Cisco Bradley, The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront

Reviewed By Tom Greenland

The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront
by Cisco Bradley
Duke University Press
March 2023, 408 pp.

Professor Cisco Bradley’s book, The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront, is product of a decade-long investigation into the creative music scene(s) hovering around Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood from 1988 to 2014, documenting its ostensible rise and fall. The narrative pits struggling DIY artists against the 2005 rezoning and consequent gentrification that brought economic sea changes on the area, a battle between art and capitalism, with capitalism the clear victor.

The research is broad and deep, based on interviews (live and emailed) and archival materials (concert itineraries, advertising flyers, photos, bootleg or commercial audio and video recordings, etc.) of artists, producers, venue operators and record label owners (with some respondents filling several roles) and other active participants, as well as articles and reviews by critics, scholars, and other writers. Pratt himself was active on the scene as a frequent concertgoer and curator of loft shows in his nearby Bushwick home.

The book’s breadth arises from the multiplicity of music genres under consideration (avant-garde, free jazz, postpunk, noise, electronic, rock, metal, contemporary classical, etc.), their offshoots (e.g., “lowercase” or “brutal prog”), and the many venues (underground or legitimate, local or citywide) presenting this music, though Bradley seems particularly interested in the nexus of free jazz-derived improvisation and contemporary classical-derived creative composition. The book’s depth derives from an overview and analysis of the prevalent socio-cultural, political and economic trends, followed by detailed descriptions of individual artists and venues, presented in a series of overlapping case studies to give esthetic and historical context. Often the breadth and depth of the coverage come into conflict, especially when extensive background information on an artist or venue digresses from the titular focus on Williamsburg proper.

Indeed, one could take issue with the idea of a separate Williamsburg scene, as there were (and are) many scenes within scenes among New York City’s creative communities, some (loosely, temporarily) centered around geographically situated venues, though these can relocate to a new neighborhood or even, as was the case with The Knitting Factory, move to another borough. Others arose out of artistic cliques or “extended families” of individual musicians living and working throughout the five boroughs, persistent over time and changing geographies.

One could further question the notion of an identifiable “Williamsburg sound,” which Bradley submits grew out of punk/post-punk, computer-enhanced Japanese bands and indie-rock to produce “an eclectic array of sounds, origins, styles, rhythms, and instruments melded together into a coherent whole with an eye for experiment, newness, surprise, and futuristic visions” (p. 85). The South Brooklyn sound, from Park Slope, Kensington and Ditmas Park, is similar, he admits, but doesn’t reflect Williamsburg’s “postindustrial environment” (p. 4) to the same extent. Perhaps, but many of the book’s featured musicians were, and are, active all over the city, playing one-off gigs when, and wherever, they can find sympathetic venue operators and audiences. Consider, too, that a large number of the book’s photos show musicians performing outside of Williamsburg. So, the question remains: Could a blindfold testee distinguish the Williamsburg sound from any of myriad other creative music then (and still) mushrooming the across city?

Despite these general caveats, the book does an admirable job of exhuming a music scene from a particular place and time. Divided into two parts of three chapters each, bookended by an introduction and afterword, the first half covers the period from 1988-2006, and the second from 2004-2014, generally differentiated by the critical mass of warehouses, lofts, and other underground/DIY venues in the former, and a shift towards commercial, and legitimate, venues in the latter. The introduction situates Williamsburg as a satellite to the Manhattan arts scene, where once-affordable rents and relative relief from commercial pressures, such as venues requiring sufficient ticket and drink sales, gave creative musicians the “luxury” to experiment with overtly non¬commercial projects—an experimentation, Bradley suggests, vital for generating new ideas, breaking and re-making rules and conventions, even providing, in the case of free-jazz, a “repository for…political consciousness” (p. 8).

The meat of the book reads like an encyclopedia, with detailed sketches of people or places playing pivotal roles. Not everyone could be included, of course, but there are enough key players to form a deep, layered impression of what was happening. For example, in Chapter 1, detailing the emergence of the scene, Bradley concentrates on the postindustrial warehouses and other underground venues dotting the waterfront (from whence the book’s title, though most of the scene wasn’t technically on the waterfront), including The Lizard’s Tail, The Sex Salon, The Cat’s Head, Flytrap, Organism, Keep Refrigerated, Lalalandia, El Sensorium; two bars, The Ship’s Mast and Right Bank Café; and several outdoor postpunk events. As these sites and situations are often described in great detail, certain musicians and organizers reappear, helping readers recognize connective tissue unifying disparate activities. Among other points of interest, there is mention of class distinctions within the scene—schooled vs. unschooled, working-class vs. family subsidized musicians—and drug use.

The next chapter covers the impact of Free103point9, a pirate radio station, and the increased use of lofts as performance venues. Profiled here are Gold Sparkle Band, Butch Morris, TEST, Fritz Welch, Matt Bua, Ros Moshe, No-Neck Blues Band, Ryan Sawyer, Dan Friel, Tyondai Braxton, Jon DeRosa, peeesseye [sic]; the Jump Arts, Music Now!, Brooklyn Free Music, and No Fun Festivals; and the venues 220 Grand and Office Ops. There is a wealth of topics—Morris’ influential system of cued improvisation (“conduction”); the prevalence of multi-media, installation, and interactive art; use of flyers and posters to advertise gigs; gaps in the transit system fostering regional autonomy; Moshe’s observations on unified communities and “factionalism” (p. 74-5)—to cite a few. The reader soon realizes there’s probably a whole book on just one or a few of these subjects.

The third chapter shifts focus to art galleries, clubs, and Bohemian Cafés, all still under the umbrella of “Utopian Spaces for Sound” (p. 19). Profiled here are artists Anthony Braxton (joined by some of his Wesleyan University protégés), Transit, Nate Wooley, Blue Collar, Memorize the Sky, Blarvuster, Mary Halvorson, Kevin Shea, Dynasty Electric, Zs and Taylor Ho Bynum; venues such as Sideshow Gallery, Dynamite Club, Read Café, Newsonic Loft and Pourhouse; and the Improvised and Otherwise Festival series. Many topics invite further inquiry: grant institutions’ favoritism towards classical composers; Braxton’s seminal influence; Wooley’s comments on “fulfilling” music (p. 111); possible connections between Jews, jazz, and mysticism (p. 115); challenges to the predominance of male musicians; Bynum’s observations on the scene’s loss of geographical base and lack of style, leading to a double diaspora (p. 31); an artist’s relationship to his or her audience; and the transience inherent to such scenes. This chapter, and first half of the book, concludes with an announcement of the beginning of the end: the 2005 rezoning of 186 Williamsburg blocks.

The “fall” of the scene commences with Chapters 4 and 5, with both framing Zebulon as the scene’s epicenter. While Chapter 4 covers downtown musicians from Manhattan’s East Village, Lower East Side and SoHo who frequented Zebulon from 2004 to 2006, Chapter 5 concentrates on younger, often locally-based musicians who appeared there from 2005 to 2012. The dramatis personae includes Charles Gayle, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Kenny Wollesen, Ken Butler, Digital Primitives, Louis Belogenis and Andrew Lamb (representing Manhattan); plus Matana Roberts, Eye Contact, Edom, Rashanim, Eivind Opsvik’s Overseas, Mike Pride, Peter Evan, Jeremiah Cymerman, Little Women, Kneebody and Mostly Other People Do the Killing (representing Brooklyn). Chapter 4 opens with an engaging discussion of the cultural, economic, and political factors influencing the establishment of Zebulon, followed by in-depth, if somewhat digressive, investigations of artists.

Some of the most interesting discussions in these chapters are on the immersive, multi-mediated experience at Zebulon, audience activity and opinions and how artist-venue operator relationships influenced musical presentation. Bradley also investigates the prevalence of conservatory-trained graduates, roles of studio and live recordings on careers, the need for receptive audiences, the development of shared musical languages via improvisation and issues with band personnel changes. Quotations of various music critics—descriptions of specific, complex musical styles and events—are less helpful, doing little to clarify the music in a reader’s mind, an inherent paradox when transcribing sounds into words.

The final chapter divides attention between two venues that continued to feature experimental music in the area from 2005 to 2014: Death by Audio, a commercial club featuring artists such as Marc Edwards, Weasel Walter, Cellular Chaos, Slipstream Time Travel, Child Abuse, Pulverize the Sound, David Buddin, Mike Barr, Orthrelm, I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues, and Normal Love. It also treats pianist Connie Crothers’s private loft, and concludes with brief mentions of Monkeytown and Spike Hill. Walter discusses “irritainment” (p. 233), posing an artist’s role towards his audience as aggressive; how his relationship with Death by Audio owner Edan Wilber led to a more flexible booking policy (p. 234); and how not having a receptive audience for his most innovative projects led to a change of priorities (p. 235). Mike Pride’s description of music that was “really torturous in a good way” (p. 241) points to a book-wide tension between creative artists’ resolve to present challenging music, audience receptiveness to such offerings, and venue managers’ abilities to support such activity at a (often nominal) profit.

The afterword reprises the introductory discourse on “the contest between capital and cultural production” (p. 264). Here, Bradley renders his most politically charged interpretations, which lie outside the scope of this critique, but suffice to say that interconnections between art, commerce, government, and individuals are complicated, and open to many points of view. The meat and bones of Bradley’s study—the sundry people, including many unsung artistic “warriors” deserving wider recognition, places, and events described within—hold up well, giving readers a multifarious impression of what it might have meant to experience that music in those times.

Tom Greenland is a music educator and journalist based in New York City. His book Jazzing: New York City's Unseen Scene depicts local music-making as a holistic, community-wide endeavor in which everyone--from musicians and fans to venue operators and music professionals--has a part to perform.