The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/25742
Music People Progressive electronica musician Jeff Bujak Jeff Bujak will perform at the Black Oak Tavern in Oneonta at 10 p.m. Friday, March 4. $3. You’re originally a classically trained pianist. What sparked your jump into the world of progressive electronica? I started seriously studying music with a theory-based education around the age of 8 or 9. Studying the theory of classical pieces made me figure out why things worked, how one part flowed into another even through full tempo changes or cut measures. With that in mind, I began to dissect the tunes in my head, and that led to the idea, when I was 11, that I might started writing my own stuff. I was tak- ing piano lessons at the time, and my teacher was giving me a lot of show tunes to play, but at that age I was so much more into rap and hip-hop, so it made me want to write and learn a lot more independently. After all of that, I started getting into heavy metal, one of my biggest influences to this day, while still balancing it with the classi- cal styles I’d been playing. And that’s really what did it for me as an artist: my music now is really just classically based, but on a much edgier level, and including the rock- influenced rhythmic backgrounds that push it harder. Throughout that whole process, I became really interested in the technological advancements in the musical world, like MIDI, syncs and synthesizers, and along with that I embraced electronica as something that could really fit into what I already loved about clas- sical and rock music. Regarding your earlier solo work, what kind of connection exists between the fact that you were so focused on creating concept albums and the way your music is constantly shifting be- tween time signatures, tempos and textures? Were those albums really just the result of your own commentaries on life? The first album (“Pieces of Man and Ma- chine” _ released in November 2006) was put together during a transitional period in my life. Up to that point, I had been record- ing and touring nationally for about five years with a band called Somebody’s Closet. Whenever I was playing as a part of that group, I was still thinking back to the solo ma- terial I’d been writing when I was younger, which was somewhat like what I’m doing now, but at a much lower-tech level _ it was recorded on a cassette tape … I had bins and bins of cassettes. So once I had been on the road with Some- body’s Closet for a while, I started to get this itch to get back to doing a solo project, and when the band started to wear down as the other members started families, I took the leap back into my own head, and “Pieces of Man and Machine” is what resulted from that. It was really just me piecing together these past emotional aspects of my life. For the second album (“Building: An Arsenal” _ released in February 2008), I basically drew half of the material from those older riffs again, but I also got into really electronic vibes that were more mellow and down-tempo, while still retaining the classical mindset. The concept album-point of view is just what fit my work and my attitudes about producing at that time. I had this dream that I would be going nonstop, producing a new concept album every year, but the reality is that it’s just difficult to do that while maintain- ing a busy touring schedule. I’ll fast-forward to your newest re- lease: you’ve recently begun to offer, as a free download on your website, a four-song EP titled “A Coordinate Time.” It’s got a heavy focus on remixes and samples of material from a variety of hip-hop and heavy rock artists. Are these mainly nods to your major influ- ences, or did you choose the samples based more on other abstract qualities they had? The “remix side” of me is something that’s been brewing for a while. When I first started playing live, I would sometimes throw a few Michael Jackson samples into my tunes, basi- cally just because I could. But as I immersed myself more in electronica, I became more aware of how to really use samples and remixes to further my own music, and that feeling is what eventually led to this EP. Every artist I included on that album has had a huge influence on me, whether it’s an older one like Maynard James Keenan (of Tool), who’s one of my very biggest inspira- tions, or a newer one like (hip-hop artist) Rick Ross. Like other people with a pretty sophisticated musical background, I didn’t take newer rappers like Ross or Lil Wayne seriously at first, but upon looking more closely at that music, I realized that I loved the simplicity of it and the flow these artists can create with the use of terminology and varied syllables. You do all of your own record- ing, mixing, mas- tering and album layout, along with a bunch of other tasks that artists usually end up delegating. Was this something that was born of necessity, or is maintaining com- plete control over the process the only way you can make your music work? Well, it definitely starts with control issues I have (laughing). When it comes to business, I have an agent, a manager, a label and a publicist, but everything goes through me first. When we’re in the tour van, I’m the one driving. So maybe I have some issues, but I don’t mind that, because I’m the only one who really, truly knows what I want done. And if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll learn how to do it. In the studio, that element of control matters even more, because my music is simply more important to me than anything else. So I have to make sure that everything is done right in order to really speak personally through what I do. I didn’t know how to do everything in the studio before I started my solo career, but living in the Internet era makes it so much easier to become well acquainted with all of the software I needed to learn, as well as helping to introduce me to the processes of mixing and mastering. After that, it’s artwork, T-shirt designs, post- ers, whatever. I just need to do it all. Some people who aren’t familiar with electronica probably brush it off as something that can’t be performed in a live setting in ways that are original or that really connect with an audience. How do you make your live shows hap- pen? For me as a solo performer, as opposed to when I was a member of a band, it’s not so much about connecting with an audience in a literal or direct sense. I wouldn’t say that I try to blank out the crowd, but I’m definitely more focused on falling deeper into my own personal world onstage. Also, just from a technical standpoint, there’s so much going on between the electronic beats, the lights and my own live keyboard parts that the connectivity really goes on between the audience and my music. Contributed I usually just close my eyes; and then I’m sending out this message, hoping that the energy is picked up by the crowd and then, somehow, returned to me. That’s what I can feel when I’m performing. Now that you’ve solidified a musical image of yourself as a solo artist, and have been on the road with some incred- ible acts within and around this genre (including The New Deal and The Marco Benevento Trio), I’m going to allow you to bestow wisdom upon us. Where is electronica headed right now, and where are you trying to take it? Right now, the progressive side of electronic music is not really on display for a wide audi- ence. There’s a whole DJ scene, there’s a whole dance scene, but those aren’t necessar- ily progressive _ it’s really just about getting on the floor and dancing, and you’re not seeing attempts to bring in any kind of pulled back, emotional interludes or other musical sensibilities, especially classical ideas. I feel like what I’m doing is trying to take it beyond that kind of strictly “dance” mentality, at least to the point where you wouldn’t really begin to compare me with acts like that. Ozric, a band that is originally from the UK but then moved to the US, has been a huge influence on me and has also been huge progressive force in electronica. They’ve found a really incredible way of blending the guitar-based rock elements with an electronic edge, and they’re all about using cut time and impressive textures. So overall, in its purest form, it’s a small genre right now. At one time, the atmosphere even made me start simplifying my own music in order to try to attract listeners from the dance scene. I felt like that worked; it kind of caught fire. And now I’m taking things back to the progressive side. I just really hope that more artists around the genre will start to take these risks in expanding the content of their music, because that will de- termine how far we can take this community. _ Sam Spokony Feb. 24, 2011 O-Town Scene 11