Scarcity - Meditations on Impermanence

Plunged into an excruciating existential crisis, brought on by the experience of grief and made worse by the restrictions imposed by the American government to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, New York guitarist and composer Brendon Randall-Myers (backed by singer Doug Moore of Pyrrhon) managed to climb back out thanks to the moving sonic textures of “Aveilut”, an album poised between atmospheric black metal, drone-doom, microtonal experimentation and the Totalism of Glenn Branca.

So, Brendon, you studied composition, but you're also a metal fan. How did you first get into this genre?

I was a metal fan long before I studied formal composition, so working on this music has been a bit like "going back" or reconnecting with my roots. I think I can say I've tried to work with the materials of metal (tremolo-picked riffs, blastbeats, harsh vocals), trying to combine them with the structural and harmonic approach of my work in formal composition.

Specifically, "Aveilut" is heavily influenced by black metal, especially the more atmospheric strain. The biggest black-metal influences on this record came from bands like Krallice, Jute Gyte, early Ulver, Blut Aus Nord and Gliding Body. Other things swirling around in my head were Portal, Dodecahedron, Oathbreaker, Leviathan and Yellow Eyes. Obviously, I'm familiar with Burzum, Mayhem and so on, but that stuff had a less direct influence on the music of "Aveilut".

I don't know if you're familiar with Liturgy, but their frontperson wrote an essay titled “Trascendental Black Music” in which, among other things, you can read: The meaning of black metal has to do with a desire for ecstatic annihilation, a perfect void. What do you think of these words?

Sure, I know Liturgy and the frontwoman (since she no longer goes by Hunter, but by Ravenna), and I basically agree with those words completely. As far as I'm concerned, this music has a lot to do with the need to disappear, yet it allows me to turn that need from something self-destructive into something constructive, cathartic and collective. I don't think this is true only of black metal, though, since I experience a version of that same transformation in a lot of the music I love. It was definitely a major part of my experiences performing the music of Glenn Branca.

Am I wrong, or did you also develop a certain microtonal approach on "Aveilut"? Among the bands you mentioned as major influences, you also cited Jute Gyte, the solo project of Adam Kalbach, who in his albums (especially “Perdurance”) works extensively with microtones.

Yes, this album was composed using twelfth-tones, which divide the octave into 72 equal parts instead of the standard 12 (it can sound strange if you're not used to hearing them), and also used at times to dissolve/deconstruct more familiar sonorities. As I said, Jute Gyte had a substantial influence on "Aveilut". His record that resonates most with these grooves is "The Sparrow Ep", which has more minimal structures than "Perdurance". Kalbach generally uses quarter-tones, so we're not using the same microtonal system, but I love his work all the same.

At the heart of "Aveilut" is the processing of a couple of bereavements and your reaction to the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In what way did the experience of death, even if indirect, change your perception of life and music?

In the summer of 2019, two people close to me died suddenly and in a truly random way, about a month apart from one another. In response to that, I sketched out about twenty minutes of this music. I then wrote the rest of the music in Beijing in February 2020, while the city was shutting down because of the lockdown. During the Covid-19 pandemic, while he was writing his lyrics and vocal parts, Doug was living in New York across the street from a funeral home. I think he was dealing with the weight of mass death being felt throughout the city in a much more direct way. What I focus on when I think about loss or change is the idea of space: something is removed or altered, leaving a space in your life. I think on this record I was more willing to give space to ideas, to sit in that space, which is actually full of possibility and life.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, said that death is nothing to us, since, while we exist, it is not present, and when we die, we no longer exist. What do you think of those words? Are they enough to lift our spirits when we're confronted with the terrible mystery of death?

As far as I'm concerned, death isn't something I need or something I want to feel cheered by. Death is part of our life cycle, something we all live alongside and have to find a way to coexist with. It's an extreme change of state, and it leaves gaps in our lives that can be excruciating, but, as I said before, those gaps are also what makes room for new possibilities and new life. I think it's important to grieve, to feel the pain of separation from what once was, so that we can in turn create the space for what could be and what will be.

In your opinion, which albums and/or musical compositions have most effectively explored the mystery of death?

I won't even try to put together a full list here, but two recent works I find truly moving are "Death Speaks" by David Lang and "Blackstar" by David Bowie.

Why did you choose "Scarcity" as the name of the project?

Actually, it was Doug who suggested it, so I'll let him answer that himself.

Doug: "Scarcity" means absence and implies poverty. But there's another sense of scarcity that stuck with me when the name came to mind: "making yourself scarce," but as something elusive or hard to grasp. To my mind, that fits perfectly both with the challenge of creating a stimulating composition and with the way contradictions and absurdities sometimes emerge in the lyrics: the unimaginable certainty of death looming over the chaos of life; the way every individual exists in an overlap of absolute meaninglessness (since, inevitably, they will be destroyed and forgotten) and absolute meaning (since every individual is an irreplaceable element both within their own social and human fabric, and within the vast cosmic ballet of physical causality — neither dimension would be the same without that specific individual). In the end, I also think "scarcity" is a word that suits the way the band sounds: austere, meditative, intense.

The album cover is very striking. What does it actually depict?

For the cover photo, we worked with a fantastic photographer who goes by the name Creature Five Fingered (IG: @creature_five_fingered). Here's what they had to say about it:

The cover image is taken from a series of photographs that would later be classified under the name 'Fractured Landscapes,' which focus on the ambiguity and overlap that arise when you observe natural textures up close and man-made architecture from a distance. At the height of the Covid lockdown, I spent a lot of time watching incredibly unsettling aerial footage of abandoned cities, noticing how much every city resembled the old, intricate bark of a tree seen up close. These repeating patterns of human architecture have always struck me as symbiotic with those hidden within natural forms. The 'Fractured Landscapes' photo series was also heavily inspired by the idea that landscapes (and human beings) can have 'a geography of scars,' which can shift, change, or deepen as the seasons pass. I shot more than a hundred individual images for this project, but the one the band chose for the cover (this strange 'spine tree') works brilliantly in evoking a desolate, unsettling emotional landscape.

Brendon, how did you get in touch with Doug Moore? I'd also like to know what you think of Pyrrhon, the band Moore sings in.

Ah, I'm a huge fan of Doug's. I've known him since 2010, and I've also been a fan of Pyrrhon since they formed. But I really love Doug's death-doom band too, Weeping Sores. Doug and I first started talking about putting together a shared project back in 2016, but it took me a long time to find the right material and the right compositional approach. While I was working on the instrumental parts, we stayed in touch, and I gave him a fair amount of insight into the thoughts running through my mind during the writing process; but then, once I sent him all the material, I avoided giving him any direction, and just told him: "Do your thing!" The lyrics and vocal recordings he eventually sent back blew my mind.

You're a member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble, and the music of the great New York composer is definitely one of the most recognizable influences on the sound of "Aveilut." What did Branca's approach teach you? Do you think the importance of his music to some of rock's most significant experiences (I'm thinking, for instance, of Sonic Youth, just to name one) has been properly recognized?

Branca's music taught me, along with Maryanne Amacher's work, something about the ghosts within sound. The way he works with amplification, stacked guitars, and harmonic interplay obviously had a huge impact on me. I also really appreciate the way he works formally with those massive sound blocks he creates, and the momentum they carry. On top of that, I'd say the wild physical and mental/emotional places I found myself in while conducting his music after his death were an influence almost as great as the music itself.

What was Branca's greatest musical achievement?

The way he worked with amplified sound and his incredible energy as a conductor. Man, he was a force of nature!

You're also the guitarist for the math-rock band Marateck, who have one album under their belt, “Time Is Over” (2017). Want to talk about it?

It's a fun record! I wrote it together with Jesse Kranzler, the other guitarist, and I feel like we both poured a lot of ideas and approaches into it. There are a few small hints of the sonic vocabulary that would later end up on the Scarcity record – especially in the second-to-last song – and I think I also carried over some of the ideas about tempo we were working with. I'm not as interested in writing music that sounds like that anymore, but it's a good document of where I was at at the time, and I still enjoy listening to it. Also, for the Scarcity live band, I recruited Marateck's bassist, Tristan Kasten-Krause, who is a genuinely killer musician and composer.

What are the ten records that influenced you the most?

The ten biggest influences on “Aveilut”:

Nine Inch Nails – Broken

Glenn Branca – Symphony No. 3 (Gloria)

Krallice – Diotima

Jute Gyte – The Sparrow Ep

My Disco – Paradise

Gliding Body – Cold Sun

Maryanne Amacher – Sound Characters

Julius Eastman – Unjust Malaise

Horse Lords – Interventions

Godflesh – Streetcleaner

But I don't like limiting myself to ten albums, so here are ten more!

Converge – Jane Doe

King Crimson – Discipline

Dawn of Midi – Dysnomia

David Bowie – Hunky Dory

Battles – Mirrored

Martin Bresnick – The Essential Martin Bresnick

Gyorgi Ligeti – Violin Concerto

Swans – To Be Kind

Meshuggah – ObZen

Bjork – Homogenic

Are there other art forms that influence your music?

I love both static visual art and time-based art (that is, film), and I've composed the soundtrack for a couple of short films. I've been reading comics and manga since I was a kid, and there's something about the way comics capture movement and time in static images that's still very interesting to me. Something I've drawn from my work on soundtracks is the lesson that "less is more": you can go a long way with very simple ideas. Working with film has also made me think about time in a slightly different way, since there's a kind of external temporal structure imposed on you by the images, and in a sense you just have to "fill the time." Speaking of visual art, I often like pieces where the process of making them becomes somewhat transparent in the finished artwork, or where I get a sense of the time and labor the artist put into making a piece.

Have you already played any shows?

Yes, we played a couple of shows in New York last month, for the release of "Aveilut". Adapting the music to a live setting and finding the right musicians took a bit of time, but in the end playing live was fantastic and I definitely want to do more of it.

Do you already have material ready for a new Scarcity album?

New material is in the works! Doug and I have been discussing thematic ideas, and I have a lot of musical ideas trickling in. I've been working on other things this fall, but this winter I'll be getting back into digging through Scarcity material.

Is there hope for this planet?

For the planet, definitely, because this planet has endured far crazier things than human beings, and we, in geological terms, are mere infants. Is there hope for humanity on this planet? Who knows!

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