INTERVIEW WITH CHARLIE LOOKER OF SEAVEN TEARES

With roots in metal, modern composition, jazz, indie pop and Early Music, Charlie Looker’s music has always been an intuitive synthesis of diverse influences. A core member of the notorious Brooklyn “brutal chamber” group Zs, Looker formed his own band Extra Life in 2007 to explore more fully his vocal writing, folk-based forms and synthetic instrument sounds.  Other notable projects and credits include work with Dirty Projectors, John Zorn, William Parker, Tyondai Braxton, Daniel Carter, Elliott Sharp, Christian Wolff, Seductive Sprigs and Time of Orchids.  On March 11th at Roulette, Charlie Looker presents his new experimental folk project, Seaven Teares.

ROULETTE:  Tell us as about the work you’ll be doing at Roulette.
CHARLIE LOOKER: I met each of my Seaven Teares bandmates through different channels, but all through hearing their work with other bands and being really impressed. This band is the first time I’ve played with any of them and the first time they’ve played with each other. I assembled the band last summer because I wanted to do something quieter, more folk and pop based than other things I had been doing. Something with simpler songwriting, with room for collaboration on the arrangements. I wanted to play with people who were willing and able to get into very detailed complexities but who were also open to total simplicity. The male/female vocal harmonizing is also very important to my conception of this project, not just sonically but on a poetic level as well. Feminine energy is important and I think I need more of it within me, both on a human level and creatively.

Are there working artists today with whose work you identify, or
rather, who do you consider to be your peers?
CL: Well, “peer” can be a presumptuous label to give to someone else because it assumes that the respect is fully mutual… But without taking any huge risks, and excluding the awesome musicians who I play in bands with, some friends who I draw inspiration from are Sam Mickens, Nat Baldwin, Owen Pallett, Jamie Stewart, Chuck Stern, Tyondai Braxton and Mick Barr.

R:  What was the last music you listened to?
CL: Sam Mickens’ new solo EP “Sinistra Secco”. It’s absolutely demonic, masterfully conceived and executed. Some people are saying this is the best of Mickens’ work to date and I think they may even be right. He is a very thoughtful composer and performer but at the same time this record bristles with a certain “outsider” vibe, probably because it was written and recorded very quickly and impulsively.

R: What is music?
CL: Oh come on man.

R:  Is there an event or experience that led you to start in
experimental media?
CL: It’s funny, my recent music has been getting so much poppier and more accessible I don’t even know if I’m even officially working in the “experimental” field anymore at all. But I have deep roots in experimental music. One event which thrust me into that world was seeing John Zorn’s Cobra at the Knitting Factory on Leonard St when I was in high school. I had no idea what was going on but I was absolutely blown away. Yamantaka Eye conducting, and this ensemble including all these musicians from totally disparate scenes, playing this noise. I found it incomprehensible, yet I could see and hear that it was meticulously controlled in some way.  I remember feeling like, wow I really have no idea what’s out there. Like I have no idea what thought process is behind that composition, what performance process I just witnessed or what social process brought those musicians together.  Before that, I had already been about what the weirdest music out there might sound like. That Cobra show gave me the first of many great answers to that question.



  

R:  Do you do other things aside from music?
CL: When I’m not making my own music I’m teaching music to little kids, both at an elementary school and in private piano and guitar lessons. That’s my actual day-job, which really is pretty lovely as far as things go. Other than that, I read as much as I have time to. I spend a lot of time writing emails and sorting out business minutia which is a fucking pain in the ass but has to get done. I used to kind of have a social life but not so much lately.