Photo by Tammy Wetzel
Jason Hann knows improvisation quite well, or so he thought. But the String Cheese percussionist finds the term is being reinvented, ironically, by his own latest project, EOTO. With improvisation the sole means of musical creation, the experimental playground Hann shares with fellow SCI alum, Michael Travis, is unlimited, but full of pitfalls. As they learn to traverse the craggy surface of an alien arena whose only law is never play the same song twice, ever, EOTO finds itself becoming a defining element of the burgeoning, fast-evolving live electronica scene. And as Jason shares, their latest album, Fire The Lazers!!, is just another step in their unrehearsed world.
What was the thought process in choosing to make EOTO 100% improvised all the time, as opposed to more traditional song writing?
Well, when we started we weren’t even thinking about putting together a project, necessarily. We would just get together after String Cheese practice. Since I was flying out to Colorado and staying at Travis’ place, there’d be sort of nothing to do after practice. We’d practice at six, or seven o’clock, and we’re both night owls, so we just ended up jamming on different instruments that he had at his house, and little by little, we started using different things, like different effects pedals. We were playing mostly fusion music, but not really any songs, just making stuff up and jamming. As we kept doing that, we just found that we could entertain ourselves (laughs) at least, until sunrise, or four in the morning, or something like that, and that was a lot of fun. When it started angling towards using looping pedals, and then using the computer, just for fun’s sake, it sort of lent itself to electronic music. We were still having fun just making stuff up. We didn’t have any pressures of playing for an audience or anything like that; just endless entertainment just making our own stuff up.
How do you feel the audience reacts to the newness of each song and show, with it being completely improvised?
Well I think that’s one of the more fun aspects of electronic music. If I were to go to sort of randomly see a DJ play, one of the things is being turned on to music that you haven’t heard before. I think that sort of sensibility carries through to people thinking they’re going to have a night out dancing, as opposed to a night out hearing their favorite songs. That’s a little bit part of what people have gotten used to when they see us: At first they know that no two nights will be the same musically, and then they know they’re going to dance all night. When it kicks in that we’re making up all the stuff off the top of our head, on the spot, then that’s another thing that people have responded to, like “Wow, it already sounds good, and they’re doing this completely improvised.” I think that’s another appreciation aspect that people have had with the band.
Do you find people crave the ability to request a song, like some band’s that have their “classics?”
Oh yeah, we’ve had – I can’t say a lot – of people come up and say, “Hey, can you play this song?” off our CD, or that song. Both of us usually respond, “We don’t really have any songs. We create it.” The conversation ensues:
“How come you can’t do that song?”
“Well we’re making everything up, every night.”
That usually comes off as being sort of a cooler impression, even if they still want to hear that song. It’s kind of neat to know that in the aftermath of the conversation, they’re surprised to find out that “Wow, you’re making everything up every night!”
Live electronica, in general, is a newer scene in music. What are your thoughts about the live electronica scene as it fits into the bigger picture of music today?
The scene’s great. In general, it seems like the younger audience is finding their own voice and style of music that they can rage too, and feel like it’s from their generation. You can tell by the way people are going to check out Phish, and the number of people turned on to String Cheese, that people still want that, they still crave that. But if someone comes through town, and it’s a night of electronic music, or the DJ’s not in town, but this is going on, then they’re going to get down to this just as hard, and they’re going to check it out. Some of the older fans of the jam scene might not like the fact that there’s a computer anywhere near the stage (laughs), but it seems the younger generation has fully embraced the DJ culture in the jam scene, and will still, as long as it’s live music. But even if it’s just a straight up DJ, they’re into both; they’re flexible enough in their taste to want both. That’s definitely made it healthy.
Now it gets to another point when you’re talking about a lot of the bands in the electronic scene. Either they have a ton load of songs, or they’re doing similar sets night after night, and I think that’s the part where we branch of from that, in that we’re trying to have the same impact of some song that you’ve known for a long time, but with the sensibility that we’re jumping off a cliff every night. There’s still that sort of adventure that we keep in our music, that we think sort of separates us from everything else that’s going on.
What do you feel are your personal favorite, or least favorite aspects of this type of music?
Well I think in most music in general, and I would say particularly in electronic music, as far as songs go, they don’t stay fresh for too long. Take for instance, if you’re playing a Bob Marley song, those songs are pretty timeless: It’s just “wow,” anyone can still have a good time, it appeals to all generations. In electronic music, the window of appeal for its freshness hangs out for maybe a year or two (laughs), before a song starts sounding pretty dated, unless you’ve updated it somehow. There bands that definitely defy that: Sound Tribe must defy that, Lotus defies that – as far as being able to play a song you wrote five years ago. But, in general, if you went to see a DJ play, and you heard the same music that you heard them do five years ago, you’re like “Oh wow, this is getting really tired, I’ve got to move on from this particular thing.” But electronic music in general is a little bit more disposable in that way, it relies on it being fresh and updated every couple of years to keep people interested.
How do you feel your role in String Cheese helped shape what you’re doing right now in EOTO?
I think more the String Cheese influence comes into play, first of all, in the vibe: That vibe that anyone can come to the show and have a really good time. If you’re open to it – if you like to dance, and have fun – we’re not really getting too much deeper then having a good time for a bunch of hours in a nighttime. Those overall positive vibes, and including everyone into it – you don’t just have to be into crunk, you don’t just have to be a Burning Man person, or a hippie to enjoy what’s going on. Anyone can come out and have a really good time. That might be the greatest String Cheese influence: Just creating a great, fun place for everyone to go to.
As far as jamming goes, I think just that in String Cheese we’d play for a bunch of hours every time we did play; that makes us want to create that sort of thing in EOTO as well. When you come to see us, you’re not just going to see us do one set, your going to see us do two full sets of a lot of music. Sort of your money’s worth; (laughs) we’re up for playing all night long! That’s part of it, and it definitely influences what we’re trying to do on a nightly basis. Outside of that, not a whole lot; what we do in EOTO is very different from what String Cheese does.
How does being 100% improvised affect your approach to making an album, like Fire The Lazers!!?
It’s still a similar approach, as far as making things up on the spot. We don’t have the pressure of the audience, of looking to see whether people are dancing or not, whether they’re digging it or not, or that we need to change up what we’re doing in a hurry. That’s a good thing live, we like that live, to feel that (pressure). The way we try to put that on ourselves in the studio, is we listen to a bunch of tracks, and we find a track that we really like and want to use as a take off point for launching an idea of what sort of style we’re going to go for. Then we try pretty hard to match that vibe, and listen back to it, and “are we catching it or not?” Then we’ll jam on it, we’ll do our improvisational way for about 10 minutes. We’ll cut out maybe the best 5 minutes of that, and that’ll become the song.
So we do things a little bit different in the studio: We do a little more listening on the spot, and we’re not trying to do all the songs at one time. It’s kind of like we listen a lot, and try to get a bunch of sounds that match the style that we like. Then we play over it for 10-15 minutes, and try to get the best out of those minutes that comes out, and that becomes the song.
Do you feel because of the improvised nature of the music, the events going on at that particular time in your life, heavily influence what you play at that time?
Oh yeah, absolutely. For instance, we recorded Fire The Lazers!! back in June – as far as recording all the tracks to it – and we felt like we’ve come such a long way since then. Now, it’s December, and just with this fall tour alone, and all the things we did during the summer, we’ve evolved a bunch. We listen back to _Fire The Lazers!! _, and we know that there’s a whole bunch of things that we’re doing now that didn’t get captured on the recording. We can hear that recording, and picture where we were at, as far as the type of instruments that we were playing, and the type of music that we were creating. But that’s going to be the nature of what we do all the time, especially as far as the studio. Probably the best thing to do is to go in the studio and record what we record, and mix it and master it right there, so it’s out within a months time. But, a bunch of months go by, and it feels like, “wow,” it sounds like we found (laughs), something from back in that period.
Do you feel like you employed new techniques, and approaches on Fire The Lazers!!?
Oh yeah, for what we had gotten to, in that moment. One of our really big influences was being at the Shambhala Festival up in Nelson, British Colombia. That prompted both me and Travis to dive back into stuff, and get all sorts of other sounds created, to have that kind of impact we saw when DJ Excision did his set at Shambhala. It inspired us to get a bunch of new stuff together for fall tour. I think that’s how it’s always going to go, there’s going to be something that’s going to come out and we’re going to be like “Wow, we got to reach for that.”
What do you feel is the through-line that connects the eleven tracks on Fire The Lazers!!, whether thematic, or otherwise?
More stylistic – we were definitely going for a little bit darker, dub step, and some glitch-hop stuff. I think all the tempos are pretty close to the same. Anything that we did outside of it, that we tried, like a house track or down-tempo track – we have a bunch of outtakes – didn’t make the record, because we wanted to make it a little bit more, stylistically, all in the same zone. Where on some of our other records, we tried to be sure we had some house in their, we tried to be sure we had some drum and bass, but maybe not dubstep, I don’t even think we were even playing it at that time. But we tried to cover all the electronica genre with the other two CDs. On this CD, we wanted to keep it in the same stylistic range.
How do you feel being 100% improvised, all the time, effects your thoughts and approach to improvisation in general?
Well that’s sort of our art form, as far as our contribution to the improvisation world. Particularly in jazz, but really in most types of improvisation, you’ll have at least a chart to follow of chord changes. Then you practice getting good playing over those chord changes, and trying to develop your solos, so that they’re melodic, or they tell a story over those chord changes, and you take the band along with you for the ride, and the audience. With what we’re doing, from an improvised stand-point, instead of practicing improvising over the form, we practice improvising the actual song structure. For instance, when we start out with a new theme or a new song, or whatever, we know that these different accompaniment parts have to be laid down first, whether it’s the drums, or different layers of sound, or guitar, or whatever. And then we know after that there has to be some kind of strong melody that cooks it all together. After that has all been introduced, we know we want to either increase the intensity, or break things down, or start taking parts in and out – so they start sounding like different sections – and then reintroduce the theme again. By that time, it’s times to move on to another theme.
So our practice is in the actual improvising of a song – making it sound as much of a song as possible, before we move on to the next one. Let’s say, when you’re doing a guitar solo, in rock, jazz, funk, or whatever, you know you hit the solo section, and that there are these certain chords you’re going to improvise over, and the whole band is going to do with you. Sometimes it’s kind of open ended how long you’re going to spend time there, but ultimately, you’re going to come back to whatever song you were just in. It’s just more of a different, even thought, of improvisation, where we’re not improvising over chords per say, but we’re improvising actual songs. It makes a world of difference when you’re trying to fill up a whole night of improvisation.
That’s got to be insane trying to improvise the whole night, from start to end.
And keeping the audience’s attention, ‘cause believe me I’ve done a bunch of jazz things, where, you know, you’re doing some Ornette Coleman type of stuff, “Hey we’re going to improvise tonight,” and you know it’s going to sound out. People are sitting in their chairs, maybe sometimes holding their ears like, “Oh that didn’t really work” (laughs). He isn’t saying, “Wow, that’s amazing.” There’s such a high percentage of that type of improvised music that I can barely stand for more then 15 or 20 minutes; so playing dance music, and electronic music in particular – where you really have to hold on to the crowd, and keep them dancing – you just have to think of improvising in a different way. If you solo too long, or it’s a whole night made up of soloing, that can get really wearing on somebody’s ear too. It’s all about having a whole night of developing themes, and breakdowns, and sonic journeys. That’s what really keeps the audience on our side for the evening.
What should fans take away from listening to Fire The Lazers!!?
It captures us in a period of time in the studio, where we’re exploring these styles of music. It’s a different element that we’re in, ourselves. It’s us sort of taking a risk, even within what we already do. Our will, usually in our endeavor, is that people will think it’s groovy, and want to dance to it, and keep it on all day long. We’re not hoping for much more then that. Usually, if those things can happen, then we’re proud of what we’re able to put out there for the people.
