“Hunger Taken by Thirst” now streaming.
I saw Ivan Julian on stage with Shriekback on their 86 tour of “Oil & Gold”. Couldn’t take my eyes or ears off of him, as he was bouncing and weaving; guitar god version of Yannick Noah, smashing every note into the concrete. Formative hearing these sheets of sound over grooves, entangling the DX-7 onslaught by Andrews and Halliwell. Nineteen-year old brains were on wide-screen record.
Internet-less in that era, information was scarce; moving via British weeklies, mags, vinyl, and tape. It’d be a few years before I’d hear the work with Voidoids that made his name. But I can still see that Syracuse night in my mind now.
Decades later, I’m teaching in NYC, writing and playing; doing the two-borough hop into Brooklyn where Javier Hernandez-Miyares is holding court at 17 Frost. An art gallery performance space connected to Ivan’s studio, Super Giraffe Sound.
I peek Ivan occasionally; silent, deep in thought. I’m too damn shy to gush elegies. Until the work makes things happen.
“Hunger Taken for Thirst”. A meditation on how desire confuses us. Tunes written between Salvador, Yokohama and Bronx, scratched out with eccentric chord extensions, Brazilian funk influences, and spoken word. Just some every day culture clashes, furtive romances, and random psychedelic musings of some dude with my name and face grasping at straws. I started building the arrangements in ProTools. There was a gap in the sound the size of a countrapuntal-Picasso -of-post-punk.
Julian’s guitars go to places I couldn’t see by myself. Ripping dimensions up; painting skyscrapers orange; refusing to connect the dots. I just wrote and mumbled the songs, sketched on a napkin. Ivan and Co. sculpt the marble.
“This reminds be a bit of “Fresh” by Sly and the Family Stone”, he suggests, as he sends me the files. I am flattered and humbled by the comparison. I wish I had the funk and the costumes. The parts are so hot, I have to let them cool on the sill for another decade. You can now touch the still-molten pan and serve yourself.
A meditation on how we misunderstand ourselves and the world. Notes from the underdog, wrapped up in sounds of the night. Trumpets by Rochesterian Emily Champion; keyboards by Leon Gruenbaum; bass by Paulo LePetit, and drums by Gil Oliveira. A stellar group that exists only on my fantasy roster. Guitars by Ivan Julian.