What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

As goofy as it sounds, I guess I would have to say that music got me into music. For better or for worse, whether or not I am ever successful or whether or not anybody likes it, I have always known I needed to be a musician in some form or another. I have had different versions of my band since I was 25 years old, which is almost 15 years ago. Though the band started in Philadelphia in 2011, in 2016, I moved to New York City to find musicians to play the music I write. This city has some of the most talented musicians in the world. I have found 4 of them. They also happen to be unbelievably cool, funny, caring, fascinating, creative people. We spend the beginning of each of our rehearsals talking with each other just as people before we challenge ourselves as artists and collaborators. The most interesting update regarding the format of the band is that I have recently started to play bass in it, something the comedian Stavros Halkias predicted when he very brilliantly and graciously roasted me doing crowd-work at a show in New York in December 2023.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

I actually wrote “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy” very long ago and sat on it for around a decade. In my mid-20’s, I lived around the corner from Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is now a museum, but it was once a working prison. I learned about the subject of the song, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, from attending the museum. I learned that when it was in use until the early 20th century, they used Bentham’s suggested technique of “rehabilitation” for prisoners: solitary confinement. This was a shocking and sad fact that an earnest humanitarian could have advocated for such a disastrously cruel practice. I researched more about Bentham’s life. His ideas and other peculiar aspects of his personality and fate were fascinating. Most notably, he basically chose to have his body taxidermied when he died so that his students could view it in a glass case in a seated position, to view it as a “stale instrument.” I had this wild math-metal instrumental lying around, so I figured I would write the vocal for this instrumental based on all of this research about this strange, tragic fellow, Jeremy Bentham.

The song has new relevance in my life and in the often cruel world at large, as I have recently made close friends with a man who is both in solitary confinement and on death row in Ohio, Mr. Keith Lamar. I believe his story that he is wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced. There is a documentary in the process of being made on his behalf with the ultimate goal of him being liberated. He is a brilliant writer, speaker, and artist in his own right. Look him up on Spotify, in fact!

In sharp contrast to “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy”, “Prayer on Love” is Ecce Shnak’s most straightforward, whole-grain rock song. It is a moderately slow song in 4/4 time with two riffs, two verses, and two choruses. Though there’s a high-pitched, Nels-Cline-inspired guitar melody, there is not a guitar solo or even a single cymbal crash in sight. The lyric is a meditation on the nature of love and its diverse manifestations a la bell hooks. It honors the complexity of love without declaring that it “is all we need.” The last verse is a celebration of the unique love in each person, all of our flaws notwithstanding: “Still my love is a star/Still my love’s a precious opportunity/and a miracle/flowing down the river of consequences and circumstances/and a self-same being.”

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

Musically, my influences are from all over the map. When I try to generalize, I tell people that I draw from 3 primary sounds: popular music (broadly speaking); classical music; and heavy music (metal, punk rock, and hardcore). For a song like “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadbody,” for instance, I would say the primary influences are Fugazi, Queen, Rage Against the Machine, Dillinger Escape Plan, and classical art song.

Lyrically, I am inspired by human madness, human love, human cruelty, human flaw, human justice, human comedy, human heartbreak. I am terrified of things, amazed by them, in love with them, and amused by them. Because I can’t help but write music, again, whether it’s any good or not, these fascinations with human beings and with absurd life on Earth find their way into the subject matter of my lyrics.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

Ecce Shnak is an art-rock band that, at its best, can still be deeply enjoyed without caring about the complicated processes or its maybe complicated presentation for their own sake. Hopefully, those complicated aspects are secondary to the sheer joy or catharsis that the music brings. Though I work hard on the songs, often doing some nerd-ass shit in the process, the nerd-ass shit is in service of the emotional expression and, when there is a message to the lyrics, the message as well. People might like or hopefully even love Ecce Shnak if they want to hear a sound that both honors many genres genuinely while not being constrained by any one in particular. If a music listener wants to hear how different traditions can be put in transcendent communication with one another, maybe they will be interested in Ecce Shnak, but only they can really say if I have been successful in that goal of mine, in their opinion.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Albums: “Skies of America” by Ornette Coleman, “Gypsy Punks” by Gogol Bordello, and “Phrenology” by the Roots

Movies: “Patriotism” by Yukio Mishima (ewwww, that’s yucky but yeah it’s pretty beautiful so sure), “Parasite,” and “Wayne’s World”

Books: The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dispossessed by Ursula Leguin, and whatever ee cummings anthology you might have lying around

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

I prefer playing live. I love recording, but there is nothing like the joy of performance. It is an indescribably wonderful feeling to sing and/or play the music one writes. I feel like it somehow makes death acceptable. The chance to tell a musical story and to have the story be heard and even maybe understood by another conscious person is simply miraculous. The fact that I learn how to perform by watching others feels like I am part of a community of spirits, a community that might overcome the gritty details of one’s history, demographic, or other limiting particulars, and overcome those of the audience members as well.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

Again, the comedian Stavros Halkias completely owned me (in the goofass millenial/zoomer/alpha internet parlance of our era) in a standup set he did in New York in December 2023. He posted it on his YouTube channel in anticipation of his upcoming tour. It was thrillingly embarrassing, but there is a fascinating way in which he dignified me and dignifies most of the audience members he “works” when he does crowdwork. At his best, he doesn’t just insult people cheaply. He points out each person’s individual flaws, limitations, aspirations, and even some virtues, and mocks it, but somehow brings them back into the community in the audience, instead of making them feel humiliated or belittled (at least that was my experience). Again, I had not been playing bass in the band at the time, though he assumed that I was the bassist just to keep his jokes moving. The jokes worked so well that that minor inaccuracy didn’t matter. Since then, since I have become the bassist, his guesswork and psychological acuity has proven even more impressive.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

I can’t choose a single song as the most unique, but one song that comes to mind is called, “Craig’s List Jawn: ¡Yay/¡Nay!” It is a strange love-song that is a musical synthesis of rhythmic-phasing-based math-metal (like Meshuggah) and classical art song (like Benjamin Britten or Richard Strauss). It is about a former girlfriend whom I still love in a fundamental way, even though we caringly and respectfully broke up with each other about a decade ago. It feels like an affirmation of the idea that a love can survive the relationship in which it was created.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

Ecce Shnak’s new EP, “Shadows Grow Fangs,” is slated to be fully released on February 7th of 2025. So far, we have released two singles from the EP, the aforementioned Queen-soaked mathpunk song “Jeremy, Utliitarian Homeslice,” and the much more straight-forward, whole grain rock song, “Prayer on Love.” Both are a little bit more than two minutes long, but are wildly different from each other. The third single is an art-hip-hop track about the internet called, “The Internet.” If Tyler the Creator and Primus ate mushrooms together and riffed on this subject it might sound like this track. The last two songs will be released with the EP. The title track, “Shadows Grow Fangs,” is the longest song on the record. It is a poppier take on Ecce Shnak’s math-kink. Lyrically, it is a meditation on loneliness and the confusions people suffer about our relationships with others, even our loved ones, especially when that loneliness becomes terrifying. The EP closes with a folk-song about a loved one of mine who took her own life about a decade ago. It is the only song in the Ecce Shnak catalogue that is just me and my guitar. It is called, “Stroll With Me.”

We hope to release this EP, a full-length not long after that, and still *another* album shortly after that full-length that will be *very* wayward remixes of American pop music. In the very long run, we will release a film project I have been working on for more than five years. It is a sci-fi/horror/thriller/pantheist family values comedy based on a classic 1990’s movie. I also hope to write an opera. Through all of this, we want to exponentially grow the Ecce Shnak fanbase, play with and open for our favorite bands (Gogol Bordello, Deerhoof, and Lightning Bolt are on the top of the list), and play the hell out of our own tours and hugh-jass festivals.

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

“Dave: what’s with the long song titles for the old music? What the hell does any of it mean? Are there shorthand titles for the songs? What the shnak are they?”

Great question! When I recorded that music, I was inspired by Sufjan Stevens’ long, autobiographical, peculiar titles. The titles of the old Ecce Shnak songs have little stories in them that refer to other titles or specific things in the lyrics individually or thematically throughout the songs. At some point over the next year, I intend on publishing a shorthand list of all of the songs in the discography, so that people can come to know the titles of the songs more easily than their official titles might allow them.

Photo Credits: Tommy Krause

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

 

Recommended listening:

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