Pop Clients

A former New Yorker, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz had already made a name for himself in that city's downtown jazz and improv scene when, in the mid-'90s, he relocated to Seattle. Here, he began working with a wide-ranging mixture of local musicians, most notably in the groove unit Zony Mash, which recently disbanded after a decade together, as well as Ponga (featuring drummer Bobby Previte, saxophonist Skerik, and keyboardist Dave Palmer) and the Four Plus One Ensemble, alongside violinist Eyvind Kang, trombonist Julian Priester, keyboardist Reggie Watts (also of Maktub), and on electronics and processing, Tucker Martine. Martine's résumé is as varied as Horvitz's; he's produced or engineered for artists as varied as electro-beatscapists Land of the Loops, jazz cats Kang and guitarist Bill Frisell, and indie rockers Sick Bees.

Mylab (Terminus), the self-titled debut of Horvitz and Martine's new collaborative project, is something of a Seattle all-stars project, utilizing the talents of Frisell, Kang, Previte, Skerik, vocalist Robin Holcomb (to whom Horvitz is married), and Watts, among others in the same orbit. The disc is all over the place stylistically, taking in everything from Afro percussion to laptop glitch to blues guitar, but the disc's late-night mood and ingratiating, offbeat grooves line it up alongside stoner-friendly fare like DJ Shadow's Endtroducing . . . as well as jazz-informed hybrids like Marc Ribot's Los Cubanos Postizos; it's both a logical extension of Horvitz and Martine's previous work and an intriguing sidestep. The Jukebox took place at the Weekly offices on a mid-January afternoon.

Radiohead: "Everything in Its Right Place" (2000) from Kid A (Capitol)

Tucker Martine: Radiohead, Kid A. Definitely one of my favorite records of the last five years.

Seattle Weekly: There's a little bit of that album's feel on Mylab. I'm wondering if that's intentional.

Martine: On the 10th track ["Not in My House"], actually, I was kind of aware of the possible similarities.

Horvitz: I didn't think we had an intent [other than] to do something together. We certainly never had a conversation where we listened to other people's music or said, "We want to do something like this." For me, when Kid A came out, I only heard it through my daughter because of my age. I haven't listened to it that much, and I don't know it that well, but I felt like it went over a lot of ground that I had heard a lot of people do before, even though I still enjoyed it. I saw it as something that people thought was revolutionary, because they hadn't heard some of the stuff that might have been 20 years old. But that's whatever.

World Saxophone Quartet: "I Heard That" (1980) from Revue (Black Saint)

Horvitz: World Saxophone Quartet?

SW: Yes.

Horvitz: I would guess because most of the saxophone quartets I know . . . it would be the vibe of these guys.

SW: How would you describe the vibe?

Horvitz: Well, I think compared to the other saxophone quartets, and it's a pretty small group, there's just a more African-American attitude, I think, than Rova or the Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet, which is a really nice band. Is this early? [Very high note sounds] Well, there, you heard Julius [Hemphill] right there, on that note. But there's that sense of, you know, more blues.

Bill Frisell: "Is It Sweet?" (1994) from This Land (Elektra)

Horvitz: Sounds like Bill. Well, we can't talk about Bill because he's too close a personal friend, to me for ages, and to Tucker, you know, for a solid age now, and Tucker's been working with him tremendously. The thing about Bill is that he's not only a great player, but he actually changed the way people think about electric guitar, and you can't say that about that many people.

SW: When you were talking to musicians about playing on Mylab, how did you approach them? Obviously, you're friends with Frisell, but in a situation like that, do you have set parts or ideas? Or was it more improvisational?

Martine: We knew places that we thought he could bring something to what we'd started, but there weren't parts written out.

Horvitz: For example, Skerik on a couple pieces, I didn't have parts written out, because it was like a riff, and he laid down some parts. I don't think Bill laid down any parts, although he could have chosen to. And we did it the modern computer way, you know: Keep recording and worry later. But my favorite Bill solo on the record [on "The Big Crusher"], a lot of people think isn't a guitar solo, because we messed with the sound so much. And then Tim [Young] takes a solo right after him that sounds more like a regular guitar.

Martine: But it's Bill, unmistakably.

Horvitz: Yeah, you know, Bill playing keyboard. No one would ever play that way, just rhythmically.

Triple Threat: "Morning Showers" (2003) from Many Styles (Fat Beats)

Martine: [after a few seconds] It's going to jump into a hip-hop beat, isn't it?

SW: Yes. This is three scratch DJs from the Bay Area?one of the better turntablist records I've heard. Do you consider Mylab more of a cut-and-paste style album than you're used to doing?