Posted in Questionnaire on December 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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: Matt Hollenberg of Sarattma, Titan to Tachyons, Cleric, John Frum, John Zorn and More
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Generally I try to be spontaneous and interactive with music as an energy unto itself. I value sensory first, non-ideological, anti-marketable approach. Engaging with “the thing itself” through subconscious methods. Also interested in genre-busting approaches and building bridges between disparate elements.
Describe your first musical memory.
When I was six years old I went to a funeral and saw the piece Albeniz ‘Asturias’ played on piano. It was trance inducing and transcendent. I immediately went home and figured out the main themes on the house piano. From then on I was very hooked into music and understood a fundamental thing that it was about that was viscerally felt.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Probably watching Secret Chiefs 3 on the floor of the stone in 2007 before I knew anyone in that scene and it was just purely mind blowing. Feeling that I was watching from the outside and wishing I could do something like that it. Was a viscerally magical experience.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Definitely the last few years when my belief that human beings and the systems we’ve created generally would progress over time and get better. It’s easy to think that through your early life as it’s what feels most comfortable to believe. But then to see the world’s systems and institutions continually fail and get worse over time, not better; this changes one’s general outlook on human delusion and destiny for sure!
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Ideally to self actualization that reflects an energy beyond culture and beyond localized time and space.
How do you define success?
Doing what you want on your own terms the best you can do it with no interfering forces in the way.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
One time I saw a cat get run over and I watched it die and it’s always stuck with me as it was awful to watch. It had a seizure and shook all over the place and its head exploded it was terrible.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
My favorite thing is not knowing what I’d like to create and finding out as a progression. The more I do, the more I realize it’s best not to plan things too intricately as it ruins the mystery of art.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To trigger experiences that are unique and singular onto the art object itself that triggers the experience.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Posted in Questionnaire on October 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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: Sara Neidorf of Sarattma & Aptera
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
As for me: I play drums, whatever the occasion calls for. I don’t feel very bound to style, though metal was such a big part of my upbringing that it finds its way into a lot of what I do. Also music with a lot of pathos and/or a lot of idiosyncrasy. I don’t like music that’s too cool for school. It has to interact with some brooding and possibly also some autistic part of me. I came to drumming when I was around 10 because it helped me to focus and relax, and also because it was a way of connecting with people, and I kept doing it for that reason, as well as because it helps me connect with myself, to feel grounded, to feel like I’m doing something meaningful and honest.
As for Sarattma: We push each other, try to lock in and lock out, try to explore different trajectories, to create some shit that we’d enjoy hearing, but which we don’t feel has been done a bunch already. We came to play together because we came up in the same music community in Philly and had some of the same music mentors. Eventually one of our mutual friends/teachers, Yanni Papadopoulos from Stinking Lizaveta, said he thought it would be rad if we formed a band, and we did, and we’ve been linking up and doing that over the past 10 years whenever I’m Stateside visiting friends and family. (I’ve been based in Berlin since 2012.)
Describe your first musical memory.
I remember singing the song “Breakdown” by Tom Petty with my mom in the car when I was 4 or 5, getting many of the words wrong and coming up with my own lyrics phonetically. Or singing the song “Montana” by Frank Zappa with my dad in the car around that same age, knowing each word by heart. “I don’t care if you think it’s silly, folks. I don’t care if you think it’s silly folks.” Drumming out the fives in that phrase on my lap, enjoying the rhythmic puzzles in the breaks without consciously knowing they were odd. I also knew how to sing every guitar solo on Metallica’s Black Album when I was 5 or 6. Not their hottest album, I know, but luckily you don’t care about such things when you’re on your way to kindergarten.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is honestly impossible to answer because there have been so many occasions that felt like pinnacles, from live performances I’ve witnessed, to shows where I performed in front of dancing, hyper-engaged crowds, to recording sessions that felt fluid, free, and perfectly aligned, to albums I blasted and sang along to with my mother in the living room as a teen, to songs shared with my partner in intimate moments, to jam sessions in a basement or rehearsal space where everything just meshed so seamlessly… I really can’t come up with a hierarchy among these moments. Music is consistently bringing me new joys, new highs and groundings, new reasons to keep pushing forward.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
This is a toughie. Perhaps it was when I did my biggest tour to date as a session drummer, that my ideas of success were definitely thrown into question. It was also the best paid gig I’ve ever had. I guess I believed that it would feel like ‘success’ or ‘arrival’ but it actually tore me down in a lot of ways, destroyed my short term memory for a couple of years due to prolonged emotional distress, basically traumatized me. I learned that recognition ain’t worth shit if you’re not happy. Otherwise there have been lots of other times, involving friendships or relationships, where my ideas about love, commitment, and loyalty have been tested and thrown into turmoil.
People giving me what I felt I always needed most, turning out to be manipulative and abusive, people I thought I’d have forever dying or leaving me in different ways, not knowing at first if I could live without these people, but then finding my way through it. I think the pandemic has also taught me a lot about how to slow down, especially about accomplishment-based things — to not put a ton of importance or emphasis on something and to think that something has to be perfect or has to happen in a certain way or within a certain timeframe. It all might be called off at any moment. Just do what you can; appreciate the present more.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I hope it just continuously leads to new places you can’t anticipate or know until you’re there. It’s exciting to me that this really doesn’t have a destination, just further journey, travel, discovery. New ways of articulating. It also fosters connections with new people and places, and also more pathways within.
How do you define success?
I’m still figuring that one out. For sure it involves making work that feels true to me. Releasing that work and having that work recognized and enjoyed (and yes, paid for) by others is also still important to me, though I aim for that to be less of a priority. Of course, it’s not about quantity; it’s about the quality of the interaction. My general experience is that a show in front of 50 really tuned-in people is way more fulfilling than a super distant-feeling one in front of 2,000. Sharing your life with people who are good to you and who understand you, and vice versa, is also a big part of success. A mindset of abundance, generosity, freedom, ease, and exchange.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I wish I hadn’t seen my mother in so much pain in her final year of life. I am still haunted by some images I will not recount here. It’s a relief to know that she isn’t suffering anymore, but I miss her every minute of every day.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d like to collaborate on creating the soundtrack to a film. I’d like to start by doing some live scoring for some silent horror films, which I’m beginning to do with a new project I’ve started playing with in Berlin, Pausa a Pausa. I’m excited to explore combining my love of music with my love of cinema. I’d also like to eventually write a sort of memoir, a collection of short stories or essays.
Other than that, also looking forward to recording and releasing more work with my projects Mellowdeath, Choral Hearse, and Aptera.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
It needs to keep pushing us to new places, presenting us with new images that test our imaginations, lead us to question systems of power, push us to feel uncomfortable sometimes but with an intentionally devised frame to make that discomfort productive, and to create affective environments in which we can reflect and experience things in personal ways.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to visiting my grandmother for her 95th birthday this September. I’m excited to attend Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal next summer, which I’m currently sad to be missing. I’m stoked for the next edition of the feminist horror film fest I co-organize each February, Final Girls Berlin Film Fest, which is just a lovely community of artists and film nerds. Lots of little things too — I’m excited to meet an old friend for dinner later.
Philly astral jazz-of-death instrumentalist duo Sarattma — Sara Neidorf and Matt Hollenberg, from whose given names that of the band derives — will release their debut album, Escape Velocity, through Nefarious Industries on Aug. 12. It’s not every band that can pull the skronk out of extreme metal and use technical wizardry to turn it into something that speaks to an avant garde history of fuckery, but Escape Velocity trades between longer and shorter tracks across seven songs — starts longer, ends longest with the 15-minute finale “Twilight Realm of Imaginary Notes” — and offers the frenetic intensity of its opening title-track (premiering below) as a beginning burst of intention, carrying djent riffing and Fredrik Thordendal-esque lead work to a place of atmospheric openness that clues the listener on the quick that anything can and just might happen throughout the proceedings that follow, save perhaps for vocals, though who the hell knows where they’d go anyway.
But if “Escape Velocity” begins the record that shares its name with only the most urgent of tech-jazz-metal shenanigans, that’s a fitting representation of ethic if not the complete sound of what follows, as “Theraphosidae” reinvents Primus‘ “John the Fisherman” as perhaps what would’ve happened if Mr. Bungle-era Trevor Dunn wrote it instead of Les Claypool and the subsequent “Sublingual Excavation” — which I’m not even going to look up perchance I might see an image of one — digs into on-its-own-wavelength-and-dares-you-to-get-there atmospheric range, breaking almost at its halfway point into a comedown that if nothing else gives the listener a moment to realize that Hollenberg and Neidorf have been running circles around them as suits their respective pedigrees playing with John Zorn, the thrashier Aptera, and so on.
A solo-on-top, skillfully-layered, and relatively un-manic stretch reminds of fellow Philly residents Stinking Lizaveta, but while Sarattma might find a home on a bill with that outfit, the purpose across Escape Velocity is the band’s own, as the turn toward the sweeter and wistful dystopian melody of centerpiece “To Touch the Dust” unveils. I won’t call it straightforward, since structurally speaking it’s not, but its ebbs and flows emphasize dynamic in a way that stands it out and makes the entire album experience of Escape Velocity richer, so that when its post-crescendo quiet finish gives way to the echoing resonant guitar at the outset of “Socotra,” the duo are even less predictable than they already were. Is the next punch coming? From where?
I mean, yes, obviously the next punch is coming. It would be a fun adventure if Sarattma went ambient drone for the entire second half of their debut LP — unexpected, if nothing else — but even on their own level it wouldn’t make sense. “Socotra” is eight minutes long, and there’s plenty of room for it to make you feel like you’re being crunched between oddly-shaped gears, all hexagons and intertwining trapezoids and whatnot, so that when “Sciatic Haze” takes over and soon enough runs backward and forward at the same time in Blind Idiot God knows only what rhythmic pattern before it resets and launches face-first into a red giant star and you feel like they just dropped Advanced Calc II on your head, it’s well earned.
And that 15-minute capper? It’s there, lurking, waiting. A goodly portion of it sees Neidorf and Hollenberg on relatively stable and serene ground, though its peacefulness is a reshaped clay of reality, urbane and sharp-cornered without necessarily being brutalist, but even the proggier landing spot for Escape Velocity would be inevitably bent in the brazen spirit of what’s preceded it. That it holds attention until unveiling its final metallic roll at about 12:20 into its 15:02 is a credit to the versatility of the players involved, though clearly if they couldn’t pull this stuff of technically, the band wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Some late forward bass rumble is welcome and continues the less-than-onslaught vibe that Sarattma have worked into, and I more than a little bit feel like I should be applauding when the song ends, so I suppose that’s probably a good sign.
Recorded in 2019, Escape Velocity won’t speak to everybody. It’s a challenging, demanding listen, and its rewards are in appreciating the level of performance and the substance as well as the controlled chaos of styles which it inhabits. But if you can keep up with it, those rewards are easily worth the effort.
PR wire info and preorder link follow the player below.
As always, I hope you enjoy:
Sarattma on “Escape Velocity”:
“The title track of the album is meant to feel like a cross-species motherboard takeover, the terror of spotting an oasis only to realize it’s a wormhole, a crash-landing into an unknown ecosystem. The album’s overarching theme is the alien within the body, in the form of pain and illness. We know this at different intensities at different points in our own lives and in witnessing the experiences of loved ones. Though we can’t necessarily take the reins on this process, there’s some reprieve in depicting it.”
Nefarious Industries presents Escape Velocity, the debut LP from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based experimental instrumental post-metal duo SARATTMA.
The follow-up to their 2017-released Inner Spaces EP, SARATTMA creates an entrancing, psychedelic, apocalyptic journey through extraterrestrial landscapes on their debut album Escape Velocity. Drummer Sara Neidorf (Mellowdeath, ex-Brian Jonestown Massacre, Aptera) and guitarist Matt Hollenberg (Cleric, John Frum, John Zorn) weave an intricate fusion of modern improv, punk, jazz, djent, avante-psych-rock, and prog, evoking Frank Zappa, John Zorn, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Dysrhythmia, Don Caballero, and Stinking Lizaveta. Their visually arousing music is a cinematic space punk anthem for those grimy enough to have survived the end of days.
Dedicated to Jill Neidorf (1957-2020), Escape Velocity was recorded in July 2019 at Black Spine Studios in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, mixed and engineered by Matt Hollenberg with additional mixing from Steve Roche, guitar re-amping engineered by Kevin Antreassian at Backroom Studios in Rockaway, New Jersey, and mastered by Colin Marston at The Thousand Caves in Queens, New York. The striking cover artwork was created by Caroline Harrison and the layout handled by Erich Kriebel.
