King Tears Bat Trip - On drum circles, bats and free jazz

We got in touch with Luke Bergman through the KTBT Facebook page. He proved immediately kind and happy to talk about the sonic experience of one of 2012's absolute revelations.

How and when did your adventure begin?

We started becoming a real band when I took charge of an event called Racer Sessions, in February 2010. During this event, which happens every week at Cafe Racer in Seattle, a composer presents a new piece and then leads improvised music jams. It's a gathering where all of us are involved in one way or another. We took part in it three times, always presenting unreleased music. It's fun! During one evening in particular, I arranged some compositions where I tried to blend Haitian percussion rhythms with the kind of improvised music usually presented at Racer Sessions. With that, I wanted to create something with a hypnotic effect, working on the slow accumulation of details and on an energetic but controlled approach. You can listen to the recordings from that evening on the Racer Sessions website. After that experience, we decided to form a real band and record an album.

What does King Tears Bat Trip mean?

Nothing. But there's a story behind the moniker. We were booked to play at The Improvised Music Project Festival in Seattle and didn't have a name yet. Evan Woodle, the drummer, called me while I was with Kristian Garrard in Austin, Texas, to play at South by Southwest. He urgently needed a name, because they were putting together the festival's official poster. Kristian and I had just walked past a place called "King Tears Mortuary" and were laughing because someone had recommended we not miss the so-called "Bat Trip." This guy was referring to a strange phenomenon in which millions of bats, living under a bridge on the outskirts of Austin, wake up and take flight all at once, turning the whole sky black. So, in short, King Tears Bat Trip is nothing more than a combination of several things that had us dying laughing at the time. Or a very cute souvenir from Austin.

I also read somewhere about a possible Beefheart-related inspiration…

This isn't the first time I've heard that. Either way, I can assure you the nature of the coincidence is of cosmic proportions.

Let's talk a bit about your musical background.

When I was a kid, I took piano lessons; as a teenager, I played in a few hardcore bands, and then I studied jazz when I went to college. Nowadays, I split my time between different things. Usually I play bass. In KTBT, though, I play a strange guitar with six identical strings. The other guys have different backgrounds. Everyone (except for our very particular New York-based changoist, Brandon Lucia) comes from various parts of Washington State, where there's a notable variety in musical training. The other drummers (Chris Icasiano and Evan Woodle) and Neil Welch (tenor sax) were already excellent jazz musicians as teenagers, partly because they attended schools in the Seattle area that placed great emphasis on music education, striving to encourage and nurture young talented musicians.

I'm curious to know more about this "strange guitar with six identical strings"…

Yes, I play a guitar that has six strings of the same gauge: 0.43 mm. I tune them more or less to the same pitch, G. The whole idea came from wanting the strings to sound, very roughly, like a six-person choir singing in response to the tenor sax's lead melodies. Little by little, though, I dropped that idea, and the "strange guitar" started to take on a role of its own, more focused on producing unintelligible noises than on reproducing a group of singers.

Is there any guitarist who particularly influenced you?

Lately, I really like blues guitarists, people like James Davis, Junior Kimbrough or Jimmy Lee Williams. My friend Ben Todd of Lonesome Shack introduced me to a lot of them. This stuff has probably influenced what I do in Bat Trip, but only as far as the guitar tone goes, because when I play I try to reproduce sounds that I like. I never play other people's guitar licks.

There are four drummers in your line-up. By any chance, is one of your intentions to recreate some kind of orgiastic ritual? Among your inspirations, could there perhaps also be Shit & Shine, who often play live with a whole bunch of drummers?

Mmm… I'm not sure we're really chasing an actual orgiastic vibe. I've never been in the middle of an orgy, so I don't think I'm able to recreate that feeling… I can only imagine it, although it's definitely not the main goal of our compositions. The music is directly inspired by liturgical music, and sure… trying to equate two such distant worlds would force me to dig into more overtly philosophical questions, as well as expose me to the risk of being seen as blasphemous. At the end of the day, the music we make simply requires a lot of drums. That's really all there is to it. As for Shit & Shine, I've never actually listened to them, although this isn't the first time someone has drawn a parallel with our musical universe. I guess I'll have to check them out soon, maybe try to "steal" a few ideas from them.

One of the most obvious features of your sound is the use of a wonderfully original instrument, the "Chango". Can you tell us something about this contraption invented by Brandon Lucia?

Brandon is a very skilled computer programmer, as well as a musician and composer. The Chango is a "video-audiolyzing synthesizer" that he plays on his laptop. It's him, for instance, behind the pulsing drone you hear in the middle of "Elevenogram". Here's what it says on his website: "The Chango converts a video source into audio in real time. The light sample present in each frame of the video generates a harmony that is unique, because it's directly tied to a specific frame. The Chango wants you to use your camera to 'audiolyze' the world". I tell everyone to check out his website, where you can download a version of the Chango for your own computer. It's seriously awesome!

I really like your album cover…

That was an idea of Kristian Garrard, who's responsible for most of the band's visual side. That's actually him on the cover, wearing a mask with feathers sticking out of his eyes like they were boas.

The first time I heard your music, I immediately thought of Albert Ayler (especially his more "brass-band" moments)…

We love Albert Ayler's music and we always mention his name when we talk about our influences. Neil Welch has studied his music and his approach to melodic phrasing extensively, and especially when it comes to his experience with KTBT, he owes a huge debt to Ayler…

I also love the way his bands, during improvisation, moved so powerfully between different degrees of sonic rawness, alternating moments of apparent calm and brass-band-like textures, without ever losing momentum, without ever letting the intensity drop. When we play, we try hard never to let our guard down, always keeping the whole arc of the piece in focus.

Should your music be read as a new variant of free jazz, or as an attempt to build a bridge between a free-jazz soul and a rock sensibility?

It's definitely a mix of free jazz and rock sensibility.

Going back to your influences, besides Ayler, is there any other name you'd like to mention?

Well, I don't know… all our influences are completely unimportant… anyway, we do love hot tubs…

Is your music politically "engaged"?

There's nothing political in our music, no hidden messages or anything like that. If someone listens to the music and ends up convinced to vote for this or that party, that's only because that person already held certain political views to begin with. Political ideas require discussion and depth, and as far as I'm concerned, our music tries to keep any explicitly "political" reading to a minimum. Of course, each of us has our own political views, but it would be a real mess if we tried to discuss them.

How did things go with your first record? Did you get a good response?

It went relatively well here in the States, and things weren't bad at all in Europe and Italy either, even though we barely made any effort to get known overseas. We hope that someday we'll manage to play some shows in Europe, maybe once somebody launches something like Just-Add-Water Drumsets.

You've described your music as “psych-trend/post-drum circle”. Can you tell us what that means?

I'd love to, but unfortunately there's not much to explain. It's actually a "fake" genre. Something that's both fun and baffling at the same time, useful for filling up a bit of space on a web page…

Is there any band you feel particularly close to in terms of sound?

Beyond Haitian music? As far as I'm concerned, while still keeping the band's own sound firmly in mind, I feel very connected to the ensemble Albert Ayler played with on “Live in Greenwich Village”… I mean, Donald Ayler, Henry Grimes, Joel Friedman, Alan Silva and so on. But also the one on John Coltrane's “Live in Seattle”, with the classic quartet [besides Coltrane, there were Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner, ed.], plus Pharoah Sanders and Donald Garrett. That last one is an incredible record, and not just because I'm from Seattle… I have a friend who was at that concert, in 1965… and he says it changed his life.

Any albums without which your music wouldn't be what it is…

Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinin – Voodoo Drums

Societe Absolument Guinin – Spirits of Life: Haitian Vodou

Street Music of Haiti – Rara In Haiti

Albert Ayler – Live in Greenwich Village: The Complete Impulse Recordings

Albert Ayler – Spiritual Unity

John Coltrane – Om

John Coltrane – Live in Seattle

Sonny Sharrock – Black Woman

Terry Riley – Persian Surgery Dervishes

Gerard Grisey – Les espaces acoustiques

Let's talk about Table & Chairs…

Some of us founded Table & Chairs and keep working for it. You can check out the website and maybe discover a whole lot of interesting stuff, and believe me, I'm not saying that just because I'm biased.

In recent years, the internet has radically changed the way people consume music. What's your take on this?

The music business is relatively young, if you consider that music itself has been around forever. I think the two still haven't figured out how to truly coexist. But it's definitely disheartening not to be able to make a living from your music, especially when music is your whole life. So I always encourage people to buy records directly from the artists (hint, hint...)

What's next for you?

Recording more records and playing as many shows as possible! We've got a ton of exciting material just waiting to be recorded. I'm also hoping to get the tape recorder I inherited up and running, so we can capture the drum sound in an even warmer, truer way. If all goes well, we'll be playing a few more shows soon, which will help us figure out even better how to work with all these drums. Got any ideas? Any universities where we could dig deeper into the whole "drum circle" thing?

"Drum circle"?

At most universities in the United States, it's pretty easy to find a bunch of people sitting in a circle, playing some kind of percussion and smoking marijuana. That's what's called a "drum circle". In these "drum circles", people are connected by vague spiritual or religious ideas, sort of like what happens in our band. I've often had this idea of traveling around to universities to play our music together with them. I think it could work just fine, even without any financial return, just good vibes.

Ok, Luke, I think that'll do it for now. Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you!

(17/03/2013)

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