The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Ari Rosenschein of Stahv

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

STAHV is always in flux, just like me. The music has gone from dreamy, hazy doomgaze to ultra-concise darkwave art rock on the new EP, Simple Mercies, and I know it will change again. I think that’s because I’m so obsessed with sounds and songs and recording that I want to sample all the flavors. There’s always a new sonic avenue to explore. That keeps me striving.

Describe your first musical memory.

I recall singing “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 into a tape recorder in our apartment in Jerusalem, accompanying myself on a nylon string acoustic. I even did Bono’s live rap from the Under a Blood Red Sky live EP. “This is not a rebel song…” This must have been sixth grade, and I was already in search of a stage. My dad has a cassette recording somewhere.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

There have been many. I hold dear the moment when I opened for Mike Peters of the Alarm at the El Rey Theater and got to sing and strum “One Guitar” by Willie Nile during Mike’s encore surrounded by Cy Curnin the lead singer of the Fixx, The Cult’s Billy Duffy, Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, and Jay Aston from Gene Loves Jezebel.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

As a younger person, I believed that life had a clean narrative arc. Perhaps this came from movies and literature. With the passing of a number of friends in the last two years, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that not every relationship, friendship, or family dispute will resolve perfectly on this plane of existence. There are things we have to work out within ourselves after someone close to, or far from us, dies.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

For me, it’s a game of constantly imagining, creating, and reevaluating the work I’m doing in the context of what is happening in the world, what I have done in the past, and what I still want to achieve. With any luck, I will be able to look back on a journey with many twists and turns that creates its own storyline—one I couldn’t have predicted. I’ve journeyed from retro rock through many iterations of indie pop, power pop, and Americana to the create the heaviest music I’ve ever done emotionally in my ‘40s. I’ve become increasingly less compromising as I age.

How do you define success?

Success can feel like many things. Hearing a song I co-wrote come on unexpectedly at a Starbucks, listening to a finished master, having a new listener order a vinyl record or buy something at a show all give me a thrill. It’s also neat to trace a BMI royalty statement and see the unusual places my music ends up over time—all the countries, TV shows, streaming services, and airline in-flight programs. Those small moments can give me a reminder that there is value to the years and years of my life I’ve spent playing clubs and working to get heard.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

There are movies and news stories that get in my head after I’ve read them. Some people can absorb details about deranged people and the evil in the world and turn it into compelling art, but I cannot. I won’t even give the real-life protagonist airtime, but recently a streaming service made a series rehashing, yet again, a terrible tragedy. The minutes I spent combing articles and following that hideous story is time I wish I could retrieve.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I have a batch of synth pop music in my head I’m very excited to explore. I see it as a natural evolution of some of the sounds on Simple Mercies, but even more electronic. That sphere that holds a lot of meaning for me from growing up in the ‘80s, but usually I end up slathering guitar on everything out of comfort and love for the sound. It would be a powerful exercise to leave it in its case for a batch of songs.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

I believe art’s most powerful function is to act as a reset button that allows us to view the world differently in its wake. I rate the feelings I get after a transportive concert, cinematic, or theatrical experience as the most life-affirming.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’ve been working on several new essays and flash fiction pieces I want to refine in 2023. I published a short story collection, Coasting, a few years back. Since then, I have been writing consistently and drafted a pair of books. But this new shorter-form stuff feels like I’ve turned a corner. A lot of it scares me in a good way. That’s when I know there’s energy around something.

https://stahv.bandcamp.com/album/simple-mercies
https://www.instagram.com/stahvdoomgaze
https://www.facebook.com/stahvmusic
http://www.stahv.com

Stahv, Simple Mercies (2023)

Mike Peters One Guitar at El Rey in L.A.

On March 11, Seattle-based experimentalist Stahv will release Electric Youth, a rare whole-album covers album, taking on The Cult‘s Electric, originally issued in 1987. In the hands of Stahv‘s Solomon Arye Rosenschein, the work of Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy becomes the stuff of adventurous and occasionally weighted solo explorations. Songs range from acid desert folk “Aphrodesiac Jacket” to bedroom indie pop on “Love Removal Machine” to the fuzz ‘n’ crash treatment given to “Electric Ocean” and “Memphis Hip Shake” (both premiering below), to Mars Bonfire‘s “Born to Be Wild,” which gets the New Wave synth treatment it’s always secretly wanted.

You gotta really like a record to cover it in full, and more to release those covers to the public, so kudos to Rosenschein on literally and figuratively sharing the love. You can hear the premieres of “Electric Ocean” and “Memphis Hip Shake” below, and while they obviously don’t speak for everything on a record that seems to jump aesthetics as easily as it jumps from one track to the next — re-proving the universal application of quality songcraft — they do certainly represent Electric Youth in being both a good time and a sincere expression of what Rosenschein refers to as his “lifelong infatuation” with the subject matter.

Enjoy:

 

STAHV on Electric Youth:

It was 1987 when I discovered Electric by The Cult album in the vinyl section of the local library. The cover had gothic gargoyles, Ian Astbury’s raven locks, and Billy Duffy’s bone-white pompadour. My 11-year-old self was instantly bewitched. I brought it home, put it on the turntable, and began a lifelong infatuation with the record.

Sure, I recognized the touchstones like AC/DC and Zeppelin and the Stones from Bay Area rock radio. (Rest in peace, 98.5 KOME.) The Cult was a different animal—earthier and more ethereal at the same time. The unhinged vibrato-laced vocals and gratuitous pentatonic soloing transfixed that young man. “Wild Flower” into “Peace Dog,” “Electric Ocean” into “Bad Fun.” It was all too much fun. So, I flipped the album over it on and jumped off the couch to the sped-up finale of “Love Removal Machine.” Electric culminated with the stop-start showstopper “Memphis Hip Shake.” A fresh Cult member caught his breath.

After Electric, I went back and discovered Dreamtime, Love, and even Death Cult. I moved forward with the band and entered their Sonic Temple, joined their Ceremony. Still, Electric never left my bones. It was my first exposure to the group. I didn’t know some fans considered the album’s classic rock about-face a betrayal. They debated the fact that they hired hipster sonic savant Rick Rubin after attempting a version closer to their prior incarnation. Whatever. To me, it was absolute perfection.

My ensuing years as a musician, led me through many stylistic investigations: doom metal, southern rock, power pop, Americana. Electric stayed by my side. It remained a faithful friend, demanding nothing but providing the lifegiving power of riffs and throaty belting.

In 2021, I decided to cover the whole damn thing from start to finish. Electric Youth poured out of me in about ten days. Between dog walks and work commitments, I snuck in recording sessions. Like Ian and Billy under Rubin’s tutelage, I had a former bandmate who encouraged me every step of the way. He helped me let it all hang out in the ways that I knew. Yet, unlike The Cult’s single-minded approach, all sounds were open territory for me: folk, fuzz, synth, TR-808 bass drums. I can hear bits of Ty Segall, Soft Cell, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, St. Vitus. But to me, it’s faithful. Or, as an early listener friend put it, “the aesthetics of each song are polar opposite to the original but the ‘bouillon’ of the OG song is still intact.”

Maybe the primary element that connects Electric Youth to The Cult’s album is the power of song sequencing. As different as these takes are, when “Born to Be Wild” goes into “Outlaw,” the contrast is just as vital. (This, even though my version of the former evokes a space disco and the latter a spaghetti western.) Ultimately, Electric Youth is my 40-minute love letter to an album. Electric taught me, through its very shameless existence, that to rock is, indeed, a divine right.

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Today, Seattle one-man outfit Stahv announce the Feb. 21 release of a new EP, The Sundowner, streaming where stuff streams and on limited edition tape through Solid 7 Records. Out as the follow-up to the project’s early-2018 self-titled debut (review here), it’s a quick instrumentalist run through a variety of anti-genre influences, maintaining a heft of atmosphere while exploring further reaches of echoing guitar in darkened progressive form. One might not know that from the noise-rock-origins-giveaway opener “Voyage of the Dawndraper,” which takes its skronk and you-go-here-while-you-go-here rhythm-making with jazzy seriousness and virtuosity, but from there, the prior single “All Seeing I” takes seven of the total 22 minutes of the offering and introduces a more willfully fluid course of post-heavy, upon which “Evhgot” builds with an added sense of churn and the finale title-track resolves in interweaving layers of guitar and drone, drums or drum sounds sitting out the final four and a half minutes to leave room for strumming breadth and undulating waves of keys or synth or effects or other noise.

It’s a course designed to be linear, I think. At lest that’s how it seems on listening. The leadoff is the outlier, which is a particularly progressive and — dare I say it? — fun move on the part of Stahv and Solomon Arye Rosenschein, who is the lone figure at the helm of the band. It’s a purposeful act of disorientation. Meant to throw the listener off. Maybe that would happen wherever “Voyage of the Dawndraper” went, but it’s pretty clear that “All Seeing I,” “Evhgot” and “The Sundowner” all run together as a unified work, and before you get there, you have this bumpy two-and-a-half-minute ride through brash noise-jazz and, yeah, I’m sorry, but that’s just a blast. From the surf guitars to the freakout organ and the snare shuffle and the theremin-esque fuzz lead, it’s a rush and a head-spinner that by the time you’re two minutes into “All Seeing I” seems to have been a dream only to be led away by the melancholy Yawning–Man-of-the-Pacific-Northwest spirit of what follows, but that contrast, the sheer brazen nature of the incongruity, makes the whole release as far as I’m concerned.

That’s not to take away from the scope of what follows, however. Honestly, if Stahv put out The Sundowner without “Voyage of the Dawndraper,” I’d probably praise it anyway for its fluidity and the open-feeling nature of its course, the patience of its execution and the sense of atmosphere it builds. The fact that all of that happens after a two-minute blastoff, however, only adds an element of joy and celebration to the proceedings, even if those proceedings aren’t especially celebratory themselves. It is a surge of artistic honesty and playfulness that’s rare in underground music or otherwise, and as I find doing-whatever-he/she/they-want to be one of the most respectable drives a creative person or project can follow, it’s hard not to admire the entirety of The Sundowner all the more for the fact that it lets itself have a bit of a good time before getting down to business.

Again, the EP’s not out for another three months, so maybe sit tight for a bit until they get there, but between the premiere of “Voyage of the Dawndraper” below and the prior stream of “All Seeing I” (also at the bottom of the post), maybe you can get some idea of what’s going on with the thing. Listen to them back-to-back and you’ll get some sense of what I’m talking about.

However you go, enjoy:

STAHV – The Sundowner

On February 21st, STAHV will release The Sundowner EP, a 22-minute head trip dusted with traces of Meddle-era Floyd, Oxbow-style polyrhythms, bleak post-metal atmospherics, and auditory hallucinations a la Can. The Sundowner is the followup to STAHV’s self-titled 2017 debut.

A post-metal solo project by multi-instrumentalist Ari Rosenschein, STAHV expands its palette on The Sundowner to incorporate slide guitar, synth textures, even a smattering of vocals–new for the primarily instrumental act. The EP will appear on all streaming platforms with a limited-edition cassette version arriving via Solid 7 Records (Sons of Alpha Centauri, Yawning Man, Gary Lee Conner of the Screaming Trees).

The Sundowner’s opening salvo, “The Voyage of the Dawndraper,” pushes off the dock with odd-metered riffs and unhinged vocals. Included on The Sundowner, last year’s single “All-Seeing I” is a jumping-off point for the rest of the EP which takes STAHV into darker dimensions. At seven and a half minutes, the penultimate “Evhgot” incorporates both contemplative passages and frenetic soloing.

Live, STAHV has supported Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Sixes, Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, Mirrors for Psychic Warfare, Mondo Generator, Yawning Man, Indian, Usnea, and Conan. The band has also appeared on curated festivals like Northwest Terror Fest, Rat City Recon, and Freakout Fest.

Music: Solomon Arye Rosenschein
Image: Detail of Sundowner Moth by Bernard Dupont
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

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Seattle’s Stahv has set a January release date for its self-titled but on cassette through Solid 7 Records, with an LP edition to follow later in the year. The moody and progressive heavy ambient outfit is comprised of Solomon Arye Rosenschein, and the album basks in an insular feeling driven alternately by post-JK Broadrick electronic beatmaking on a cut like “Djinn Rumi” and swells of atmospheric, buzzing distortion and minimalist dronescapes on the penultimate “Preta Realm.” All told, it’s seven tracks in a manageable 32 minutes of solo studio experimentalism writ large. Each piece feels somewhat self-contained in its purpose — to wit, “The Test” indeed sounds like Rosenschein is trying something new out — but the whole of Stahv‘s Stahv ties together through its arrangements of guitar, bass, keys, drums and programming, as well as the evocative places its instrumental progressions lead toward.

Centerpiece “Forest Dweller” draws on Isis-style contemplation, while the subsequent “Benevolus” finds a niche between guitar solo flourish, strummed noisemaking, retro keyboard work and synth beats. Where Stahv most succeeds as an album, however, is in bringing these varied pieces together. Rosenschein has more to do in this regard in terms of transitioning from one track to the next, but even as it stands on this first offering, Stahv sets a tone early with opener “Jardín Infinito” that leaves the contextual foundation for everything that follows wide open. Which is to say, it’s not like one goes from the organ-topped rollout and near-Earth dronemaking of “Jardín Infinito” into “The Test” with an expectation of more of the same.

Rather, by attuning himself to the fine details of the sounds he’s composing and how each element and layer affects the whole, Rosenschein allows his scope to grow broader as each track plays out. And it just so happens to do exactly that, right through the somewhat kitchen-sink freakout of closer “Grüver,” which holds together various noises electric and electronic over a core acoustic progression. It’s a strangely fitting (and just generally strange) way to end Stahv‘s Stahv, but again, context is everything, and as far out as Rosenschein has already gone at that point, he leaves himself little reason not to push that much further.

One hopes he’ll continue to do so as Stahv undertakes its sonic development from this point on. In the meantime, I’m happy today to host the premiere of “Jardín Infinito” ahead of the album’s release next month. You’ll find it on the player below, followed by a few words from Rosenschein about its making and some more PR wire background concerning the record.

Please enjoy:

Solomon Arye Rosenschein on “Jardín Infinito”:

“‘Jardín Infinito’ is the sound of time spent in the gloaming, losing the way and finding the way and losing it again. It’s two and a half decades of ears pressed against speakers—the infernal fears of a teenage wastrel talking on the phone to Anton Newcombe about jumping off mountains. It’s placing half steps against whole steps and seeing what shakes out.

STAHV is Solomon Arye Rosenschein, one human creating instrumental post-metal incorporating shoegaze, funeral doom, psychedelia, and esoterica. The name means autumn in Hebrew and winter in both Arabic and Aramaic. For twenty years Rosenschein has released records under a variety of monikers. He lives in Seattle, where he writes fiction and creative nonfiction and is half of spectral-folk duo The Royal Oui.

STAHV’s debut will be available as a limited edition cassette with unique packaging through Solid 7 Records in January 2018 and on vinyl through Forbidden Place later in year.

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