Exclusive Interview (1)

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music received responses to an e-mail interview with Mason Wendell of Prelapse, Blinder, and The Method And Result on April 13, 2005.

Xtreme Music: How did you go about transcribing the Naked City’s original compositions?

Mason Wendell: The wrong way! Ha ha! Alex Lacamoire and I were roommates in our first year at Berklee College of Music and I turned him on to Naked City. We were doing a student show of covers and I wanted to do three Naked City songs in it so we transcribed them note for note, solos and all. We were a little naive and didn’t give Naked City enough credit for being the great improvisers they are. That turned out to be such a blast that we wanted to do a whole show of just Naked City material so we then transcribed fourty-five minutes worth, all note for note. Those charts were a funny way to play these songs, since we were reading and recreating Naked City’s improvisation, but they were the best way to learn the styles and techniques to really get inside John Zorn’s head. Alex and I then started writing for the group. We played a few shows around the school and Boston with various players, but the group soon solidified into the lineup we had for the CD: Myself [Bass & Vocals], Alex Lacamoire [Keys & Direction], Dane Johnson [Guitar], Jeff Hudgins [Saxophone & Clarinet], and Andy Sanesi [Drums].

Xtreme Music: How did you first meet John Zorn and when did you start collaborating together?

Mason Wendell: John Zorn came to Boston to play a Painkiller show and Alex and I went to see it, and to ambush him with our transcriptions and our live tape. After the set we snuck backstage, introduced ourselves and showed him the charts. He was pretty shocked I think, and was impressed enough with our charts that he offered to send us copies of his originals and encouraged us to learn the ten or so pieces that NC never recorded. John Zorn’s charts for Naked City were all constrained to one page, and instead of having a lot of specific notes written, there’s usually just a riff here and there, with time signatures, genre instructions and special instructions written in as necessary. When they came he had heard our tape and offered to put us on as performers at a John Zorn Festival that New England Conservatory was having. NEC was only a few blocks away from Berklee, so I took full advantage of all the Zorn-focused energy that was going around. While Prelapse was learning to play John Zorn’s charts I was spending a lot of time at NEC learning pieces like “Cobra” and “Bezique” under Stephen Drury. It’s funny to me now that we were playing all this hardcore music in music schools and conservatories, but the schools were pretty open to it then. After the NEC show we had dinner with John Zorn, our first time that we actually had time to converse, and he offered to record us doing the unrecorded Naked City material and our originals.

Xtreme Music: Please tell us about the writing processes involved in producing Prelapse’s original compositions.

Mason Wendell: We all wrote separately and would bring our pieces into the group. At first our approach was to take the Naked City vocabulary, speed, genre changes, noise bursts, and use them to build our own music. As we matured as writers we found ways to work our own voices into the music. For most of us that meant writing more long form songs, and in my case I usually worked with some theme that I could play around with throughout the whole song.

Xtreme Music: What was it like working with this prolific musician from the downtown avant-jazz community?

Mason Wendell: It was alternately fantastic and frustrating. We were so excited to be working with and associated with one of our musical heroes. We rehearsed constantly and really made the material our own. We got together five or six times a week to work it out. But we were based in Boston at first and so we were not in direct contact with John Zorn all the time. There were times when we felt like we were working in a vacuum. In another sense though, that was great. We were forced to make the music our own and hopefully add something to it that John Zorn wouldn’t have thought of. We would demo songs and send them to John Zorn for his feedback and direction from time to time, and Alex visited him as we were preparing to enter the studio to record the Prelapse CD. When we went down to Brooklyn to record the CD with Martin Bisi we tried to keep our composure but were too excited to do that very effectively. We recorded in the same studio that Naked City did, and Martin told us all the stories of those sessions, and John Zorn was in and out all the time. It was just a blast. We really produced ourselves, and when John Zorn came in to put down his part, we kept on in that role. So the coolest part for me was when we were giving him direction on where and how to play our interpretations of his music.

Xtreme Music: What was the most challenging part of performing with Prelapse?

Mason Wendell: Something I always wanted us to do but we were never able to fully accomplish was to do our shows without any sheet music on stage. I come from a rock background and really love performing and it’s a lot different with a music stand in front of me. We rehearsed so much that Dane and I would frequently put the music away, but the other players preferred to have it there. For me, the most fun shows were the final few where Dane and I weren’t reading.

Xtreme Music: What were Prelapse’s live performances like and how was the crowd reaction?

Mason Wendell: It was always a blast for us and I think for the audiences too. We played a mix of venues ranging from theaters, jazz rooms, and dive bars. We always tried to do as many songs as possible, and do a few quiet or surprising ones along with all the thrash jazz. The audience usually had a number of Naked City fans who were curious to see what we were about, but also excited to see this music played again. It was always funny to me that we weren’t so different from some corny hair metal tribute band. So there was always some irony to me that some folks were more interested in what we represented as a Naked City cover band than in Prelapse. So we always played a few greatest hits. “Speedfreaks” is the Naked City equivalent to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird”.

Xtreme Music: When was the best experience in Prelapse’s music career?

Mason Wendell: I don’t mean this with any sense that we peaked early or anything, but the best part for me was that the initial period when John Zorn sent us his original charts, and we went through the two books of compositions learning them all. We played almost all of them at least in rehearsal, somewhere around two-hundred. Since I had been such a huge fan this was just the most amazing thing for me.

Xtreme Music: Who would you say are your main influences that have helped shape your musical direction?

Mason Wendell: I’ve always listened to a lot of different music from all over the place, and I think that’s what attracted me to Naked City in the first place. Here was some music that packed it all into the same song! My favorite music in any genre is stuff that finds that perfect balance of having great melodies and smart arrangements. Artists that neglect either side of that balance can be great, but usually don’t hold my attention for very long. In absolutely no particular order here are some folks that I always keep going back to: Steve Coleman, The Dismemberment Plan, Rufus Wainwright, Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus, Bill Frisell, Death Cab For Cutie, Jawbox, Joni Mitchell, The Pixies, The Police, Aimee Mann, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Alban Berg, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, and Radiohead. Recently I’ve discovered some great music from Jaga Jazzist, Sufjan Stevens, Rilo Kiley, The Notwist, Bebel Gilberto, and Miranda Sound.

Xtreme Music: For those who enjoy Naked City’s radical genre-shifting style, what other bands could you recommend?

Mason Wendell: I have to admit I’m no expert on who’s taking that technique to the next level right now. My attention has really moved focus onto great songwriting more in the last few years. I’ll never get rid of my Mr. Bungle records though.

Xtreme Music: How did your music differ between your projects Prelapse and Blinder?

Mason Wendell: Prelapse and Blinder were going on at the same time. Blinder was active from 1997 to 2001, and was a female fronted loud math rock band I formed with my wife Megan [Vocals & Guitar] and Koven Smith [Drums]. We tried to graft strong melodies to angular arrangements. We were pretty aggressive most of the time, played a lot with mixing time signatures, non-traditional chords, and some microtonality. The point for us was to have all that music geek stuff in there to support the song and lyrics.

Xtreme Music: Please tell us about your collaborative music with your wife Megan Wendell in The Method And Result.

Mason Wendell: The Method and Result is my latest group. It’s a duet with Megan, and we’re focusing on making pretty music. We play a mix of electric and acoustic instruments, along with a lot of electronic production. I had always tried to cram a lot into my music before, and now we’re really focusing on melody, lyrics, and creating a sonic world for each song. I’ve loved and still appreciate all the music I’ve done in the past, but this project has me more excited than anything I’ve done before. We can do something pretty complicated with a lot of samples and orchestration, then follow it up with an open and simple pop song. There are just so many possibilities, and we get great responses from both music heads and average folks alike.

Xtreme Music: What are the future plans for your publicity company Canary Promotion And Design?

Mason Wendell: Canary is the business I started with Megan to service the independent and up and coming music community. Megan developed as a publicist while promoting our music, and I’ve been a designer and web developer for almost as long as I’ve been a musician. The thought process behind programming and design is very similar to writing and playing music, and I love doing all of that every day. We’ve been in business for about four years and split our time pretty evenly between Canary and The Method And Result. We just want to continue growing the business and work with more and more great clients, and designing great projects.

Exclusive Interview (2)

Rich Ladew from the radio production PCP House Of Coffee conducted an e-mail and phone interview with Alex Lacamoire [Keyboards] and Mason Wendell [Bass & Vocals] of Prelapse during late-October to mid-November 1999. This Perlapse interview was originally sourced from Adventures In Sound, and has been used with permission. Minor editorial alterations were made by Justin St. Vincent on January 10, 2005.

Rich Ladew: How long was Prelapse around before the New England Conservatory Of Music, and John Zorn artist in residence program?

Mason Wendell: I guess we were together in some form or another for maybe two years or so before that show.. Alex and I first started this project when we transcribed and performed three Naked City pieces in a student show our first year at Berklee College Of Music. A few months later we felt like doing more with this “Naked City project” and put together this band to do another Berklee show. This time with a full progam of John Zorn’s music. So far we were still just a cover band.

Alex Lacamoire: The earliest moments of the band occurred in May 1994, when I transcribed a few of John Zorn’s Naked City charts and performed them live with Mason.  In 1995, Mason and I transcribed a total of about thirty-five tunes and did a Naked City Tribute show that March billed as the “Prelapsarian Collective”, with Mason Wendell [Bass & Vocals], Dane Johnson [Guitar], Andy Sanesi [Drums], Demetrius Spaneas [Saxophone], and myself [Keyboards]. Our next big gig was the John Zorn festival at the New England Conservatory Of Music in January 1996, with RJ Rabin on drums and Jeff Hudgins on alto-saxophone..

Rich Ladew: How did the New England Conservatory Of Music performance come about?

Mason Wendell: We gave John Zorn a tape we had made of us playing Naked City and showed him our transcriptions after a Painkiller show. He was really impressed and sent us copies of his original compositions and suggested we work up the pieces he had never played. When the New England Conservatory Of Music called Zorn about the festival, he called us to do the show.

Rich Ladew: When I saw you guys, initially at the New England Conservatory Of Music gig, and later on opening for the Mike Patton with John Zorn show in Northhampton, MA, you played a lot of  unreleased tunes written for Naked City. Your self-titled CD on Avant and your contribution to Music For Children on Tzadik also feature a large amount of music written by John Zorn. Was the music of Naked City a project for the band temporarily, or do you continue to play these tunes?

Mason Wendell: The Naked City stuff was kind of how we got started. We didn’t take it seriously enough to write for the band until later. We try to do about half and half Prelapse to John Zorn in our sets now.

Alex Lacamoire: We used to play John Zorn’s charts exclusively, until he said to us that we should write our own material and make an album. I’m really glad he encouraged us to do so, because it made for some really exciting music that I don’t think any of us knew we were capable of. We still play a lot of Zorn’s charts because that’s where the band’s roots are, and because it’s killer fucking music!

Rich Ladew: Is Prelapse undertaking any new ideas, styles, formats for future projects?

Mason Wendell: We don’t have any grand plans for a new project right now. We’re kinda taking things as they come. On a smaller scale we are exploring new directions. Dane’s most recent piece draws a lot from classial Indian music.. and I have some pieces that are much more free-form and some idiosyncratic ones that have almost nothing to do with genres or mixing styles.

Alex Lacamoire: We’re just taking it one step at a time, seeing where our music and our ideas take us.

Rich Ladew: How does Prelapse’s composition style differ from that of John Zorn’s? Can you explain a little bit about how the scores for both your pieces and Zorn’s pieces are written and structured? What are napalm clusters?

Mason Wendell: All of John Zorn’s pieces for Naked City are written on one page. At first they look like nothing but guidelines. A riff here, a genre written there. The exact arrangement is fleshed out in rehearsal. Our pieces can be structured in any old way. We have one piece called “Lachrym”, that’s just written rhythms and no specified notes. I’ve written a couple that are completely through-composed and based on specific pitch-theories, especially “545: Mystery Hole”. Napalm clusters are short hardcore bursts. I think the term comes from the band Napalm Death.

Alex Lacamoire: I think it has to do with our individual influences. John Zorn’s Naked City charts definitely gave us all a springboard to compose from, but I think each individual composer in the band brings out their own little musical tastes and histories into the tunes. It’s taking Zorn’s concept and adding something else to the mix. For example, in Mason’s “545: Mystery Hole,” you hear Zorn’s dramatic texture changes, but you also see Mason’s love of 20th century classical music and 12-tone techniques. In my tune “Leper Sap”, you hear brutal Naked City power-chord-Drop-D-tuning riffs, but also my influences of classic rock. Napalm clusters are influenced by Napalm Death, and Zorn would notate them by scribbling dense, black blocks in the music. You play what you see: dense, thick noises and rumbles.

Rich Ladew: Does anyone in the band find it more difficult writing and performing for Prelapse than in other musical projects the band members are involved with?

Mason Wendell: For me it’s just a different mindset. Writing-wise Prelapse is a blank canvas for me. They’ll play whatever I write for them. In that way it’s kind of a composer’s workshop. In performance, in almost every type of show I’ve done, I just try to put my all into it.

Alex Lacamoire: The most difficult part about it is finding out when we’re all in town at the same time! We’ve all got such different things going on in our lives, but the music really is a catalyst.. we all come together and bond on it.

Rich Ladew: What are some of these musical projects?

Mason Wendell: My main band is my rock band, Blinder. We’re a female-fronted trio.. we play a lot of odd-meters and our sound is pretty eclectic. It goes from really crazy to some strange cousin of pop. We’re finishing our first CD right now. Alex Lacamoire does gigs on Broadway and Dane Johnson has his own studio.  Both Andy Sanesi and Jeff Hudgins are playing in a lot of different groups.

Alex Lacamoire: Mason’s band Blinder, one of Jeff’s other bands, Skyflower, my projects in the theatre realm… [This includes various broadway and theater style shows in New York City including Disney’s The Lion King].

Rich Ladew: I noticed various artists recording on the Boston Sublingual record label. Which members of the band are involved in that? What is the name of the band? Any future recordings for this label? What are other projects that the various band members are in?

Mason Wendell: That band was Sigmoid Flexure, a free-improv band I had in Boston. Dane Johnson was in that with me. I had to break it up when l moved to New York City. My wife Megan Wendell is also the singer and guitarist from Blinder. Everyone else has gone their own way, like to Los Angeles or Europe.

Alex Lacamoire: Jonathan LaMaster runs the label Sublingual, plays violin in the Boston-based Saturnalia, and is a friend of ours. John is a major force in getting avant-garde music performances and recordings happening in Boston, and “Boston Underbelly” is one of the first releases on the label. That disc features several acts and personnel, from Boston, New York and beyond.

Rich Ladew: While I have a growing number of supporters and listeners for my experimental and modern music show the PCP House of Coffee, I will infrequently get a phone call or comment questioning the integrity of the music. These comments usually focus around using the word “noise” or “anyone could fool around and make sounds like that”. Has anyone in the band experienced this? How do you respond to such accusations?

Mason Wendell: If that’s someone’s attitude, then good for them. I’m not out to change anyone’s attitude, just make some art.

Alex Lacamoire: I truly believe that everything is music, from the pieces of John Cage to the sound of water flowing. It all depends on how open you’re gonna allow your ear to be.

Rich Ladew: I understand members of Prelapse are spread out between New York and Boston. Has the band played or toured anywhere besides these cities? What is the typical reaction to your music?

Alex Lacamoire: We actually all live in the New York area now, after Dane’s move to New Jersey this year.  We get pretty good strong reactions to the music, because I really feel that there’s a lot about the music we play that relates to people on a lot of levels. The music really grabs your attention, and it changes so much that you’re constantly surprised and intrigued, waiting to see what’ll happen next.

Rich Ladew: Was it difficult for your saxophone player to work with John Zorn due to intimidation, or worries of being too imitative? Some Internet discussion groups have commented that the saxophone style is too much a copy-cat of Zorn’s style. Is it difficult to deal with Naked City comparisons, or being called a “Naked City-lite”?

Mason Wendell: I’ll let Jeff deal with the comparisons. I think he’s pretty secure about his sound. I know his sound really well, and I think there’s a big difference. As for the band as a whole, I’d hardly call us “Naked City-lite”.. we’re different bands.

Alex Lacamoire: It’s funny, I met with John Zorn a couple of times before the recording to discuss the directions of the pieces and the details.. as the sax player for Naked City, he had a very specific approach as to how the sax should sound in context of the music. He literally said that it’s crazy to have a sax in a thrash-metal musical texture, and the only thing for a sax to do in such a setting is to basically kick ass and go ballistic sound-wise. I think that the way Jeff plays on the loud stuff is a mixture of a bunch of things: a continuation of Zorn’s own approach on the music; a specific direction given by the composer himself; and Jeff’s own style.. check him out on the clarinet tracks “Mintcrumb Rosette” and “Lachrym”. I think the world of Jeff, and can’t think of a better musician to fill that spot in our band. John Zorn was way cool about playing on the CD.. it was his idea to be on it, and on some tracks, rather than muting what Jeff had already done on tape, he just played along with it, letting us be a band while adding himself as an extra ingredient. How awesome is that?

Rich Ladew: After you had rehearsed and performend these songs live, how did the recording process differ? What steps were involved in recording the CD?

Mason Wendell: We recorded most of the disc live together in the same room. There were only a few overdubs, like vocals.

Alex Lacamoire: We were able to actually work it until we got it right!.. The songs can be short and erratic, and because the styles between tunes are so eclectic, it’s sometimes hard to nail a piece on the very first run. When you perform live, you have no choice, but in the studio, we could actually practice it a couple of times, try a few takes.. There was absolutely no splicing on the disc. We always recorded as a band, playing the basic tracks live.

Rich Ladew: For the uninitiated, the music of Prelapse and Naked City is extremely inclusive, eclectic, and explosively energetic. Did the band have any disagreements about which pieces to play, or arguments of musical genres to include on pieces?

Mason Wendell: Not really. John Zorn wanted us to record certain pieces of his that he had never recorded. So that half of the CD was all taken care of, and for our half there were no arguments. We get along pretty well.

Alex Lacamoire: We all get along really well as a band.  We’ve had some blowups in the past, but what band doesn’t? As far as arguments about genres and the like.. we don’t really collaborate when it comes to our original tunes, and each composer brings in the finished work to the band. Therefore, we don’t really argue about each other’s pieces.

Rich Ladew: Listening to this music has always made me jealous of how much fun the performers must have playing it. Is this an accurate assessment?

Mason Wendell: Oh yeah! This is a total blast!

Alex Lacamoire: Yes, it’s true.. we have fun, dammit! Our friends have pointed out that when we play live, every song ends with all of us laughing. Some people may disagree with me, but I think that there’s a real comedic element to the music we play. I think that’s what makes people enjoy it so much. You have to admit that some of the stuff.. is really silly, and I don’t mean that in a demeaning way. As heavy and as dense as the music is, it’s really light at the same time. It’s music that’s kicking your ass and winking at the same time!