JOBS, Jessica Pavone, Julian Lynch, Erik Kramer

New York avant-garde ensemble JOBS stops by Communication in support of their latest album, “Log On For The Free Chance To Log On For Free”. The album is wonderfully discordant and weird; “GIFs,” for example, sounds like what would happen if Bon Iver dropped acid in a high-school computer lab. Rounding out the bill are experimental violist Jessica Pavone, a member of JOBS who will also perform solo work; Real Estate’s Julian Lynch, who released a marvelous solo album, Rat’s Spit, in January to positive reviews; and Erik Kramer.

note, quotes are part of the title in this case

Experimental pop/avant-garde. $8.

press release: We are the band called JOBS, and sometimes that feels like a big responsibility. JOBS believes that this band is our job, and it is the band’s job to provide an experience that makes you forget your job, and hopefully gets you to look at the way things are with an eye towards how things could be. 

The original members of JOBS - drummer Max Jaffe, bassist Rob Lundberg, and guitarist David Scanlon - started the project (under the name “killer BOB”) in a tiny closet in Manhattan when they were music students (yes, this is music made by music students, but don’t let that scare you away), and 10 years later, they continue to devise new ways of maintaining their creative vitality. 

The music on their forthcoming record, “Log On For The Free Chance To Log On For Free”, is the result of changes to their environment and lineup. To prepare for this record, JOBS rented a small two-bedroom bungalow in Santa Fe for a week. There is a vastness and an openness to the environment there that is nowhere to be found in New York, and the band took full advantage of that, feeling the space and freedom to run with their craziest ideas. Long unstructured days of writing and rehearsing were broken up by spontaneous hikes in the Galisteo Basin. Food was prepared together. Energy flowed with ease. A record of new material was essentially complete by the end of the week. 

After completing the recordings in a communal house studio in Woodstock (The Isokon), JOBS had one final crucial step, which was to formally bring longtime friend and occasional member Jessica Pavone into the band. She brings her own highly-developed musical personality to the table, as well as years of immeasurable experience as a luminary of the New York avant-garde. Her viola playing and one of her compositions (“Held Up Fairly”) make its debut with JOBS on this record. On the title of the record, "Log On For The Free Chance To Log On For Free”, it can easily be heard as coming from the voice of a corporation which, for many, is the keeper of their job. “Logging in... is a ploy to acquire information. ‘Log on for the free chance to log on for free’ is a catch-22. It is a corporation exploiting someone and, in return, giving them what they already had,” says Lundberg. Jaffe adds, “there are corporations that we have socially agreed to collaborate with. Our information and the content that we create is monetized and in exchange we are given a community that we already had.” 

The energy that is bottled and distilled in this record is multitudinous, with moments of tensile contemplation leading to teary-eyed euphoria, irreverent humor morphing into inchoate rage, all-out metallic assaults paired with spacious group meditations, and all guided by a spirit of joyful experimentalism. Despite the musical risk-taking found on the record, the concept of “groove” is essential to JOBS’ music. Scanlon says “I do not have a clear definition for ‘groove’; however, a collectively agreed upon pulse seems crucial to its existence”. One can hear the influence of the communal living and open spaces that forged these songs in the many collective and risky agreements JOBS makes throughout the record.

Jessica Pavone:

    Jessica Pavone (composer, viola, violin, el.bass) has performed in countless improvisation, avant jazz, experimental, folk, soul, and chamber ensembles since moving to NYC in 2000. She currently leads her own string ensemble, plays with the band JOBS, in a duo with guitarist Mary Halvorson, in Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Orchestra and as a solo violist. As a composer, The Wire magazine praised her “ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special,” and The New York Times described her music as "distinct and beguiling...its core is steely, and its execution clear."

    Pavone’s recent works for solo viola and voice stem from years of concentrated long tone practice and an interest in repetition, song form, and sympathetic vibration. She combines her long tone rituals with delay, understated melodies and sparse lyrical content while continuously experimenting with new forms. She is interested in the physicality of performing her somewhat larger-than-comfortable instrument and believes that cultivating physical bodies as a strong container for her thoughts is part of the creative process.

    As an instrumentalist, she has personally worked with and interpreted new music by; Aaron Seigel, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Elliott Sharp, Glenn Branca, Henry Threadgill, Leo Smith, Jason Ajemian, Jason Cady, Jeremiah Cymerman, John King, Matana Roberts, Matthew Welch, Tristan Perich, Tyondai Braxton and William Parker; and, has played strings in bands such as Christy and Emily, Pure Horsehair, White Blue Yellow and Clouds, Joy Mega, and The Artificials.

    Pavone has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, performing in venues ranging from international music festivals, universities, and art galleries, to community centers and basements. Her music has premiered in venues in New York City such as, Roulette, Issue Project Room, and The Kitchen, and at the Klangbad Festival in Sheer, Germany. In 2011 she was featured in NPR’s “The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40.” She has received grants and commissions from the Aaron Copland Recording Fund, the American Music Center, New Music USA for her collaboration with choreographer, Anna Sperber, The Kitchen, MATA, The Jerome Foundation, The Tri-Centric Foundation, Experiments in Opera, and the chamber music collective, Till By Turning.

    Pavone’s music is available from Taiga Records, Tzadik, Thirsty Ear, Relative Pitch, Porter, Skirl, and Peacock Recordings.