Reposted from Dispatch Magazine, Maine Friday, August 12th, 2011 by Jakob Battick

Click here to see the full article with music links and photos at DispatchMag.com

Lee Todd Lacks is a seemingly fearless musician. He recently released Reassembled, a sprawling double-disc retrospective of various works compiled over 22 years, entirely on his own. He is without a record label, without a regular gig schedule, and unconcerned, an independent man absorbed in his own process. It’s apparent, when listening to this 40+ track opus, that Lacks is consumed by the sounds and ideas within his head, regardless of the outside world’s perception of his work. In that sense, he has the makings of a classic outsider musician, even despite the fact that he’s a trained performer with a deep knowledge of music both past and present.

To be honest, I was taken aback by Reassembled when I first heard it. With a number of earnest and open-minded listens, though, I soon found myself coming back to the track ‘Holocaust Memorial’ over and over again. Something about Lack’s impeccable spoken delivery, and the tension and atmosphere of the minimal backing track, had me transfixed. His words on this recording in particular are devastating and first-class stuff. From there, I dedicated myself to working through the whole album track by track, and I soon found that there were plenty of gems scattered throughout it’s two discs.

Reassembled, as a collected body of work, is a scattershot collage of sounds, styles, and approaches. Lee Todd Lacks is seemingly capable of covering free jazz, kraftwerkian electronic workouts, spoken word, and even noisy avant-punk rock all within the confines of just a single disc of his material. In all honesty, I don’t think there’s a genre this man has left untouched in his own odd way. To boot, ‘Adagio for Flute, Two Clarinets, and Bassoon’ is a gorgeous piece of relatively straightforward classical composition, all conceived of and set to paper by Lacks himself.

Understand, though, that there are very few conventional melodies or ‘songs’ on either of Reassembled‘s two discs. Lacks’ music is focused on texture, diction, narrative, and the combination of words and music. You’ll also have to become adjusted to his taste in synthesized tones, which leans heavily to the more dated side of 70s & 80s keyboard selections. Personally, as a fan of Tangerine Dream & the afore-mentioned Kraftwerk, Lacks’ choice in synth voicings was hardly disturbing, though I could easily imagine many of them being hugely off-putting to easy-eared first listeners. Listening to Reassembled is like listening to Jandek,Harry Partch, Captain Beefheart, or any number of obscure & eccentric visionaries. It’s unlikely that you’ll enjoy everything he does, but if you’re appreciative and open-minded you’ll be able to get a lot out of his utterly personal style of music-making.

Needless to say, after a certain point of engagement with Reassembled, I had to get inside Lee’s head, to pick his brain and find out what exactly makes him, and his music, tick. So, here, for the curiosity of whoever’s fancy might be struck by my descriptions of his work, is the transcript of a brief interview with the man himself. Instead of telling his story for him, or accidentally mis-assembling the details on my own, I’d like to stand back & let Lee Todd Lacks explain himself in his own words.

JB: You have an extremely peculiar and unique style of music-making and sound manipulating. Do you see yourself as an ‘outsider’ in either the musical sense or the creative sense? Or, on the other hand, is this something you vehemently deny?

LTL: I do regard myself as being a creative outsider of sorts, at least with respect to the Portland music scene.  Since having relocated to Portland nearly seven years ago, I’ve become involved with a number of promising collaborative projects, but for various reasons, none of these have ever made it past the planning stage.  That being said, I still strive to connect with a community of like-minded musicians, writers, and producers, and I am humbled by the interest that you have shown in my work.

JB: Do you have past musical training? What was your schooling like?

LTL: Yes, I studied piano for a number of years when I was younger, and I consider keyboard to be my primary instrument.  I also play clarinet, harmonica, and melodica.  As a teenager, I began listening to new wave bands like Devo, The B-52′s, Yaz, and Missing Persons.  For a small-town geek who spent a lot of time at Radio Shack, the keyboardists in these bands served as musical and sartorial role models!

My very first studio setup consisted of a Casio VL-1 and a Realistic Concertmate 400, which I amplified through my parents’ home stereo and recorded via the stereo’s cassette deck.  The music department at my high school offered an elective course in electronic music, which I must have taken at least five times!  This class was taught by Bryan Marks, one of those teachers who always went above and beyond the call of duty.  In addition to showing us how to use analog synthesizers and multitrack tape decks, Mr. Marks also found time to explain intervals, inversions, and other key elements of music theory.

As an undergraduate at Providence College, I completed a double major in Music and English.  While there, I studied classical piano with Diana Smirnov.  Upon graduating, I applied to Tufts University, where I ultimately earned a masters in Ethnomusicology.  During the early 1990′s, the music department at Tufts attracted some truly remarkable people, whose virtue and virtuosity never ceased to inspire me.  One of those people was a professor of composition named John McDonald, who encouraged me to join the New Music Ensemble. My experience of belonging to the New Music Ensemble at Tufts led me to explore concepts that became essential to my identity as a composer and a performer, including free improvisation, sound art, and extended techniques for clarinet.  It took me a while to decide upon a career, but I ultimately chose to become a music therapist.  With this goal in mind, I went back to school in the fall of 1998 and earned a masters in Expressive Therapies.

JB: How do you see your music fitting within the classical/jazz/avant-garde spectrum? How would you define your work along these stylistic boundaries, or in relation these stylistic boundaries?

LTL: I typically refer to myself as an experimental musician, and sometimes, as a performance artist.  When I start a new piece that features sung or spoken text, I may be responding to a broad political or social concern, or I may be responding to a life experience that seems potentially transformative.  While I acknowledge the extent to which jazz informs my approach to improvisation, I regard contemporary classical music as being an even greater influence.  The soundscapes for quite a few of the tracks on my album were created through a process of collage, to which I refer as speak-and-music pairing.  Through this process, I set many of my long-neglected poems, short stories, and monologues to selected bits of electronic music that I had recorded and archived during the previous 22 years.  In so doing, I have sought to layer dozens of disparate parts into something more substantially whole.

JB: Do you perform often?

LTL: I don’t perform very often, but after a long hiatus, I’ve begun to perform more regularly.  Last September, I performed at the Sylvia Kania Gallery for the First Friday Art Walk with Tom Swafford, a gifted violinist and composer who co-produced my album.  Later that same month, Tom and I were booked to perform at the North Star Music Café, along with a mutual friend of ours named Matt Crane.  Sadly however, the North Star closed its doors one week prior to the date of our show.  This past March, Tom, Matt and I were able to play at Blue, on what turned out to be an unseasonably cold night!  Over the past year or so, I’ve also had a couple of shows in Boston and New York.

JB: How have audiences reacted to witnessing your highly idiosyncratic music?

When I was 24, I rarely wasted energy worrying about whether or not any given audience would appreciate my peculiar brand of entertainment.  If my peers enjoyed whatever I happened to be writing or playing, then I presumed that the general public would enjoy it as well.  I now care way too much about what people I don’t even know might think of my work.  I need to regain some of my former confidence, and in order to do so, I need to connect with whatever community may exist up here in Portland.  If the community can meet me halfway, then perhaps I will be motivated to become intolerably audacious again.

Copies of Lee Todd Lack’s Reassembled can be purchased at his online store. They’re lovely little bundles, with fully annotated liner notes and track explanations/notes, and are custom-packaged by Portland’s fantastic Wolfe Editions.

LEE TODD LACKS

Reassembled

44 tracks (two CDs)

A quick glance at the track listing and the average listener will, without a doubt, experience intimidation. 44 tracks on one album? That’s just unheard of! The sheer magnitude of the effort appears daunting. However, it is not every day that a gifted artist comes along who successfully merges the genre of experimental music with spoken word while incorporating performance art and sound design into the mix, all in an intriguing way. Meet Lee Todd Lacks, an individual who bears a striking musical resemblance to Tom Waits. The twisted and haunting carnival anthem “Black Clouds” enshrouds the listener, while “Why’d You Do It?!” incorporates one voice after another, each of which are in search of the ultimate truth. Of course, these are just two selections from the effort. A 22-year retrospective, the album also includes a companion piece. The accompanying book is a treasure trove featuring the text for each tune along with annotations describing how and why the aforementioned tracks were produced. A multitude of photographs also serve to document Lacks’ experiences and performances, all of which are evident of a well-rounded career and are a testament to his versatility. (Julia R. DeStefano)

http://portcityblue.com/

20 Greene St. (between Canal and Grand St.)
Admission $15 ($10 for students, seniors, and anyone under 30)

http://www.roulette.org/

Tom Swafford: The Real (?) Me
Fri Mar 19 – 8:30 PM
Lately violinist/composer Tom Swafford has felt adrift in a sea of musical genres, each one with its own set of aesthetic criteria and performance practice. Tom has reached the point where he wants to define exactly what his compositional voice is. This concert uses this well-worn cliché (The Real Me) as a unifying theme for the variety of his compositions presented. The centerpiece of the concert, This is the Real Me, a distilled opera written for vocalist/performer Gelsey Bell, addresses the issue of not just musical but personal self-definition through extended vocal techniques, a variety of musical styles, facial expressions and physical gestures. The text of Your (so called) Music (for spoken word artist Lee Todd Lacks and 12 piece string orchestra) is a vitriolic piece of hate mail Tom received after his last composition concert. Hecklepiece, for solo performer and hecklers, deals with some of the issues faced by musicians and composers-for-hire who must tailor their art to the demands of others. In this concert, Swafford is asking: “When given absolute freedom to create the music I want, without being subject to anyone else’s aesthetic criteria, what would that music be?” Also on the program is music for woodwind quintet, solo piano, banjo and string orchestra.