Justin Walters’ dreamy free-jazz and the mighty EVI
5.17.13 @ Blind Pig (w/Colin Stetson)
PHOTO: by Doug Coombe

Interview: Justin Walter

http://music.justinwalter.net/

Most of the week – I’m the indie-rock guy. The punk guy. I dabble in hip-hop, I don’t do country-western but I do do country-rock. I need to expand more. Then I find this Justin Walter.

Justin Walter’s stuff spun me straight off my perfunctory pop stool. His brand of ambient/experimental jazz (imagine Boards of Canada in one ear and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew in the other), broke open borders for me; a fresh aural vision, a new way to conceive a piece of music, a much needed trip. Yes, trippy but meditative all at once. Expansive music, impressionistic brushstrokes, introspective…charmed by a curious instrument called the EVI (eee-vee,) or Electronic Valve Instrument.

“Ever hear of it?” coaxes the Ann Arbor native. “Dan Bennett, who was playing with me in NOMO at the time, told me about it and I ordered one that same day. I set out to explore the nature of the beast, so to speak.”

Walter opens up for iconic improvisational freak-out jazz maestro Colin Stetson on Friday at the Blind Pig.
Listen:

Walters (who performed with NOMO, the notable Ann Arbor-based Afrobeat / funk / jazz / almost-anything outfit), had a very musical upbringing, attending Community High School where, at a young age, he was introduced to jazz and live performance. Entering his 20’s, his main focus was jazz. “Fairly straight ahead jazz, at that. All day. All night. Seems like I grew up in the Del Rio and Bird of Paradise. Lots of great jazz!”

Then he met up with this band… An elastic, eclectic, ebullient band, called NOMO. (Watch: NOMO – Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2012– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PooNu3vFVho).

NOMO was his collaborative gateway band – moving on to work with Saturday Looks Good To Me, Iron & Wine, and His Name Is Alive, weird and wonderful indie-punk-and-folk acts that would otherwise have never panged on the radar of just a “fairly straight ahead jazz” musician.

Walters work in NOMO was the beginning of his learning about “music that wasn’t jazz,” to put it mildly.

But back to that EVI. In Walter’s words its “an analog synthesizer that sort of plays like a trumpet.” You might have seen aliens playing it in the Tatooine Cantina band. “It’s unique in many ways and I found that it was fairly unheard of…”

As Walter continued playing with all these interesting groups, he honed his own craft, working on lots of experimental/improvisational music on his own, eventually culling a fair number of bedroom recordings and releasing a proper EP (recorded in Chicago with NOMO’s Erik Hall).

Walter worked with SLGTM’s Fred Thomas to release the WALTER double cassette on his LifeLike tape-centric label. It was a great collaboration, a fine collection of music and a motivating experience overall for Walter. It was time, then, that he get out a proper full length “studio” recording. Hall came back into the picture, along with drummer Quin Kirchner, the result was Lullabies & Nightmares.

“It’s what happened when I set out to make the most beautiful music I could make.”

The current Brooklyn-resident is eager to return to his old stamping grounds. “(Stetson) was one of the people who inspired me to make a solo record,” says Walter. “So, this is possibly the best pairing I could have hoped for. It’s an honor.”

Lullabies & Nightmares comes out May 27th via Kranky Records. In the meantime, though, you can hear Walter’s works live, Friday, at the Blind Pig.

While you’re here, Watch: Colin Stetson – “Among The Sef” –

Colin Stetson – Among the Sef from Constellation Records on Vimeo.