Scott Pinkmountain always wanted to be a folk singer, but his path back to the music of his youth was a circuitous one. On the way, he took several detours to the land of free jazz, skronk, and avant-garde music. On The Full Sun, his debut for local San Francisco label Howells Transmitter, he brings along an extended ensemble, the Golden Bolts of Tone, to produce an ambitious work that’s more of a suite than a collection of individual songs. The album traces the arc of a relationship from the giddy hallucinations of “Song of Solomon”, which celebrates the rapture of love’s first uncontained excitement, to its demise with the droning, horn-driven cacophony of “To Love Is to Die.” The songs often make jolting twists and turns, but Pinkmountain always manages to draw you further into his troubled world of love and loss.
“[The Full Sun] is intentionally a concept album,” Pinkmountain confesses from his Oakland home. “It was pretty elaborately mapped out. The songs I gathered together are old and new; some of them I finished three years ago, some I finished just before the recording started. Every song demanded its own treatment.” To realize his vision, Pinkmountain enlisted almost 50 musician friends to create The Full Sun’s expansive sound, moving the music from folky laments to free jazz dissonance and bluesy instrumental interludes. He often had a dozen or more players in the studio at the same time, augmenting the usual line up of guitar, bass, and drums with expansive horn and string ensembles. He also created two orchestras and a vocal choir. “We actually did a lot of live tracking in the studio, sometimes with 10 or more people in the room at once,” he says modestly. “You get a different product when you work with live musicians. It may not sound different [than overdubbing], but it feels different. At one point, we had a 30-piece orchestra in the studio playing together. That was one of the high points for me.”
Pinkmountain had a clear idea of the sounds he wanted to use on the album and the songs were highly arranged, although he left room for improvisation. “The album took about 11 months, from beginning to end. The songs are all my compositions, but there was improvisation too. I brought in all these players and told them the general tone of what I wanted, and they took it from there. I composed, produced, and conducted, with tremendous help from engineer Eli Crews [Why?, Deerhoof].
“Still, it’s definitely a lyric-driven record, so I tried to stay away from that which has already been said and avoid clichés, unless I was using them intentionally. Often you read lyrics and anybody could have written them; there’s no personality in the word choices. What moves me are word combinations that could only have come from one person. The lyrics have to stand on their own, so they’re intentionally elaborate and demanded intricate adornment. ‘Unforgiven’ has the shortest lyric, but it’s the longest song on the album, with the music going further and further out, while on the more lyrically dense songs I had to pull back the music.”
The music on The Full Sun is as sprawling as Pinkmountian’s lyrical conceits. There’s the slowly modulating progressions of “Song of Solomon”, all breathtaking tension and no release, the free jazz of “Solar Flare”, the avant-garde meets chamber music excursion of “Unforgiven”, the smooth vocal harmonies of “Sundowning” that bring to mind the Swingle Singers and Four Freshmen, and the sunny, straightforward pop of “You Gave Me This”, with its vague hints of Bacharach. Another thing that sets The Full Sun apart is the drumming of Gene V. Baker, who manages to swing and stay outside the parameters of rock at the same time. “There wasn’t any single direction I wanted to go in,” Pinkmountain explains. “I wanted it to sound like rock without the usual 4/4 of rock drumming. Percussion has a massive sonic palette, but in rock music, it’s usually just timekeeping. I like roboto drumming with a lot of personality. And I wanted to synthesize all of the music I’ve absorbed so far.”
Pinkmountain’s skewed blend of folk, jazz, and free music evolved slowly over time. “I was born and raised in LA, but didn’t get into 
music until high school. My stepfather played guitar, and he was an important influence on me. He played folk music and got me thinking about doing music for a living. That way, I could be a flunkey for the rest of my life, or so I believed. Then I came to Oakland to study music at Mills College and met (avant-garde sax player and composer) Anthony Braxton. His music had a huge impact on me; that was my eureka moment.”
Pinkmountain was still going by his given name of Rosenberg at the time. He sold his electric guitars, a decision he says he still regrets, and took up the trumpet and sax. “I’d listened to weird psychedelia in high school, and then Braxton introduced me to post-Coltrane creative music. I started listening to Henry Kaiser and other pioneers of modern music. I don’t see it as a big leap from psychedelic to avant-garde music. There’s a lot of common ground; both are interested in drones, unusual orchestration, and letting go of a fixed pulse.”
Rosenberg played with Braxton and started making his own records. 1996’s are blended solo sax, group improvisation/composition, and avant-garde jazz. He founded his own label, Barely Audible, and released IE (For Large Ensemble), music for a 27-piece jazz orchestra, Compositions/Innovations 2000, a duet outing with Braxton that earned him rave reviews from jazz critics, and V: Solo Improvisations, credited to the Rosenberg Skrontet, an album that steps outside rhythm and melody to make music that sounds animal, mechanical, and disturbingly original.
In 2004, Rosenberg became Scott Pinkmountain and went back to the guitar. He put together P.A.F. with drummer Gene V. Baker and Eric Carlson on bass, and played an odd blend of free music and roots rock. “I perceived the music as straightforward rock but with more improvisation than your average power trio. Some people called it free country, and while there was definitely something off about it, to my ears it sounded like rock ‘n’ roll.” P.A.F. made two albums—Fingerprints Medicine and Phoenix—before he moved on with Pink Mountain, which he describes as a freaked out, psychedelic, progressive rock project. About a year ago, he started thinking about combining everything he’d done into a new song-driven project and Scott Pinkmountain and the Golden Bolts of Tone started to take shape.
Pinkmountain produced The Full Sun himself, “given the lottery-like nature of recording and trying to get a record deal,” and found a sympathetic ear in Howells Transmitter. Now all he has to do is figure out a way to play the songs live. “The live band is drums, bass, guitar, and keyboards, with a few horns. The emotional intensity and tone is the same as on the album, but at rock clubs, a string section just won’t work, so until there’s a demand for it….” He lets the thought trail off. “We’re also making a video of ‘To Love Is to Die’ that gives a good impression of what we do. I think the people that like the record will be willing to seek us out and see us live.”
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Tags: Scott Pinkmountain, Anthony Braxton, P.A.F.
Read past installments of Introducing:
John McGrew: The Music Industry Defector
BOAT: D. Crane Plays Like a Big Kid
Shelley Short Rides the Heart of Tomorrow
Loading ...
Scott Pinkmountain: Free Folk Meets Skronk in Oakland
by: j. poet
“[The Full Sun] is intentionally a concept album,” Pinkmountain confesses from his Oakland home. “It was pretty elaborately mapped out. The songs I gathered together are old and new; some of them I finished three years ago, some I finished just before the recording started. Every song demanded its own treatment.” To realize his vision, Pinkmountain enlisted almost 50 musician friends to create The Full Sun’s expansive sound, moving the music from folky laments to free jazz dissonance and bluesy instrumental interludes. He often had a dozen or more players in the studio at the same time, augmenting the usual line up of guitar, bass, and drums with expansive horn and string ensembles. He also created two orchestras and a vocal choir. “We actually did a lot of live tracking in the studio, sometimes with 10 or more people in the room at once,” he says modestly. “You get a different product when you work with live musicians. It may not sound different [than overdubbing], but it feels different. At one point, we had a 30-piece orchestra in the studio playing together. That was one of the high points for me.”
Pinkmountain had a clear idea of the sounds he wanted to use on the album and the songs were highly arranged, although he left room for improvisation. “The album took about 11 months, from beginning to end. The songs are all my compositions, but there was improvisation too. I brought in all these players and told them the general tone of what I wanted, and they took it from there. I composed, produced, and conducted, with tremendous help from engineer Eli Crews [Why?, Deerhoof].
“Still, it’s definitely a lyric-driven record, so I tried to stay away from that which has already been said and avoid clichés, unless I was using them intentionally. Often you read lyrics and anybody could have written them; there’s no personality in the word choices. What moves me are word combinations that could only have come from one person. The lyrics have to stand on their own, so they’re intentionally elaborate and demanded intricate adornment. ‘Unforgiven’ has the shortest lyric, but it’s the longest song on the album, with the music going further and further out, while on the more lyrically dense songs I had to pull back the music.”
The music on The Full Sun is as sprawling as Pinkmountian’s lyrical conceits. There’s the slowly modulating progressions of “Song of Solomon”, all breathtaking tension and no release, the free jazz of “Solar Flare”, the avant-garde meets chamber music excursion of “Unforgiven”, the smooth vocal harmonies of “Sundowning” that bring to mind the Swingle Singers and Four Freshmen, and the sunny, straightforward pop of “You Gave Me This”, with its vague hints of Bacharach. Another thing that sets The Full Sun apart is the drumming of Gene V. Baker, who manages to swing and stay outside the parameters of rock at the same time. “There wasn’t any single direction I wanted to go in,” Pinkmountain explains. “I wanted it to sound like rock without the usual 4/4 of rock drumming. Percussion has a massive sonic palette, but in rock music, it’s usually just timekeeping. I like roboto drumming with a lot of personality. And I wanted to synthesize all of the music I’ve absorbed so far.”
Pinkmountain’s skewed blend of folk, jazz, and free music evolved slowly over time. “I was born and raised in LA, but didn’t get into
music until high school. My stepfather played guitar, and he was an important influence on me. He played folk music and got me thinking about doing music for a living. That way, I could be a flunkey for the rest of my life, or so I believed. Then I came to Oakland to study music at Mills College and met (avant-garde sax player and composer) Anthony Braxton. His music had a huge impact on me; that was my eureka moment.”
Pinkmountain was still going by his given name of Rosenberg at the time. He sold his electric guitars, a decision he says he still regrets, and took up the trumpet and sax. “I’d listened to weird psychedelia in high school, and then Braxton introduced me to post-Coltrane creative music. I started listening to Henry Kaiser and other pioneers of modern music. I don’t see it as a big leap from psychedelic to avant-garde music. There’s a lot of common ground; both are interested in drones, unusual orchestration, and letting go of a fixed pulse.”
Rosenberg played with Braxton and started making his own records. 1996’s are blended solo sax, group improvisation/composition, and avant-garde jazz. He founded his own label, Barely Audible, and released IE (For Large Ensemble), music for a 27-piece jazz orchestra, Compositions/Innovations 2000, a duet outing with Braxton that earned him rave reviews from jazz critics, and V: Solo Improvisations, credited to the Rosenberg Skrontet, an album that steps outside rhythm and melody to make music that sounds animal, mechanical, and disturbingly original.
In 2004, Rosenberg became Scott Pinkmountain and went back to the guitar. He put together P.A.F. with drummer Gene V. Baker and Eric Carlson on bass, and played an odd blend of free music and roots rock. “I perceived the music as straightforward rock but with more improvisation than your average power trio. Some people called it free country, and while there was definitely something off about it, to my ears it sounded like rock ‘n’ roll.” P.A.F. made two albums—Fingerprints Medicine and Phoenix—before he moved on with Pink Mountain, which he describes as a freaked out, psychedelic, progressive rock project. About a year ago, he started thinking about combining everything he’d done into a new song-driven project and Scott Pinkmountain and the Golden Bolts of Tone started to take shape.
Pinkmountain produced The Full Sun himself, “given the lottery-like nature of recording and trying to get a record deal,” and found a sympathetic ear in Howells Transmitter. Now all he has to do is figure out a way to play the songs live. “The live band is drums, bass, guitar, and keyboards, with a few horns. The emotional intensity and tone is the same as on the album, but at rock clubs, a string section just won’t work, so until there’s a demand for it….” He lets the thought trail off. “We’re also making a video of ‘To Love Is to Die’ that gives a good impression of what we do. I think the people that like the record will be willing to seek us out and see us live.”
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Tags: Scott Pinkmountain, Anthony Braxton, P.A.F.
Read past installments of Introducing:
John McGrew: The Music Industry Defector
BOAT: D. Crane Plays Like a Big Kid
Shelley Short Rides the Heart of Tomorrow
by: j. poet
published: February 18, 2009
in column: Introducing
no comments yet
Tags: