In conceiving this project, I wanted to focus on creating the material with very few ingredients; just improvising at the drums or piano or singing ideas into a voice recorder, focusing primarily on rhythm and melody. I want to see what other ingredients the players or singers would bring to the material. I’m interested in a true band sound: I want to know how the musicians will color, shape, and season the raw ingredients, and how to pull all of those pieces together to a whole. I'm also interested in hearing how musicians adjust and adapt to playing music with which they may be stylistically unfamiliar. I'm also interested in hearing how some musicians play with other musicians with whom they might not normally play. That kind of tension is interesting to me, and ultimately I think it's interesting to the audience.
Kris Bowers at Sear Sound 1.19.14, photographed by Johnalynn Holland