One question interview with Shining Sea

When a friend told me Adam Nathanson was playing in a new group that sounded “more out there” than his previous hardcore outfits, I reflexively started imagining “out there” as a place. For me, Nathanson’s best known bands — Life’s Blood (seers of “Reckoning Force”) and Born Against (divine mouth foam) — have always conjured the complicated New York City from which they sprang. When Nathanson relocated to Richmond in the ’90s to play in (Young) Pioneers, it sounded like he was trying to Southern-fry American hardcore in a grease derived from melted folk 78s.

Now he’s making music in New York again with Shining Sea, an instrumental trio featuring saxophonist/clarinetist Stan Zenkov and drummer/bassist Andy Guida, formerly of Altercation and Supertouch. When fellow NYHC scene legend Freddy Alva recently interviewed the trio about the music that influenced their new recording, Ready Rock (Let the Good Times Roll), the answers threatened to spill off the map: jazz, dub, klezmer, huayno, peace punk, Swans, Godflesh, Test Dept., Dog Faced Hermans, the Ex, and, as per Guida, “every subway and weird noise I’ve heard.”

Evocative and tough, Ready Rock throbs with a forlorn futurism — the sound of a dozen disappearing New York Cities pooling into a new bruise of NYC spacetime that hasn’t happened yet. But before I got swept away by it all, I got curious about those weird city noises. I was humbled by the generosity of the band’s answers when I asked:

Outside of music, what is your most vivid NYC sound memory?

Adam Nathanson:

I had just moved back up here the year before, and my girls were staying with me over 4th of July 2020. People had been out making noise in the streets already that summer, but most of it was pretty unhappy. We went over to East River Park to check out the scene when the sun finally set. Strictly family picnics, blankets, and barbeque with one big exception — everyone had their own huge arsenal of fireworks. The toddlers, old people, and merengue were totally drowned out once the competition started. As we passed between the Riis Houses on the way home, we got caught in the crossfire of a major neighborhood roman candle (with report) and bottle rocket (with report) battle just like what we did as kids in NJ. Whole packs of whistling chasers (definitely not the name I grew up with) were going off everywhere, too. I remember we were trying to run and dodge everything, but we were laughing so hard.

Stan Zenkov:

The first New York sound memory I have that left a lasting impression was from when I was 7 or 8 years old, and we had just moved to our first apartment in Brooklyn after arriving from the recently fallen Soviet Union a couple of months prior. I was waiting for both my parents to return from their work and their job searches, probably doodling or hanging out with my dog.

We lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a large pre-war building in Bensonhurst. All of a sudden a loud and violent banging on the door started up. Fists or kicks, who could tell, but it definitely scared and confused me. The person continued banging and screaming something in English, a language I didn’t understand yet at all. This door knocking, banging and screaming is the first sound memory I have of NYC. I stayed as quiet as possible hoping they wouldn’t know I was there. Whether this went on for ten or twenty minutes, I don’t know, but it felt like hours to me as a child.

When my parents got home they found a bunch of magic marker writing on the apartment door. We didn’t know what it meant, but in the next few days my father figured out that it said things like, “fuck you,” and “bitch, I’ll kill you.” Welcome to New York City, kid.

Andy Guida:

I have many vivid sonic memories of New York City. I spend a lot of time consciously experiencing, capturing and analyzing sound. I enjoy reading books about how sound moves and how our brains process it. I was a kid that noticed the rhythm of the washing machine and dryer. I liked the layers of rhythm and the sonic spectrum. Deep thumping sounds up to high-pitched metallic sounds. The sound of walking on gravel or small rocks always pleased me. Or very subtle changes in sound, like how the angle of a magazine you’re reading reflecting sound at one ear can change the sound of a room. I’ve always loved the sounds of nature or machines, quiet or loud.

One could simply say New York is loud, but there are quiet sounds and many layers in the blaring volume. As I read my memories I realize any of these could be in other cities. What ties them to New York City is the fact that I experienced them here as a lifelong New Yorker. Memories are subjective, they exist in relation to other experiences.

The sound collage at the end of “Tinku” on Ready Rock is my orchestration of a sonic memory from NYC, walking down the street. The “Tinku” piece is made of street sounds. Conversation in different languages, cars, bottles into pails and an ice cream truck with an almost nausea-inducing amount of Doppler effect. When I hear that piece it’s as if I’m watching a time-lapse film.

I got lucky and happened upon an ice cream truck whose playback was speeding up and slowing down as well as rising and falling in pitch. The truck wasn’t moving but the pitch of the recorded song was bending as if I was experiencing the Doppler effect.

Growing up in Brooklyn, a few miles from JFK Airport we sometimes got to hear the Concord breaking the sound barrier. They were probably hitting the speed of sound closer to land than they were supposed to, but I loved it. Man-made thunder, or the biggest kick drum ever.

The subway is an obvious NYC sonic memory. There are deep layers to it. The screech of metal wheels on metal track. The ground-shaking low end rumble of the train. That much mass rolling along creates deep bass, and the accompanying rattle of all the loose parts, as well as people talking. At times the rhythm sounds military in its rigidity. Other times it’s as funky as Clyde Stubblefield. A symphony of funk/noise included with every fare.

Different times of year inspire different NYC sonic memories for me. Warm weather is Coney Island. Cyclone riders scream and subway wheels screech, echoing off buildings and the subway station, which is elevated above ground. The wind and surf sound closer, they have no echo. Wind on the beach is anechoic, so is the surf. If you listen for it, the difference between echoed and non-echoed sound is significant.

When my son was young, we would go to Forest Park in Queens on weekday mornings when the park was quiet. There’s a bandshell and we would play with the echoes we made by clapping, yelling and stomping. We would also play with the whispering arch created by the stone proscenium. I am endlessly fascinated how quiet sounds will travel so far along the right shape reflective surface. Most people don’t associate whispering arches and echoes with New York City. There are even some whispering arches in Grand Central Station. The echoes are everywhere. We’re bombarded with so many echoes we don’t notice them all.

Cunningham Park, in Queens has a curved stone and cement tunnel under a roadway. I have had fun stomping the ground and smacking my legs, creating funky beats that played off the echo under there. I was enveloped in the echo as the sounds were moving all around me, I was in the middle of the tunnel. It’s a very different feeling from playing a drum kit to an echo box or plug-in. This city has tons of echoes that are fun to play with if you don’t mind looking funny to passersby.

A rapper in the Port Authority subway station crossfading with the sound of a woman playing violin a couple hundred feet further in the station as I walk through. Those sounds blend with trains pulling in and out of the station inside tunnels and lower levels. Add the noise of hundreds of New Yorkers hustling past each other. Those are some of the best New York sounds I can think of.

The subways are a giant echo/reverb chamber. The reverb created with all those levels of tunnels and nearly 100% reflective surfaces is immense when we blast LOUD levels of cacophonous sound into it. If the tunnels were silent and you popped a balloon that was as loud as a train, how long would that sound last before the reverb faded away? How far through the tunnels would that sound travel?

This is the quintessential New York City sound memory, to me. I was walking in downtown Brooklyn. I passed two guys walking toward me who, from the way they spoke, must have been Brooklyn Italian. One said to the other, “Five years, and not even a fuckin’ plate of macaroni!” I can’t remember more of the conversation, except that he seemed to be referring to his girlfriend or wife. It sounds like a classic line from Saturday Night Fever. I laughed for days after hearing that. Without hearing that line, I would remember none of that scene. That guy doesn’t know he’s been playing in a short film in my head for years. I barely remember what he looked like, but I remember that line and the way the scene sounded. I hear cars on the street, people talking farther away on the sidewalk, feet walking everywhere. Those sounds are echoing off the tall buildings around us. Then the macaroni guy up close, no echo, as we pass each other.

“Five years, and not even a fuckin’ plate of macaroni!” Brilliant. CUT!

Shining Sea’s ‘Ready Rock (Let the Good Times Roll)’ is available on Bandcamp.