Talking Brooklyn NYC Jazz with Uncivilized
The highly anticipated opus, "Uncivilized — 5 by Monk by Csatari," courtesy of the avant-garde musical collective Uncivilized, is poised to make its grand entrance this November.
As a tantalizing glimpse into the enigmatic realm of Uncivilized, they've granted their audience a new track on October 31st, 2023, featuring the captivating composition "Blue Monk (Feat. Tristan Cooley)." This duet rendition of Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk," showcasing the eloquent flutist Tristan Cooley, a luminary poet and scholar hailing from Vermont, elegantly interlaces with Csatari's masterful acoustic guitar work, exemplifying exceptional finesse and artistry.
This remarkable musical endeavor pays tribute to the indomitable jazz virtuoso Thelonious Monk and is spearheaded by the guitar virtuoso Tom Csatari. With his deft artistry and innovative vision, Csatari breathes renewed vitality into Monk's iconic oeuvre, effectively metamorphosing a jazz legend's legacy into a contemporary masterpiece.
Csatari's approach to Monk's enigmatic body of work is profoundly intimate, capturing the very essence of Monk's whimsical profundity. Through "Uncivilized — 5 by Monk by Csatari," Csatari embarks on an expedition through Monk's sonic cosmos, harnessing the essence of the jazz luminary while simultaneously imprinting his unique imprint upon each musical passage.
Monk's compositions have long been celebrated for their ethereal and enigmatic nature, and Csatari's interpretations pay profound homage to this mystical quality. Steve Cardenas, a renowned Monk Songbook transcriber and virtuoso of the Electric Bebop Band, astutely observes that "Tom Csatari keeps the spirit of Monk alive on this spontaneous and unique album."
The Grammy-winning guitarist, composer, author, and songwriter, Adam Levy, intriguingly reflects, "It makes one wonder why Monk never featured a guitarist on his own recordings." Csatari's mastery of the guitar unmistakably radiates, introducing an avant-garde perspective to Monk's illustrious catalog.
"Uncivilized — 5 by Monk by Csatari" stands as a testament to Csatari's patient and intricate musicianship, as articulated by Sam Lisabeth, renowned for their contributions to Guerilla Toss, Tredici Bacci, Martyr Group, and CP Unit. This album not only celebrates Monk's enduring legacy but also illuminates the extraordinary prowess of Tom Csatari.
This is a record that transcends the confines of conventional musical exploration, beckoning the intrepid listener into a mysterious and enchanting world sculpted by the combined genius of Monk and the distinctive interpretation by Tom Csatari and the Uncivilized collective.
We caught up with Tom (Uncivilized) to talk all things Jazz —
Hey Tom, How are you today?
Hey Jonny. I'm hanging tough: lots of crazy stuff going on around the globe right now, feeling pretty blessed and thankful for the sunlight each day.
Tell us about the Uncivilized project? How did you come together? ie: The history of the project?
Yo! Uncivilized is a crazy project. Honestly, it came out of some hidden tabs of Google Chrome at my office job. You see, I used to manage these things called "waste audits" at office buildings in NYC where we would sort through a building's entire waste stream-- literally ripping open bags and sorting it into piles by hand with a crew of my musician friends at night when the bags came down to the street -- and I started reading some weirdo philosophies from this movement called "uncivilisation" wherein the only way to truly get away from it all and "live greener; reduce emissions etc." is to become LESS CIVILIZED, hence, Uncivilized. So... it's sort of a joke band name for a *jazz-ish* project, but also a reference to a type of music that comes from somewhere deep beneath the soil or in the ocean, or some shit that has nothing to do with society and its ills, or that maybe "free music" that roams everywhere (and nowhere) is exactly the balm that I need/needed, or that simply is the project.
I really dig this Frank Zappa concept: Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason At All (or AAAFNRAA). So the music of Uncivilized likes to go all over the place and be pretty schizo, but also, pretty chill and kinda folk-orientated, sometimes even poppy, or anthemic all at once. (My earliest musical memories were listening to the Boy Bands and Spice Girls on the radio: how can you resist all those gummy pop ear hooks?)
Eventually somebody from The New York Times showed up at one of our Uncivilized residencies at a burlesque bar in Brooklyn-- we were the house band ever second Wednesday or something--and he came back and wrote a piece about the group: I think he was mainly confused and couldn't pin us down (the print headline read: Listen Carefully They're Hard to Pin Down). We didn't really fit into the indie scene in Brooklyn which was hyper-rehearsed, or the Jazz scene (capital J in NYC), which was super museum-orientated on preserving the tradition. I'm down with both scenes but it made it hard for us to find venues that would work for our vibe, so we usually had to create the venues or convince bar-owners to let us set up on the floor and lug all our equipment in. A lot of the magic of the project is in the live performance, but I've been increasingly interested in capturing the live performances and editing the recordings to make them sound like we did it in the studio.
This all sounds like some sort of lofty high-art thing but it's more about strumming the old geetar around a primordial campfire after the apocalypse or something. But, all jokes aside, Uncivilized is a loose artistic moniker for the music I put out, that has, in the past, involved a huge crew of musicians *mostly* in the New York City area ...
Who have you collaborated with in the past?
The bassist from the metal band Baroness (Nick Jost), who sometimes plays upright bass with us. The free-jazz trumpet legend and Fly or Die bandleader jaimie branch (RIP), who played on our 2020 album Garden that we recorded live at Pioneer Works (https://www.brooklynvegan.com/stream-nyc-jazz-group-uncivilizeds-new-album-garden-ft-jaimie-branch/). We also did a thematic residency at a world music venue deep in the heart of Brooklyn where we presented someone else's music arranged for Uncivilized on three nights one summer (the music of John Fahey, Chico Hamilton, and Frank Zappa). David Lynch's Twin Peaks soundtrack which we have played live on numerous occasions, including on our 2018 album Uncivilized Plays Peaks (www.uncivilizedplayspeaks.com). We also did a pretty epic Lagniappe Session for the hipster-blog-journal Aquarium Drunkard, funded by a UK radio station, recording a set of latin-jazz Chico Hamilton music for a group with tuba and cello (www.uncivilizedplayschico.com).
Who did you collaborate with for this release?
This upcoming release (my first while I've been living in Australia) is mainly solo guitar tracks which I recorded in my little office here in The Entrance, but one track-- the first single, out on Halloween, has some saucy flute on it from my dude Tristan Cooley. He recorded his wave over in the state of Vermont in an attic. We go way back and he's been on most of the Uncivilized records, laying down that fluttery, high-pitched rage which is so underutilized as an instrument in Jazz these days. (A lot of sax players "play" the flute, but they are always amazed at Tristan's legit devotion to that instrument like an appendage.) His dad put him through music conservatory by playing cocktail jazz piano: Tristan is the real-deal jazz musician who learned the art passed down from his father, so he's a really special cat to work with. We also used to work that recycling / waste audit job together and he's now basically a religious scholar or something way above my head where he writes poetry for sacred operas!
Tell our readers about 5 by Monk by Csatari (Ignore Heroes, 2023), and the upcoming Album
So this solo guitar album is all music by the pianist Thelonious Monk. If you don't know Monk, you should. (Sorry if that sounds elitist but seriously, Wu Tang Clan samples his old-school piano on the song "Method Man" from 36 Chambers .) VH1 Save The Music had an ad about his famous tune "Blue Monk" (which is the single from this upcoming album) where a young clarinet student is playing this infamously cheeky and bluesy--almost childlike, but slightly skewed--melody that's just a total classic. Monk was always redoing and experimenting with the tunes he already wrote-- each time like ripping off a bandaid--so for this album I was trying to capture some of that looseness and raw quality: a unique mixture of folklore with angularity. These are all fancy words though. Monk is grimy and off-kilter, especially when he's playing his tunes solo on piano, like the first time he recorded 'Round Midnight in 1944, where it sounds like he's barely keeping up with himself and fumbling soap or something (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ5D9oyv6vw). He was actually quite underrated as a pianist is many ways. He played that thing with such a wicked sense of internal rhythm and ground-breaking chordal vocabulary, it's no wonder his music has lasted over half a century.
So for this short album I had this borrowed Taylor Swift acoustic guitar from my niece and wanted to record an album before I gave it back and I had been working on these Monk tunes and realized he had this album called 5 By Monk By 5 and thought, well shit, I can only probably play 5 Monk tunes by myself so let's just do that and give it a go. I tried to record them spontaneously in my office when I could play them in one or two takes but you can hear a false take on the first track. I'm not really into the whole "bedroom recording": I usually leave that up to engineers and I just play my guitar and keep my band happy (mad respect for the art that is audio engineering), so I found this online recording site called Soundation where you can record directly into the computer on a tab of Google Chrome and so I love using that and it's an easy way to document new composing ideas or projects like this...
Monk's tunes are like little puzzles or houses within which you can explore the nooks and crannies in improvisation, creating weird twist and turns which fit the Uncivilized ethos eerily well: mixing folky rawness of the everyday with more abstracted, experimental movements of the sublime. I doubt there are any record labels that would "release" this album with a ten foot pole so I'm putting it out on my Ignore Heroes imprint which exemplifies some of the subversion I veer towards (often unknowingly, and sometimes unwantingly: somewhat grotesque and gothic, not unlike Monk's tune "Ugly Beauty") in most of my music work. In the end, the medium is half of the picture. . .
Living in Australia, let alone Long Jetty, must be quite different from NYC, what are the major differences? What are some artists from back home that we should be across?
My dad's from Jersey, and my mum's from upstate New York, so it sort of made sense that I would end up in NYC, but we used to always go to the Jersey Shore beaches in the summer for a big Hungarian family reunion (my surname is Hungarian: pronounced chuh-tar-ee). So I really dig the beach and learned to body surf from my cousins in Jersey and the surf is actually pretty gnar there. I met my partner in NYC working at my office job and we eventually moved out to Rockaway Beach and had been visiting her sister in Toowoon a bunch over the years and once we had kids we were always trying to find the right time to give it a go over here and maybe learn to surf finally. I'm working on that and enjoying the bushlands and beaches immensely.
I really dig some stuff that's coming from this label LEAVING RECORDS in LA, in particular this bassist Sam Wilkes who just put out a new record which I think is the best of 2023 with one of my favorite drummers Craig Weinrib on a bunch of it (https://samwilkes.bandcamp.com/album/driving). Also, there's a dude on my second album (https://tinymontgomery.bandcamp.com/album/outro-waltz) named RJ Miller from Maine who is a major legend in the jazz community in NYC who I somehow convinced to play my music; his solo stuff is incredible: it's what he calls "live ambient/ free soul" which is a mix of jazz drumming and synthesizers and experimental loops that's really chilled-out and full of little details each time you re-listen, all while keeping a heavy groove going. Check out RJ's album Ronald's Rhythm (https://rjmiller.bandcamp.com/album/ronalds-rhythm). Y'all should also check out L'Rain, a pretty heady project which my mate Ben C-K-- a longtime Uncivilized associate on the bass clarinet and baritone sax--plays/composes in.
What are your go to records to listen to at home?
I like this clean version of Wu Tang Clan's 36 chambers on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO5zyc3o1QI&t=222s) which I can put on when my kids are home and still get into a flow. RJ Miller's newest album Free Soul which I wrote about over here -- https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2021/04/14/ronald-rj-miller-free-soul/ . For Jazz: Thelonious Monk plays Duke Ellington (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnp3-2gBxy4&t=1848s) and Duke Ellington with John Coltrane (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IN1TdLlITA). The Buckingham-Nicks S/T album pre-Fleetwood Mac is a huge influence on my life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1kHeix-55c&t=509s). But I'm all over the place. I'm a barista at Flour & Co and I really dig the music Tim Boreham hips me to-- I'm always hearing fresh shit on his playlists.
As far as projects go, I've been working on this guitar zine-book thing for about a decade and it's been a major goal to finish that when I moved here. The project is called Guitar Uncivilized and will likely spin out into a few other areas, hopefully with more guitar inspiration/instructional content coming soon: www.guitaruncivilized.com . I've interviewed some interesting people for the first book which is all centered around the "campfire/cowboy chords" (think G, D, A, E, C), that we all know, love and hate-- even grandma!
Thanks for your time!
Thanks!
For more information about Uncivilized and updates on the album release, please visit ignoreheroes.bandcamp.com