SSB Presents: A Square Peg in a Round Hole
Experimental Musician and Composer Steve Jansen Comes to Abiquiu
Steve Jansen is a sound maker, originally from Arizona, who worked exclusively as a writer and visual artist for more than a decade. Though he had incorporated sonic elements into his visual-art pieces, music performance was an afterthought until his first gig in 2007—a free-spazz duo, sans any band practice whatsoever—at a downtown Phoenix art gallery and music venue.
Now based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jansen’s experimental music output includes solo and band performance on alto saxophone, prepared guitar, cassette tape, and natural and manufactured objects, across a swath of genres ranging from free-jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation to harsh noise and primitive techno.
A primary element of Jansen’s constructions hinges on live cassette-tape manipulations featuring on-site field recordings and ad-libbed performances from worldwide locations such as Ghana, continental Europe, Mexico, rural Arizona deserts and forests, and a plane crash site in the Sandia Mountains. These sound emissions are often articulated through malfunctioning devices that may or may not work come performance time, bringing another improvisational element to the set.
Jansen, who currently plays with North Texas no-wave psychos Gay Cum Daddies, has collaborated with John Dieterich, Raven Chacon, Jeph Jerman, Sandy Ewen, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Tom Carter, Rebecca Novak, Parham Daghighi, and James Fella. He also runs the labels That’s Cool Records, UNHINGED, and Section 31.
For anyone wondering, this is not the Steve Jansen from the band Japan (and it’s not Japan the country). Steve Jansen vs. Steve Jansen from Japan is an important distinction. Not Steve Jansen from Japan once had a gig fall through because the promoter, who thought he had booked Steve Jansen from Japan, promptly 86’d the gig when they realized they had booked not Steve Jansen. It’s one of not Steve Jansen’s favorite gigs he has never played.
Artist Statement
I started relatively late as a musician, at age 29. The impetus was an extroverted way to blow off creative steam, one that the cloaked and inward activities of writing and photography, my first two arts, were never going to placate. When playing in bands, I take a square-peg-in-round-hole-yet-this-fits approach to collaboration, whether it’s live manipulating cassette tape commotions or shredding a no-wave party-sax line. In solo compositional improvisations, I veer towards an enterprising narrative approach where I’m telling a story sonically. I continue to capture sound in the U.S. Southwest wilderness—both intact landscapes and former deserts paved over with asphalt—that’s then transmitted through equipment in various states of decay.
Landing Patterns (10″ lathe)
Upheaval Suite III
Metal Beach
Red Tank Draw
Second First (cassette)
ABOUT SSB AWAY
SSB AWAY retreats provide crucial time and space for artists to germinate ideas that might otherwise be marginalized during the intensity of public life and artistic production. A network of residences offers artists the agency to take time away from their habitual surroundings and to rest and inhabit a nourishing space of creative sanctuary, solitude, access to nature, and multivalent privacy. SSB offers residencies in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and Podere Malabiccia, Tuscany, Italy.