BeatRoute Magazine BC Print Edition January 2018

STEVE GUNN
TRADING PRECISION FOR INSTINCT, PERFECTION FOR SIMPLICITY
SAFIYA HOPFE
ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO
PERFECTING THE ART OF RESISTANCE WITH PURE SOUND
EMILY JAYNE
MUSIC
Cocked and loaded, Steve Gunn is blazing a trail with his solo material.
Arrington De Dionyso’s shows are more than a just
a performance, they are magical acts of conjuring.
Based in Olympia, Washington, De Dionyso
is a prolific visual artist, musician, linguist and
instrument inventor. From 1995 until 2008 he
was the leader of beloved art-punk combo, Old
Time Relijun (K Records). He recalls his times in
Vancouver fondly, in 1995 being shown around
by members of July Fourth Toilet. Years later, De
Dionyso returned to perform at a now defunct
venue called the Butchershop where he gave his
first Voice Workshop for overtone singing and
vocal improvisation. In 2009 he founded Malaikat
Dan Singa, melding free associative Indonesian
translations of William Blake with dancehall
rhythms and postpunk angularity.
“Performance is a commitment to embrace the
ecstatic. Music is one means of navigating those
seldom charted realms of conscious awareness,
where your individual identity both expands
and contracts in the service of the sound itself,”
says De Dionyso. “My approach to music is very
physical, whether it’s vocal or through saxophones
or other wind instruments — it’s literally a form
of holotropic breathing in the way I play — so it’s
very easy for me to enter into trance space just
through the athletic nature of how I’m pushing
air through these wild tubes of sound. As much
as I might try to disappear into the pure sound,
I am also responsible for curating some kind of
shared experience for my audience at the same
time, and that I think is where the real artwork of a
performance occurs. It’s not enough to me to just
have some kind of singular peak experience if I am
not able to offer some means of transportation
for the person there at the show as well. So if the
audience is already willing to go along for that ride,
it’s certainly that much easier…”.
He found himself the target of the alt-right,
implicated in a bizarre and unfounded conspiracy
called #pizzagate after painting a mural at Comet
Ping Pong in Washington DC in 2010. Although
only up for a year, it was picked up by online
conspiracy theorists who took it as a “clue”
pointing to a fictitious politically involved sex
trafficking ring. Despite the online harassment,
death threats and illogical onslaught, he is more
determined than ever to keep creating art and
music with a message promoting the joy of being
human, mythology, dreams and the magical gift
of being alive. So it’s perfectly fitting that his latest
project, This Saxophone Kills Fascists, opens the
gates and calls upon the heavy medicine of music
with a nod to Albert Ayler’s The Healing Force Of
The Universe (1969).
“Because we need this medicine now more than
ever before,” De Dionyso’s latest press release reads.
“A Music of Resistance is found in the templates of
Spiritual Free Jazz. Through the guttural delivery
of ancient horns and stretched skins, a resounding
echo cracks the foundations of the walls built to
divide us.”
De Dionyso will be joined by uniquely gifted
Philadelphia percussionist Ben Bennett, who brings
some amazing perspectives to his musical playing,
informed by a wealth of experience in both poetry
and meditation.
Arrington De Dionyso performs January 12 at
the China Cloud (524 Main St.) at 9 p.m. along
with the Watermill Project and Ridley Bishop and
Clarinets. $10 at the door.
www.thissaxophonekillsfascists.bandcamp.com
One-of-a-kind folk experimentalist Steve Gunn
has worked with all kinds of talent — from Kurt
Vile’s band, The Violators, to Michael Chapman
himself — but as 2018 starts to present itself, it’s
the perfection of his intricate solo sound taking
centre stage.
Not that he’s new to working solo, and not
that he’s aiming for perfection. As a matter
of fact, Gunn describes recent realizations as
quite the opposite. “I’ve just been feeling more
comfortable in my singing and my words and
I realize, it’s really easy to kind of overthink
things.” As a self-proclaimed “obsessive” with his
work, Gunn is learning to embrace the value of
simplicity, impulse, and what he calls “restraint.”
For him, this means “thinking of songs differently”
and refusing the old traps experienced guitar
players might fall into. “I’ve played with musicians
who are older and who have been around studios
for a long time, and they tend to just kind of trust
the process and not get to overly precious about
it. You know, if you’re a singer and you play guitar,
just go in there and sing the damn song. Don’t do
fifty vocal takes and try to piece together a song,
you know? And that kind of approach, you can
really hear it in the music, and it was something I
was really trying to do: let myself sing a song and
January 2018
not have to comb over every word and try to fix
everything. Because it’s not going to be perfect.”
Another recent shift for Gunn has been a focus
on songwriting itself: methodically, formulaically,
and throughout history. Though his sources of
inspiration vary — from Indian music to “avantgarde
improvisors” and encompassing everything
in between — his respect for the song, and what
goes into its immaculate construction is both a
point of intrigue and a means of rethinking his
own work.
“I think you can approach it in all different
kind of ways. And people who construct effective
songs, that’s been lately an inspiring thing to me
even if it’s, you know, session musicians from the
early ’60s who played with people for different
labels and things. I’m just thinking a lot more
about the production of music and how to make
a record, you know?”
Having spent the last couple of weeks towards
the end of 2017 in the studio, Gunn is prepared
to manifest these recent revelations and more, all
in time for next fall when his fourteenth studio
album will emerge into the world.
Steve Gunn performs January 12 at St. James Hall
(Vancouver).
Arrington De Dionyso’s This Saxophone Kills Fascists is not preaching to the choir.
Photo by Lena Shkoda
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