Pynchon Music: Kyle Bruckmann

Kyle Bruckmann is an American composer and oboe player. Born in Connecticut, he studied oboe under Robert Atherholt at Rice University in Houston. In 1992 he formed Lozenge, an experimental industrial band partially inspired by the Boredoms. Serving as frontman, Bruckmann also played oboe, keyboards, and electric accordion. He describes their music as a blend of “sensory overstimulation, poly-/a-/hyper-rhythmic propulsion, labyrinthine black humor, and tooth-rattling timbral density.” After a period of hiatus while Bruckmann earned his master’s degree at the University of Michigan, Lozenge reformed in Chicago. In 1999 Bruckmann established the experimental group EKG with electroacoustic musician Ernst Karel. Although most of their work involves the electronic manipulation of wind instruments, EKG also plays the music of composers such as Anthony Braxton and Morton Feldman. In 2002 Bruckmann formed Wrack, a jazz ensemble dedicated to performing his own avant-garde compositions. A year later he moved to San Francisco, where he’s an active member of the Bay Area music scene. In 2016 Bruckmann formed Degradient, an electrified free-jazz ensemble with members of the Fred Frith Trio.

Kyle Bruckmann is no stranger to literary inspiration, and his works have made reference to Jorge Luis Borges, Henri Michaux, Donald Barthelme, and John Barth. In 2014, Bruckmann released an entire album devoted to Thomas Pynchon: Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack…Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire. Sometimes written as (W).A.S.T.E., the four-part suite is described as a “musical phantasmagoria inspired by the novels of Thomas Pynchon, anchored by instrumental settings of fictional song lyrics found in V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity’s Rainbow.” According to Bruckmann, his intention is to create a “parallel universe” where Pynchon’s songs are part of the Great American Songbook, now subjected to jazz interpretations from Bruckmann’s own tradition of “Downtown maximalism.” The novels provided Bruckmann with musical touchstones as well, and the suite contains allusions to Ornette Coleman, Parker’s “Cherokee,” and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.

Voted best jazz/improv album of 2014 by Magnet Magazine, Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire is a marvelous work, inventively conceived, brilliantly played, and expertly recorded. While Bruckmann provides no key to decipher which melodies were inspired by which set of Pynchon’s lyrics, it really doesn’t matter. Each piece is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, conjuring its source material with intelligence and humor. These aren’t soundtracks to the novels, but colorful distillations of their shifting plots and revolving cast of characters. The compositions also provide numerous opportunities for improvisation, with Bruckmann himself playing oboe and English horn.

The suite begins with a brief overture announced by a staggered fanfare. (To my ears, it evokes the opening theme of Leonard Roseman’s under-appreciated soundtrack to the 1978 Lord of the Rings. Not un-Pynchonian in itself!) A sawing bassline escorts us through the skittery introduction, fragmentary tunes providing glimpses into the madness to come. This “tuning up” concludes in a breathy cadenza, more sputtered than blown through a muted trumpet, a bridge that carries us directly into “V.” The longest piece in the suite, “V.” is a madcap burlesque of changing rhythms, melodies, and styles, from the cat-and-mouse striptease that opens the curtains to the boozy finale that struts off the stage. Dizzy with its own audacity, this is the musical equivalent of spinning plates—or like Bruckmann says, “juggling puppies while riding flaming unicycles through a labyrinth.” Like the best vaudeville acrobatics, everything teeters on the edge of chaos, but never quite flies off the rails. Truly wild, exciting stuff.

The Crying of Lot 49 enters quietly, the double bass exploring the terrain on curious cat-paws. Suffused with mysterious tension, the piece materializes slowly, congealing around a plaintive, longing melody played on gypsy viola. The melody strengthens as it develops, passed to the oboe and spun into a serpentine lead redolent of charmed snakes and exotic bazaars. The longest sustained theme in the suite, this sequence lasts for nine lovely minutes; but eventually the horns grow bored of “playing well with others,” and the trombone and trumpet start pulling in opposite directions. A quasi-military march erupts into to a full-throated jazz band in full beatnik mode, with staccato rhythms, a wailing bass clarinet solo, and an extended outro rolling across the drums. McClintic Sphere could hardly do better!

Gravity’s Rainbow begins not with a screaming, but a gurgling, the band trembling to life as each instrument comes into focus. What emerges from the gloom is pure showbiz, a bawdy vamp that fluoresces into something like a self-deconstructing show tune from a musical about sailors. The next section is pure Ives—One of Bruckmann’s biggest influences—as a playful bass clarinet collides headlong into a Salvation Army band. Instead of the expected fireworks, things dissolve into a protean fizzle, the viola reminiscent of John Cale’s minimalist drones. But nothing remains stable in the Zone, and soon we’re pitched back into “madcap romp” territory, whirling through chase scenes, Looney Tunes escapades, fragments of “Red River Valley,” Parkersesque bebop, jazz funerals, and vaudeville curtain calls. The most chaotic and “noisy” piece in the suite, Gravity’s Rainbow takes an unexpected turn some thirteen minutes in, slowly coalescing into a beautiful melody like a nineteenth-century folk hymn. It’s absolutely gorgeous—but unsurprisingly, it’s not meant to last, and the melody is pulled apart and distorted by overlapping waves of sound before fading beyond the zero.

A fantastic achievement, Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack…Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire is avant-garde jazz at its finest, played with energy and conviction, and eager to embrace chaos and beauty alike. It’s also deeply wrought, the kind of work that reveals new treasures with each listening. While Bruckmann shares similarities with John Zorn, Wrack is more accessible than many of Zorn’s experimental projects, and their playing conveys a sense of joy not often heard during, as Laurie Anderson might say, “difficult listening hour.” Hopefully Bruckmann knows there’s plenty of material for a sequel!

On his homepage, Kyle Bruckmann has this to say about the album:

(W).A.S.T.E. wrapup
…What first reeled me in was the character of McClintic Sphere in V. I distinctly remember sitting in English class, snickering geekily and patting myself on the back because I “got it”—I knew that his white saxophone was a not-so-subtle reference to Ornette Coleman. And it just keeps going—Gesang der Jünglinge gets name-checked, and Wozzeck, and Webern’s death… But that’s exactly Pynchon’s game: daring you to succumb to paranoid systems. There’s a dimension of reading his work that’s like firing a blunderbuss into a barrel of red herrings. No matter what your field is—rocket science, colonial history, organic chemistry, hermetica and the occult—he somehow knows just enough of your specialist knowledge to ensnare you in webs of “Kute Korrespondences.” Of course you’re going to try to connect dots and discern patterns in his noise, because that’s what human brains are wired to do. And of course you’re going to find those patterns, because everything is buried somewhere within the static. And it may very well be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s The Truth.

In 2015, Bruckmann spoke to Chamber Music America:

CMA: Your new work, supported by the CMA New Jazz Works grant, is entitles …Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire—a reference to Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I can guess at some immediate connections to your work—the postmodern preoccupation with forms and codes, the Bay Area, the whole notion of the “underground”—but could you talk how that text is informing your composition? What does Pynchon’s work mean to you in general?

Kyle Bruckmann: I love his utter audacity, his exasperating flamboyance, his uncanny ability to fire on so many different cylinders simultaneously. In the course of a single page, he can screech from the most puerile potty-mouth silliness into stomach-turning perversion, and then blindside you with exquisite lyricism. I resonate with his skepticism and obsession with paranoia and conspiracy systems. He’s merciless about jamming his finger into the sockets of imperialism, American racism, and the unfathomable Shadow of the Northern European psyche—matters that, as a white guy with German heritage who’s had the privilege and access to colonize jazz, I feel duty-bound to stare square in the face now and then.

The specific inspiration for this piece actually spans his first three novels. I started off intending to stick with V. and Lot 49, but have sprawled into Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve doubtless bitten off more than I can chew. I’m definitely not aspiring to depict them in any narrative sense—that’d be a fool’s errand, and contrary to their spirit. I’m trying to honor their overarching feel in the most abstract way I can. My anchor, though, is quite literal. I got hooked on his absurd conceit of having characters burst into song. The books are littered with fake lyrics—ribald, hysterical, filled with punning groaners—pure doggerel. And they tend to have very explicit stylistic weight: show tunes, sea shanties, drinking songs, vaudeville—you pretty much know exactly how they’re supposed to sound. It didn’t take long before I started hearing them as a cracked funhouse mirror Great American Songbook. So I’ve been setting those lyrics, writing fake songs. And I’m imagining them evolving or devolving into a parallel universe jazz tradition—analogous to the way Gershwin and Cole Porter became trans-coded DNA for bebop.

CMA: Is this the first time you’ve worked with an extra-musical text, at least in an explicit way?

Kyle Bruckmann: I’ve lifted track titles from Borges and Barthelme, but that was superficial and post hoc. This is definitely a first for me, and it’s been really fascinating. In part, there’s simply the creative advantage of having a self-imposed constraint—the canvas isn’t quite so terribly blank. But I’ve been surprised to find how permissive the process has also been. I’ve had to consciously decide to trust the texts to demand their melodies, no matter how ridiculous or bluntly idiomatic. The real challenge is negotiating an appropriate relationship to irony. I have to compose music sufficiently preposterous to do justice to the source material, but without becoming jokey or losing sight of the jaw-dropping glints of the ineffable Pynchon also somehow throws into the mix. It cracks me up that I set out thinking I was going to write a “real” jazz piece, and it turns out that what actually counts as a “classic” for me is more about 1980s Downtown maximalism, Berio’s Sinfonia and my old hero Charles Ives.

1. Overture (2:25)
2. Part One (V.) (22:58)
3. Part Two (The Crying of Lot 49) (14:59)
4. Part Three (Gravity’s Rainbow) (17:07)

Musicians
Kyle Bruckmann—oboe, English horn.
Jason Stein—bass clarinet.
Darren Johnston—trumpet.
Jeb Bishop—trombone.
Tim Daisy—percussion.
Jen Clare Paulson—viola.
Anton Hatwich—bass.