to a project like this? There's a repetition to some of these pieces, or there's what, from my perspective, seems like a fragmenting, you know, a stutter stop element in how it's produced and some of the processing you do. Do you have a sheet of poetry or prose that you're working from, yet only a few sentences get used? How does your work get integrated into an environment like this? How does your contribution manifest?

Shara Lunon: About 90 percent of what I wrote made it into this record. There are a couple of songs that just didn't work, so we just kind of scratched the lyrics, but I'd say about almost all of it, the use of where you hear, like repetition or set or stop or things like that is intentional for the poetry and for the message of the poetry that I've written for it. But I'd say almost all of what I wrote got used.

LP: Wow, that's neat to hear. Something that struck me about this record is that although it's very modern and fresh sounding, I could almost hear a lineage. Some of the things that sort of spoke to me were that they sounded very much, at times, reminiscent of some of Laurie Anderson's work. I felt like I could hear some elements of some of her, especially her early mid-'80s work.

There was also, in that same period, a lot of people were playing with the Synclavier, and it had a very specific sound in its production, and I could hear that as well. You mentioned something, Shara, about the voice and the drums being two of the oldest or the two oldest instruments, which puts me into this milieu of lineage and tradition. Do you think about that at all? Are you aware of a lineage you spring from, or is that in your consciousness?

Ches Smith: Maybe a little more so these days, but it's a pretty free process when I'm coming up with the music. And the Laurie Anderson thing is interesting. I was a big fan of hers and got to work with her a bit. I didn't think about that really at all. Other than what you said about her mid-'80s work. That first track, "Minimalism," has an '80s vibe to me, but I just realized that came later and almost more when I added the horn and string parts.

It stemmed from just an arpeggiated Moog pattern I had going. Craig Taborn thought it just sounded straight German. I was playing demos of it on tour, and he laughed. I don't know; I'm slightly resistant to placing myself in a context of history or something like that. Or I don't want to limit myself by thinking in those terms or even thinking I'm important enough to place myself somewhere like that.

LP: Do you think about that, Shara?

Shara Lunon: All of the time. Most of my music and words are from the Black American music tradition. I don't necessarily belong to one, but I use them all to inform my compositions and use them to inform musical choices. Lyrics come from poetry. Words of my history, for sure.

LP: At the risk of sort of deconstructing process, because I know that can be annoying to do to an artist, but I'm fascinated with it. You mentioned maybe some of the words, but how do you tap into musical forms? Like, you talk about the Black experience or the Black music traditions. Is there a process element, or is it a spiritual consciousness element?

Shara Lunon: Process, I'm unsure about. I wouldn't give you one way I process through my music. There are many different things and activities I do to get into the work mode. I focus a great deal on how things sound coming out. I think about the shapes of sounds and how it feels in my mouth to create them. Then, I see what feelings arrive, and an intention comes from there. I'd say maybe that's spiritual, but maybe it's also just visceral for me.

LP: Were you all together?

Ches Smith: For the most part. I did some additional things outside of it, but we worked it up together in rehearsals. My goal is to be able to play it live, which we have to do soon. I'm not anticipating too big of a problem because just everyone's sort of used to doing that.

The electronics and the programming stuff were a little more skeletal during the recording. Then I filled it out how I wanted everything to sound, plus the mix, which took some things to a different level just as far as panning and the spatiality of it.

LP: Is this pure improvisation, or did you come in with charts and lead sheets? How do you express your compositions to the team?

Ches Smith: Just charts. I have a score, and I break it down into parts and give people parts, and then we work that up together. I think Shara said some. I gave her some parts, and then she made up other things. She wrote some melodies and things like that, especially the things with words. Or sometimes she'd write the words exactly to the melody I wrote, or maybe some other instrument was playing.

Maybe it's the least improvisation of any record I've done so far. There was a lot of writing on it. I normally do that; I write a lot and end up replacing things with improvised bits and stripping things down as much as I possibly can, but in this case, maybe it's the number of people involved. This record seemed just to want to have all that writing on it.

We recorded some free improv things that didn't make it on; there just wasn't space, and it didn't make as much sense, but I'm planning on, at these gigs, doing that, having certain things be looser and more improvising in general because that's like what we all do really.

LP: You sort of anticipated the question, but can you talk a little bit more about how the music changes when you present it in front of an audience, or what's the role of the audience? When you talked about playing live a few minutes ago, you said we have to play this live in front of an audience, and I thought that was an interesting choice of words because it sounded almost like you had to do it. The way you delivered that line stood out.

Ches Smith: I guess we could cancel. That's an option. (laughter)

LP: You're that excited?

Ches Smith: I am excited. I've been practicing my ass off with it. We have to play it live. Or I guess what I meant is I knew that was coming eventually after the release, so why not just work it up?

Like, we had some gigs at the Stone, which had kind of partial versions of these pieces, and already it was sounding good to me. And then we got in there with Randall Dunn and David Breskin, and it was sort of under a microscope, almost more from having to do with their processes.

I just liked working with them anyway, and they made it sound great. We ensured we had really good takes of everything locked in. Once you do that recording, everyone has it in their ear, and it's much easier for that to just sort of come out. Of course, we're rehearsing quite a bit. Once we have it, I just like to have people take more liberties and try to mess it up.

LP: Shara, for you, you said something earlier that I feel like definitely is relevant as it relates to presenting this music live, which is the way the audience will fixate on a singer the way they would on a horn or maybe another traditional lead instrument. And I wonder, what does that mean for you as that voice? What's your experience in this context when you're in front of an audience?

Shara Lunon: There are so many people in this ensemble that I could argue are lead instruments. So, it's not that big of a thought for me because we're all improvisers and play with unique voices. Nate Woolley, a trumpet player, is obviously also a lead instrument. JBL is also on sax, which is a very lead instrument, you know?

I don't think so much about it. I think it becomes a bit more of a focal point when I am speaking or singing words, maybe because there's a message or intentionality, particularly in "Winter Sprung." Like that is all spoken at the beginning. So I know I am in the forefront, but I feel like the voice is so embedded in such lush and articulate sounds that it's not a conscious effort. It's more about listening for me at that point.

LP: When did processing and electronics become part of your work as a vocalist?

Shara Lunon: It's always kind of been part of my practice. When I gave up trying to be an opera singer in my early 20s, I dove into hip hop, which generally has an electronic base. When I was overwhelmed by being in a large hip-hop band, I was in this eight-piece band for years. I did a solo set to find solace, which involved vocal processing.

And as I developed it as an improviser, it became almost synonymous with what I do, even in my solo work or other projects. It's super embedded. I also really love building electronics. I've built different types of synthesizers, theremins. So it's also just super ingrained as part of my practice.

LP: Ches, how about you? I will assume, which is always bad, that you were a trap drummer initially. What was your journey on the drums, percussion, and electronic spectrums?

Ches Smith: Totally. I grew up playing drums because my brother was into it, my older brother, and some neighborhood kids that were older than him still. It was luckily around, or unluckily for my parents, I guess.

LP: That's tough, two drummers. (laughter)

Ches Smith: Yeah. But it was just playing to records, like a lot of rock music and the neighborhood I grew up in. Eventually, I started reading drum magazines in my teens, playing with people, and finally, with other friends who played other instruments. And I just got into it.

But then I was like, "Oh, all these drummers are talking about reading and rudiments. And I don't know anything about either of those things." So I sought out a teacher at the drum shop, and he started showing me stuff. That same drummer got me, made this jazz mixtape, and I really hadn't heard much jazz at all, and he was talking about some drummers on there, and then I just started checking it out, and I got interested pretty quick, and then really dove into that.

I was into bebop and even swing music, and then definitely post-bop and a lot of '60s music. Yeah. So that started that way. Then, I was working as a drummer in the Bay Area, and that's when Willie Winant, who became my percussion teacher, invited me to apply to school there. He thought I could get money to go.

I did, and that started the whole vibraphone and more classical or new musical instruments for me. Just to get to the electronics, that didn't happen till I joined Marc Ribot's band with Shahzad. And then Marc was like, "We need cheap drum machine sounds." And then Shahzad's like, "Ches is your man." You know, and I was like, "What are you talking about?" I'd never done any of that. I had a drum machine. But it was more to practice with.

Shahzad just loaned me all this stuff, and I just took it on a gig and started making a racket during the free parts. And then Shahzad was supportive. He's like, "You already have a voice on this. Can you hear it?" I was like, "No!" I always say they kind of forced me into it, you know? So that's when that started.

And then I sort of added it into my solo drums vibes project called Congs for Brums. Once I started doing that, I said, "Oh yeah, I can see some connection between the metals, beats, and drums." I couldn't articulate it, but I was just trying to do that through practicing and playing.

LP: I read this great quote about when you were a teenager playing, and you said, "We didn't distinguish between improvising and jamming." Tell me the difference. As nominally a player, I've done both. But what would a listener need to know about the difference between improvising and jamming?

Ches Smith: I felt like jamming was not a permissible word for anything once I got to Mills College in grad school. And I'm not saying I agree with that; that's just how it was. Another friend, Greg Saunier from Deerhoof, said, "NEVER, before or since, was I so terrified to improvise than my time at Mills College," you know? It was just under the microscope.

And then when I got to New York, Marc would be like, "Yeah, we'll just jam on this." And I was like, "Oh my God, he said jam. Marc Ribot said jam," you know? (laughter)

LP: Does an improvisation have to have more of a sophisticated element to it? And jamming is more like, you know, pointless?

Ches Smith: That's what I'm implying people think the distinction is. I don't know. I mean, jamming to me, just on a gut level, sounds like rock guys. And I mean guys. (laughter) No, I'm just kidding. You know, it sounds like that. I'm from Sacramento, and it was just like, "Dude, let's jam!" It's like that. (laughter) Anyway, Shara, do you have any ideas about this?

Shara Lunon: I think it's just connotation. I feel like people think of jams, and they think of like Grateful Dead or something like that. Or like the melodic chord structure you're sticking to. And I think the connotation of improvising means it can go anywhere. Does that mean that that's what they should be? No, but that's just kind of the connotation behind it.

Ches Smith: Yeah, the word connotation is important in talking about this.

LP: it's interesting, right? Because you think about the jazz tradition, there was always a tradition of jam sessions, right? Or even until the loft era in New York, there were jam sessions. Hearing you both speak about it, it seems where I'm arriving at with it is almost like you might jam on a tune, or you might jam on a blues. You're using some structural starting point. And though you can do that in improvisation, that means some of the great, my favorite things or whatever is that you use the song as the vehicle, but you don't necessarily need to.

Ches Smith: Yeah, I mean, but I've been to my share of jam sessions in a bebop format—tons of them. So yeah, there is that. I don't know. I've seen people improvise over the changes, too.

LP: Yeah.

Shara Lunon: It also comes from appropriating words. I say people think of Grateful Dead because it all comes from a Black tradition that was used later to describe something it didn't fully apply to at the time. And that's where the connotations come in, and what became popular became acceptable and palatable for the American public. Improvisation also has this elite thought, virtuosos of jazz or in new music, but it is synonymous.

Ches Smith: Yeah. Yeah. By the time it got to me as a kid in Sacramento, it was that connotation.

Shara Lunon: I mean, yeah. Same.

LP: Sacramento is, when I think about music in Sacramento, like a meat and potatoes rock town.

Ches Smith: Yeah. That's what I think too, but it's interesting how much cool shit has come out of there. Death Grips, Chelsea Wolfe, all this stuff, you know. Tesla. No, just kidding. (laughter) That was when I was in high school.

There was a lot of music, you know, around. And the scene I was in actually had people who were into a lot of things, like downtown New York stuff. People would get together, and yeah, they'd say jam, but it sounded like free improvisation. And these were people older than me. And it was a pretty mixed scene, actually, for that area. It just made me think, "Oh, these guys are cool," and that being open to stuff and improvising is cool. That's what I thought as a teenager.

LP: I'll share a moment of vulnerable ignorance with you, which is, you know, I haven't grown up in the tri-state area in Connecticut. It was Southern Connecticut, so the gravitational pull was always New York. For other parts of Connecticut, it's Boston and more into New England. But for us, I was outside of New Haven, so it was always New York.

Like, I thought all the downtown music, even from the no wave stuff on through Zorn and Bill Laswell and all that, I thought nobody knew about that outside of, outside of that area because it was a time where like, you know, obviously pre-internet and it wasn't in Rolling Stone. That was my reference point. Who knows about this music?

Until the Sonny Sharrock album was reviewed in Rolling Stone, that sort of was a mind-blower. My point is to hear you say that people in Sacramento and on the West Coast are aware of this music. Later in life, I can turn around and say, "Well, yeah, duh." But I had this conception of getting on the train to go into Lower Manhattan, going to the old Knitting Factory, to see Sonny Sharrock in what amounted to a storefront venue—I thought it was the center of the universe and a secret. I thought it was a secret.

Which, you know, at a certain age, that adds a lot to the music, that adds a sort of sense of excitement. But it's not fair to overlay that on the artist, right? I want people like you and those I've admired over the years to find their audience. I don't want it to be just mine. Still, it's interesting how your entry point into music can stay with you for a long time, like how you think about it. It can stay with you for a long time. These feelings can stay embedded even once you learn something different intellectually about it.

Ches Smith: Yeah, and I thought the Sacramento scene, the reason they knew about the New York scene, part of it was, had to do with everyone working at the Tower Records warehouse. But yeah, like that drum teacher I mentioned—he worked there and knew those other guys that got me into this other music. They'd be talking about Coltrane and Dead Kennedys in the same sentence, and I was just like, "What are they talking about?"

They were kind of, I guess, hipsters in there, and they were checking out New York stuff. And I guess music from other places, too. I heard Nirvana and the Seattle bands way, way early. Then I heard them and said, "Man, this kind of just sounds like classic rock to me." I thought because they were into so much other crazy shit, but when I heard Nirvana, I didn't get it at first. I thought we should be trying to go as out as humanly possible. (laughter)

LP: It's incredible to hear you say that. I had this discussion with somebody the other day about when many of those bands broke in the late '80s and early '90s. My reaction was just like, "Oh, it's cool." I grew up in hard rock and metal. And I was like, "Oh, great. They're finally getting rid of the guys with the lipstick and the big hair, and it's safe to make rock music again." Didn't strike me at the time as revolutionary. I heard the lineage, you know, it was cool. I was excited that it existed, but I didn't care. (laughter)

Ches Smith: Yeah, it wasn't until I heard Melvins that I was like, "Whoa, that's different."

LP: Yeah, deep sludge, man. (laughter)

Ches Smith: Yeah, just heavy as shit.

LP: Shara, what a fascinating journey. You mentioned that you decided to stop pursuing being an opera singer. I would love to hear more about the journey until then. Were you immersed solely in the worlds of opera and classical music, or what was in the stew that makes up you as a listener and performer?

Shara Lunon: I grew up on a lot of jazz and punk music. I was really into X-Ray Spex and Bad Brains. I was obsessed with Ella Fitzgerald. I was just obsessed, hands down. Through my grandmother, it was jazz. And I grew up just outside Miami, so punk music was big and hardcore. But I only liked the breakdowns. I didn't like the rest of it. (laughter)

What got me into classical music was my grandmother took me to see an opera singer when I was like five. And I'm just like, Oh my God, my atoms rearranged. How did she do that? So, I just loved the power of the voice I heard.

I attended a performing arts middle and high school, which exposed me more to classical music than my personal listening choices. I was like, "Sure, this is a music route. I'm going to try it. I'm going to go for it." But I found it stifling. There are a lot of rules in the classical world that I just couldn't subscribe to as a young punk girl. I was like, "Yeah, I can't do this." Rules are not my thing.

I was an ethnomusicology and voice double undergrad, and I was studying the Black music tradition. So, the only thing I could get approved by my school at the time was singing spirituals. Which are beautiful and a huge part of history—I love that I learned so much about that part of my world. But then I was like, "Oh, I want to study Brazilian opera because it's not written by an old white guy. It's at least a brown man." No one knew how to teach me.

So I had to go to Brazil. And then I fell in love with Brazilian psych rock. I was like a huge Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and Som Imaginario fan and just dove deeper, and that was it. I was like 21 when I moved to Brazil for a year. And that just nipped it in the bud because I wanted to see people and be around people who looked like me.

LP: That's incredible to hear you can do this about funneling into. If you're not going to do our program, you can do this. And that was about as left of center as you would be allowed.

Shara Lunon: Yeah.

LP: I talked to a lot of artists and guests about the role that the different pedagogical philosophies have played and the way they impact, especially young people, and how easy it is to take somebody who would otherwise have a voice and completely derail them, quite honestly, I mean, you know, luckily that doesn't happen in a case like yours. Still, it's incredible what many artists have to overcome in their education to get to their voice.

Shara Lunon: It derailed me for a little bit. I was pretty bummed about it. I was, and I left school for a semester. I was like, "I don't think this is right for me." But going home sucked. No offense to my parents, but I said, "I don't want to be here either."

Ches Smith: Yeah. That's a rough age for that.

Shara Lunon: Yeah. I think it did derail me for a while, but I just really love music, you know? So that was like my way through, and finding different avenues to make it happen has always been. Part of, I think, most musicians' stories and histories is to be open to sound and allow yourself to experience different sounds to take you to new places. Yeah, I wouldn't say it didn't derail me for a bit, but, you know.

LP: You bounced back.

Shara Lunon: I got the bug, you know, gotta have the music. (laughter)

LP: I have to thank you for mentioning Bad Brains. HR and Bad Brains don't come up enough here. (laughter) Holy cow.

Shara Lunon: Yeah!

LP: And I go for a while without thinking about them. Today's going to be a Bad Brains day. Thank you.

Shara Lunon: Yeah. Good. Have a Bad Brains day. I also have a punk band, and we sit and talk about how punk bands influenced us and how we became who we are. Because the band is punk, and it's fused with many things. And that kind of sounds like Bad Brains, you know?

LP: Yeah, they were shocking to me as a young kid, you know, in suburban Connecticut, hearing those early cassettes was like, it probably was more impactful than even I'm giving it weight to, because it was, you mentioned jazz and punk and with the benefit of hindsight, I see, I just see that tradition as like colliding over the years, especially In the late '70s and '80s, and like the downtown scene in New York, man, Bad Brains were seminal, like you can't overstate that.

Ches Smith: Yeah, it's funny; I remember in that documentary, Daryl Jenifer was like, we were on some fusion shit. Yeah, even those Cro-Mags dudes were into all kinds of music. Maybe there's some cross-fertilization thing, or perhaps it's one direction. I don't know, but yeah.

LP: Zorn opened my eyes to that, too.

I wanted to ask you about humor. Where does humor fit in in your music? Because I feel it here and there, but I don't know if that's me as a listener.

Ches Smith: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I made anything deliberately to be funny. Although some things can make me laugh. Things happen in music that makes me laugh. It's not just mine, but other stuff I'm listening to. There's this MC called Motion Man from San Leandro—he's kind of an East Bay area thing—and his stuff is really funny. I was reading an interview with him, and he's like, "Yeah, I laugh at it, but I'm not trying to make other people laugh, but I think it's funny."

And I don't know. I've been listening to him for years, but I thought a lot about him when making the beats and things like that. And I guess the track "Minimalism" has the idea of that groove with that arpeggiated pattern and then the melody, which is this austere horn backup of Shara's voice. On paper, I was like, "Oh, that's a funny idea." But it's not like I laugh when I listen to it. It sounds pretty pissed, snarly, and pissed off in a certain way, too.

LP: One of the things that I enjoyed and that made me laugh was the Frank Heath film "Minimalism."

Ches Smith: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's ridiculous.

LP: (laughter) In the best way, in the best way.

Ches Smith: Frank's great. David Breskin, the producer, connected us and had him just do that film, and Frank's been a big supporter. He did something for my last record, too. He's just an interesting guy. He seems to like what I'm doing and gives him ideas. But yeah, that's a pretty comic take on the track.

LP: Yeah, it's, yeah, I don't have a great articulation about it, but it's like a literal visual representation in some way. It's like a manifestation, not a representation, but it is very funny. It was great. I don't mean that to be dismissive or to diminish it. Humor's good.

Ches Smith: But I do like that. At first, I thought, "Oh man, is this like an ad for the '80s?" And then it goes on, and there's always a darkness that emerges from his stuff, which I like a lot. But Shara, did you have a thought? Just on humor, in general?

Shara Lunon: I make a lot of sounds that make me laugh. I try to do that just because I'm like, how absurd can I get? Vocally, just because I get a lot of joy out of that, but pertaining to your record specifically, the track "The Most Fucked"—when we were recording, it was really funny because we were like using toys and like different like noise making machines and just going crazy on it. It was also an eight-hour vocal day, and you're now improvising. And I was like, "Yeah, I got nothing for you." (laughter)

But listening to the rest of the record, like thinking about it, I guess some things make me laugh, but not necessarily because they're funny. I was having this conversation with a friend I'm working on a composition with, and I was just like, "Yeah, I kind of want to write something that's just like chill, not heavy, just like having fun with it." It's not how my music comes out ever.

LP: (laughter) It may just be the 14-year-old boy in me, but you had to laugh when you had the title "The Most Fucked."

Ches Smith: I was going to change that. I was talking to Breskin, and he was like, this sounds perfect for what it is.

LP: It's a great track.

Ches Smith: Yeah, thanks. Yeah. There's a thing of Shara at the end. She says, "What, like, kind of like that?" It's a little buried, but I like that part in there. I just thought that she was still going, you know, like still blowing.

LP: Yeah. I would love to ask Ches a little about what you took away from your work and interactions with Terry Riley.

Ches Smith: I was such a fan of his Records as certain records, especially like Shri Camel, was something I've listened to probably hundreds of times—not an exaggeration. It was mostly piano drums and then usually Gyan Riley on guitar and occasionally horn.

Terry is fundamentally an improviser. I didn't realize that because I always thought of him as this composer, and things are really fixed, but then now I can go back and hear Shri Camel and be like, "He's probably improvising a lot of this stuff." Just as he'd bring things in, he was not precious about anything, like different things to happen.

We worked on a whole new piece of his up at, I think it was at, maybe it was at Bard College or somewhere up there, like Willie and I and Gyan and just how he'd take that stuff and sort of, He'd bring it in at different tempos, you know, different takes and things like that. So I guess that was it. He's comfortable going into a free improv setting, even though he's often using modal material and things like that.

LP: We had some guests a few months ago who wrote a book called On Minimalism. The sort of thesis of the book, if you will, is that it was a much bigger movement than what they called the big four: Glass, Reich, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley. The book starts with them talking about Kind of Blue as a minimalist album, and it casts such a wide net of artists from the mid-late 50s forward—a lot of it through a feminist and POC perspective. Like many of those, many artists were left out of the narrative, as I'm sure those people are in other contexts. Still, it's a fascinating book, and to read that expansive definition of minimalism, I think it strikes me as something you both might enjoy.

Ches Smith: Yeah. I'll check it out. Did they also get into visual art, or is it mostly focused on music?

LP: It's mostly focused on music. They refer to other forms. It's pretty much about music.

Ches Smith: Okay. Yeah, I'll check it out.

LP: Yeah, it's neat. Thank you both. This is one of those moments where I'm sad that I don't plan a trip to New York or back east because I would love to see one of these shows you have to do. But thank you for making time, and thanks for making such a great record.

Ches Smith: Sure. Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Shara Lunon: Yeah. Thanks so much.