Mark De Clive-Lowe Discusses The Brand New 'CHURCH' LP In An Exclusive Interview With REVIVE.
Musical beast and proud Kiwi Mark De Clive-Lowe sits to discuss his new album CHURCH in the first segment of an exclusive interview with REVIVE. The interview arrived on the date of the highly-anticipated release, which dropped on May 27th. The pianist and sonic innovator recounts his musical journey to date, from his roots in New Zealand to his time at Berklee College of Music, through his days on the house scene in London and the latest moves between New York and his current home base in L.A. The album itself is an embodiment of that journey that also encapsulates the spirit at the helm of the legendary live performance series which has grown into an institution since its inception and also bears the CHURCH moniker. Mark De Clive-Lowe details the travels, musicians - from Betty Carter and Brad Mehldau to Tribe and J Dilla - and movements that have lead him to create a widely-celebrated and utterly sacred space for sound.
R: You were at Berklee in ’94. Where did you move shortly after Boston?MdCL: I went from Boston back to New Zealand, and I swore that I would move to Sydney within three months. Sydney– in that part of the world– had the best jazz scene. Then I left New Zealand three to four years later. I really became entrenched in doing my thing in New Zealand. I was doing a lot of straight-ahead stuff. About once a month, I would have a jam band vibe in a club that was a two-room club and the other room was an acid house vibe, and we’d be in the chill-out room.
It was predominantly jazz musicians, but there were rappers and turntablists and stuff. It was around that Groove Collective time and it was that kind of sound. It was so fun. I remember one time playing a straight-ahead gig in a suit, on stage, at Auckland Town Hall, and I thought, “Why am I being so serious about this serious shit, when I have so much fun doing this other thing? Shouldn’t I be serious about the fun one?” That was kind of a turning point.
Not that I didn’t have the love for the acoustic music. I was heavily into Branford Marsalis’ quartet – around the Crazy People Music time. When I first heard Brad Mehldau, it just blew my mind. Like any piano player, it just changes your whole way of thinking. I was into ‘60s Miles and those kinds of things. I had awareness, on some kind of level, that I didn’t want to try to emulate them – it’s like I love it too much. I don’t want to be a cheap, knock-off type thing. So what’s my music? I was super drawn to jungle and drum & bass at the time.
R: Those were two huge musical movements at the time.
MdCL: Those were the times! I mean the ‘90s – to me – was the hip-hop golden era and there was a UK golden era, which started with jungle and drum & bass then morphed into what became the West London scene. It was just cool to see really creative and innovative music happening, which reflected the times in the same way that free jazz reflected the socio-political times and the kind of sounds of industry that you were starting to hear. As music changes, the counter culture of the previous movement reflects the environment – especially technologically. So it was really cool for me to hear and it definitely gave me a lot of inspiration.
R: I recently spoke with José James who mentioned that you introduced him to Pino Palladino. His new album is a love letter to the East London scene. I don’t really know too much about the London scene, what is it about that scene that makes it so important for modern-day musicians?
MdCL: It’s definitely not a right now thing, it goes much deeper than that, and I do have a pretty thought through theory on it. [Take] jazz music, you can really do this with any genre of music, but let’s take jazz music. If you grow up in America playing jazz music [as] an anti-traditionalist, then your subjectivity to being an anti-traditionalist is dictated by the fact that you grew up in a country where jazz came from. So as far as you want to get away from it, there’s only so far that you can get away from it. Whereas someone in the UK says, “Jazz is from that country over there. Afro-beat is from that country over there. SoCa is from that country over there. Reggae is over there. Let’s just take a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” You’re not conformed by those restraints and traditions. This is why I feel that the UK has an amazing ability to fuse music and make new forms.
The immigration culture helps there. They have a huge West Indian culture, huge African culture, and European influences. Those flavors all help it. Imagine being from New Orleans and your mom’s a piano player and your dad’s a trumpet player and you want to make drum & bass. How’s that going to work? There’s a freedom in distance. Maybe it makes a good analogy for New Zealand and Australia.
Hiatus Kiayote can… it’s almost like that telephone game. By the time it reaches there, then it’s a whole different thing. J Dilla’s a huge influence, but the way it’s distilled to a band like Hiatus is so far removed someone in Detroit. I think it’s important to have that freedom in creativity.
I would love to hear acoustic jazz records mixed by rock engineers or hip-hop engineers just so it can be different. So we can re-contextualize it. It’s like when it comes to an acoustic jazz record, which the paradigm is Rudy Van Gelder. Rudy was amazing, but that was a long time ago, and he didn’t know what he was doing. He maximized the technology of the day as much as he could and got an amazing result.
I love Tribe Called Quest, but I’m not trying to emulate Midnight Marauders. There’s a spirit and an essence in that music that I’d love to hold on to. It’s the same essence in Sun Ra and Stravinsky. It’s a [subtler] thing than the individualization of, “Oooh! I like this, let me copy that.” Or, “I’m going to mix this just like that.” There are subtleties that are really important.
R: I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the reason for your unique sound is because you’ve travelled around so much and you’ve adapted so much of the music culture from each hub into your own style. What did Los Angeles do for you?
MdCL: It’s how it should be. I think one of the primary roles of an artist is to reflect heir environment. Your environment changes so it would be weird to not change. L.A. is expansive. I think of the sky when I say that. You can always see the whole skyline from side to side, back to front. That’s incredible! It makes you feel different. It’s always sunny; that makes you feel different. In New York, I never see the skyline and if it’s sunny, I might not even notice because the hustle and bustle is so crazy. Bu that’s great! It has a whole vibe.
It was cool for me to be in both cities and do CHURCH every month. I would get both these energies from the cities and I’d put that into the music. I feel like L.A. helped me re-connect with a sensitivity that I’ve filtered out through banging beats. I was playing in Dwight Trible’s band for a while with Miguel and that the dynamic range for that was so huge. It was my first sideman gig in… I don’t know how many years. But ballads with a singer – I hadn’t done that in over a decade. Miguel and I would do improvised soundtrack mixes and there would be a lot of sensitivity. So L.A. helped in that bag. Being open to a dynamic range much broader than what I’ve focused on in a while.
Compositionally, it made me feel free. I feel like if I moved to New York, I would have felt more restricted. I’m not saying that this is a restrictive place, but it’s more that might I have seen it. But when I would bring CHURCH out here, we got to hit harder. That whole east-coast/west-coast thing is real! So CHURCH was usually Nate Smith and Mark Kelley and we’d go for blood. So I’d take some of that back to L.A. and vice-versa and it’s really cool how it evolved.
Read the full interview and get more on Mark De Clive-Lowe via REVIVE. Purchase the CHURCH LP via iTunes. Stay tuned for more.
