Search

Year in Pop: 2016

Post Author:

diNMachine

All the latest from diNMachine.

All the latest from diNMachine.

We caught up with NYC’s diNMachine after the release of Dance to Reason, and today we catch up again with the esteemed Michael J. Schumacher about the band’s new LP The Opposites of Unity from Greedy Dilettante Records, featuring the world premiere of their video for “eW.A.F.T.” made by both Schumacher and the band’s own Nisi Jacobs.

Return to the ecstatic and eclectic wold of diNMachine with Miachel & Nisi’s visuals that take you on a trip through Sunset Park in Brooklyn, the New York harbor, the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, a train ride through New Jersey, and more. As “eW.A.F.T.” as a song is centered on ideas of motion and momentum, gaze into the mandala design by Camille Laoang, witness the whirling dog Jimmy, birds in flight, to the shaky clusters of leaves gathered by a chain linked fence. The visuals further illustrate all the grooves involved on the track being sprung to life and applied to the animated and alive world around us that we all inhabit.

Michael Schumacher discussed the video with us with the following insights:

This is Nisi and my first video together. I’m the director and she’s everything else: editor, colorist, FX coordinator…

Most of the footage was captured on my iPhone. There’s a train ride through New Jersey, images of Sunset Park Brooklyn, New York Harbor and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The “mandala” image is by artist Camille Laoang. That’s Jimmy the dog spinning in circles.

The themes originate in the song: twitchy grooves, sunshine, the clackety rhythm of trains, the whorl of space, a bird in flight. Mostly I was trying to capture the sense of movement and momentum the song gives to me.

dinmachine week in pop 1

The pop music envelopes continue to be pushed by diNMachine on The Opposites of Unity where composition minded creations roll forth into new forms and self-styled structures that defy convention and pigeon holing. The opening track experienced in the previous video debut of “eW.A.F.T.” illustrates this in a rhythmic wind-tunnel runnel that re-definies the soundtrack to your morning commute spent with ear-buds plugged in on public transit. Nu-New York styles of jazz and rhyme rolls forward on “Jabbr Wawky” that exhibits sounds heard about Sunset Park in Brooklyn and features bars and verses from Black Saturn that keeps the cosmic collage firmly grounded together. “Brisé” rides through a variety of understated frequencies made for choreographer Liz Gerring that is the sound of an early morning evolving into day, with “Dbl Trbl” sounding like a funky & fresh take on a Carnival street fair celebration. The everything and the kitchen sink approach continues on a masterful course on the “Give and Go” where the collective chaos always remains in control, while the 15 minute closing stunner “Fawcett” is the kind of rhythmic, atmospheric roller-coaster music majors could write a thousand theses on.

Michael Schumacher provided the following introductory preface on the new record The Opposites of Unity with the following insights:

“Rock and…”

Rock is our starting point and we go anywhere from there. Drones, EDM, Prog, Latin, Funk. Even Baroque counterpoint. Rock musicians have traditionally been multitaskers. John Lennon was a poet and an artist. Miles Davis, who made his share of rock music, was a boxer. David Byrne is a photographer, a writer, a sound artist, and is now composing broadway musicals. Thurston Moore is a book collector. Jim O’Rourke does pretty much everything.

So why not embrace the other part of that sentence, the “…”?

With thirty plus years of making music behind me I want to make rock music that embraces the varied experiences of life, that isn’t just designed to accompany or enhance a specific range of emotions. As people get older, don’t their musical horizons expand, don’t their tastes shift? The music industry wants to grab their attention early and hold on to it through nostalgia. I say that musicians can grow and expand as well, that a middle-aged rock band doesn’t have to make the same music they were making when they were twenty-five.

When I compose, I’m looking for a catalyst, for a germ, an idea, that’s going to kick off the song. With this record, mostly it came from synth lines. As often as not that initial impetus will end up pretty buried under the things it inspired. So for example in “eWAFT”, the first thing was a bass synth track that kind of pulses along underneath. Eventually I pitched it to go with the string pad. In “Jabbr Wawky” the original riff was the talking bass line that comes in at 0:33. The riff suggests a tempo, a tonality, a groove and a vibe. It’s like the first four notes of the famous Fifth Symphony. The rest of the movement all derives from that first cell.

Neo-PrAgUe-PhUNK is what I’m calling our “genre”. Neo is the character from the Matrix who’s new. Prague is Europe but it’s also progressive. PhUNK is funk and punk.

“Jabbr Wawky” is my favorite track, merging non-linear form, grooves, low-end, evocative melodies, field recordings and a great rap. It’s like a Bach fugue, there’s a part where five melodies are playing at the same time but you barely notice because it’s so easy to listen to.

Sound sources from “Jabbr Wawky”: an air-horn signalling the start of a swim meet in the ocean near San Francisco; a street musician playing flute in Mexico City; someone whistling; an auctioneer selling off stuff in a foreclosed restaurant in New York City; a ping pong game in the student center where I teach; shooting pool in a Brooklyn bar…

Black Saturn’s rap tied the whole thing together, delineating the sections perfectly. Somehow he intuited the core and made it clearer. It makes the song feel shorter, too, which is a good thing.

“Fawcett” uses recordings of water pipes for the drones. In New York, the pipes can make terrific noises, I guess maybe air gets into them and they start to resonate. I tuned the recordings to make chords.

I used to compose a lot of drones, often using a prepared electric guitar. My second solo release was called “Fidicin Drones”, which I recorded in Berlin, on the Fidicin St., using a Hohner guitar with E-bow, files, saw blades, pieces of rubber and the horse hair from a bass bow. I have a Soundcloud playlist with some of my drone compositions.

The “Freddie the Freeloader” quote in “Fawcett” is intentional.

Greedy Dilettante (Garrett Frierson and Chris Butler) added some crucial input towards the end of the mixing process. The songs are dense and they encouraged Marcelo and I to open things up where we could. Going forward (we’ve got another release planned for “asap”) they’ll be co-producing our next record, helping with a “diNBox” which is a piece of hardware that plays random sounds and considering a physical release (LP?) of The Opposites of Unity.

I have to thank Joshua Fried for introducing us to Marcelo Añez, who mixed the record. I love his approach. He’s Venezuelan and spent a lot of time in Miami working with Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. He’s got a Latin Grammy. He’s also experienced in theater, film and live sound, so he’s bringing this huge range of aural knowledge to the table.

I compose using chance operations, like John Cage did. I ask questions: when should this change happen; what order should these notes be in; what synthesizer patch should I use? It’s also a very useful technique for modulating effects; I’d rather set up a Max patch and let it do its thing than play the knobs. It makes the process interactive, you respond to the randomized signal rather than “feeling” it.

When I was 16, I told my piano teacher Seymour Bernstein that I wanted to write music that combined my love of both rock, R&B and classical, but I got sidetracked with a long (and ongoing) detour into sound art.

diNMachine’s The Opposites of Unity is available now from Greedy Dilettante Records / Bandcamp.