Richard X Bennett - SCAVENGER (2024)

TRACK BY TRACK - rXb writes about the music:
1) woven with gold
"It always starts with the piano. I’m playing an intricate groove based on the West African wasulenké rhythm. Soon after, the massive sounds of joy arrive. “woven” is inspired by the incredible El Anatsui bottletop installations. Feel it!"

2) love and garbage
"Nowadays all piano players play obsessive repeated one note figures. I think it has to do with techno music and the anxieties of our age. It’s just a thing. Add a contrasting Afrobeats djembe groove and soaring electric violin by Johanna Burnheart and an ear worm song is created. I’ve never met Johanna in person. We met at a Covid-era Ropeadope Zoom Christmas party and bonded because we were the only people who dressed up. If you can style, we can hang!"

3 my elegy
"I played chromatic harmonica when I was a kid. Then I stopped. During chemo I started again, trying to get my breath to work properly. I can only play slowly but this keeps my elegy from being ruined with unnecessary flourishes. Don’t be hating the melody.. try a little tenderness…"

4) vultures
"It started with a twenty year old cymbal pattern. I wanted a piece that would have everything all at once: soaring melody, driving African groove, chaos, joy, anger. There’s even the desperation of the concluding vibes complete with grunting."

5) 5fu
"5fu is short for Fluorouracil, a cancer drug so named because it will fuck you up at least five different ways. However: sometimes during chemotherapy you can be surprised by how good you feel. Its rare but it happens. I woke up one morning, came up with this groove and quickly recorded it. I couldn’t really feel my hands (neuropathy from chemo) but this song is solely about the joys of living. You can even hear me singing along. I could have smoothed out the edges later but what for? Along with drums and congas, it is what it is: a funky exuberant piano throw down."

6) that’s the sound
"We can’t be doom and gloom all the time. The piano trio part was recorded years ago but it didn’t quite sing. In January I added vibes and now it’s all about love!"

7) backgammon
"Based on a Javanese gamelan scale, (game-lan, game on, backgammon - my favorite game). It started with an old discarded piano trio recording. This year djembe was added to give it some pop. I told tenor sax player Michael Blake to express the rage of a dying man. My melodica counters with a Buddhist indifference to life and death. The vibes refer back to the original Indonesian inspiration. A jazz psycho-drama in three and a half minutes."

8) love and forgetting
"a poetic recitation about memory and loss by Paula Jeanine Bennett leads into a wistful melodic exploration on harmonica. Our lives are full of what ifs…"

9) separation
"The original track with sitar and sax didn’t evoke the tired resignation I was feeling in April. I replaced them with new melodica and vibes parts. As Paula Jeanine Bennett recites in “How to Kill a Plant” (Love and Forgetting - Ropeadope 12/6/24): “I am removed from the world, even though I’m in it”

10) raga puriya dhanashree alap (live)
"Live from St Pauls Chapel in Columbia University, this is the slow section from an hour long performance. There were musicians spaced far apart throughout the church (vocal, clarinet, flute, harpsichord) who played an embellished drone. Puriya Dhanashree is a raga of separation that has obsessed me since I first discovered it twenty years ago. There’s also a video of the performance superimposed over a bleak industrial landscape."

11) music 43
"An abstract soundscape was needed for the movie I was making. Three modern classical improvisers (flute, viola, vibes) sent me tracks based on my prompts. They didn’t hear what the others did. I pieced the tracks together et voila!"
credits
released November 15, 2024

richard x bennett - songs, piano, vibes, harmonica, melodica

with

johanna burnheart - violin (#2)
teagan faran - viola & violin (#4 & 11)

michael blake - sax (#1, 4, 7)
matt parker - sax & flute (#1, 4)

paula jeanine bennett - conga, djembe, shaker, voice (#1, 4, 5, 6, 8)
michael wimberly - djembe & bell (#1, 2, 4, 7)

gaku takanashi - bass (#6)
adam armstrong - bass (#7, 8, 9)

julian edmond - drums (#1)
tony lewis - drums (#4, 6)
eric halvorson - drums (#5)
alex wyatt - drums (#7, 9)

and:
sadie dawkins rosales- voice (#10)
zachary hann - clarinet (#10)
rebecca moranis - flute (#10)
julian bennett holmes - harpsichord & vibes (# 10, 11)
leo sussman - flute (#11)