«Everything feels so post-modern and self-referential»

A talk with tonight’s attraction at Blow Out!/Kafé Hærverk. Saxophonist Michael Foster talks of the American status-quo, being a prisoner of time, ‘Queer Trash’ and The New York Review of Cocksucking.

Tekst: Eli Tenga Foto:Peter Gannushkin

Disclaimer: Interview was conducted in English. Due to the Blow-Out series’ international vein and the subject’s need of precision, it is published in English.

As a novice in the free-jazz/impro/experimental world of live music, I was delighted to encounter the Kafé Hærverk’s Blow Out! series of concerts. Definitely not for the faint hearted, as my first sitting had licks of trumpet-spit at my feet; yet also not alienating as the crowd and ambiance is one of reverence for the craft and welcoming attitude to newbies.

Thus, after a couple of sittings drenched in free renderings of sound, we’ve managed to snag the first interview with one of the performing trio - Michael Foster of Foster/Crawford/Sullivan : a born and bred New-Yorker who fuses the old-school with the new: the traditionalist free-jazz and noise: classical improvisation and queer-theoretical practices. The interview below:

Hi Michael. How are things and where are you in the world?

- I’m in New York City, in Brooklyn. Things are pretty terrible these days in America as you might imagine. The fascist takeover of America is definitely in motion and there is a certain feeling of powerlessness with that. Everyday there’s something new to be outraged, offended, threatened, and terrified by. 

Are you still located where you grew up?

- Sort of. I was born and mostly raised in New York City but lived in Los Angeles around high school, and moved back for college. I’ve always considered myself a lifelong New Yorker with a brief intermission in Los Angeles, a city I used to hate but have come to greatly appreciate over the years.

How was the music scene where you grew up? How were the beginnings of your relationship with this art-form?

- By the time I got into music I was in high school in Los Angeles. I was, and still am, a dedicated cinephile, and my life was entirely about film and literature. When I was 15 I thought I should play an instrument if only for the sake of being “well rounded” in my education, but soon the instrument took over my creative life. Los Angeles had some music but I wasn’t aware of a lot of it, especially improvised and experimental music at the time. I always felt more connected to the experimental music happening in NYC, however it wasn’t until I was older that I discovered the amazing history of experimental musics in Los Angeles (such as the ‘Los Angeles Free Music Society’ also known as LAFMS, or the music of John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Horace Tapscott, and the various noise music in the city and others). I was lucky to have some friends who were deep into jazz such as the late great pianist, Austin Peralta, who unfortunately passed away some years ago. Austin was the first person I really improvised with and I felt very lucky to have had that opportunity. I also had an inspiring teacher, Ralph M. Jones, who was a student and collaborator of Yusef Lateef, who encouraged me to pursue music and improvisation in my own way. He also encouraged me to see the overlap between my love of film, literature, and theory, and improvisation; suggesting I listen to Albert Ayler or watch films like “In the Realm of the Senses,” both of which were crucial to my development.

When did you realize music was the thing for you? The same time you realized that the saxophone was your main base-vehicle of transmission so to speak?

- Yes, around the same time. The more effort I put into the instrument, the more I got back, and eventually I decided to pursue music in college and take a break from film and theory. Discovering free jazz, improvised music, noise, contemporary composition, etc opened a lot of doors for me in my conception of what music could be, how it functions, and how I could find space for myself within it. Saxophone is still the only instrument I’ve studied. 

Now, I must admit, I’m a newcomer to - for lack of better words - the free/impro/experimental-jazz world. When did you first encounter these forms of music?

- In high school I got into Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Andrew Hill, Brotzmann, Evan Parker and many others. When I first got into Albert Ayler’s music it felt emotionally overwhelming, even a little taboo. It felt like I had encountered something that was too much for me, but like most things that seem taboo at first, I became fascinated by it, and had to investigate further. That feeling of engaging with work that initially felt scary or taboo became intoxicating.

In the concert’s notes it says you have collaborated with artists in the field from veterans like Joe Mcphee to younger artists such as Mette Rasmussen. Do you feel a difference in the approach, method or idea of the free-jazz form across generations? Does it stay just as «contemporary» as it did since the 60s?

- I’ve worked with a pretty diverse array of collaborators across ages, generations, genders, identities, and experiences, and I always find that diversity inspiring and encouraging. Working with Mette was wonderful because we’re about the same age but from very different backgrounds, however we were both engaging with similar musical interests very differently which was inspiring. Joe comes from a totally different generation but his openness is so inspiring; he makes it feel like anything could work. There is a difference in their approaches and reference points certainly, but if an artist is open, compassionate, and kind, it makes everyone easy and inspiring to work with. 

I think we’re at a strange place in history right now, where everything feels so post-modern and self-referential. Maybe that self-referentialism is, for better or worse, one thing that defines the contemporary approach more than anything else. The rapid pace of digital information and access to just about anything has definitely impacted this music and how people improvise. I have heard younger musicians whose approach to improvisation and structure feels informed by instagram and social media. I think the music now does need to meet the moment more substantially if it wishes to maintain relevance, and consider its place in a larger context than a purely social one. I think a lot of improvisers have resigned themselves (at least within the US) to this music being marginalized, and thus let it exist within a vacuum, which is a shame because I feel improvised music has a lot to teach our society about relationships, collaboration, compassion, intimacy, and communication.

Can you briefly talk about how you think the field has developed through time - especially since part of its ethos, I feel, is to transcend time and space? Or is it locked so thoroughly in the moment it can’t be but of its time and space?

- I think about time a lot, for me it’s less about transcending it but accepting that I’m a prisoner of time. I tend to focus more on the minutiae and intimacy of gestures across time in service of a longer form, which can feel like time has frozen or slowed down more than it really has. The best comparison I can really make, despite it being a bit cliche, is sex and forms of intimacy, whereby time slows down due to the focus you place on the other person(s) and your shared interaction.  

To better get to know you, I wrote these questions whilst I had a video of you playing from youtube on the headphones, titled «Michael Foster’s Ghost @ The Record Shop 5-14-23». I found it invigorating even for my amateur ears -  can you talk a little about this project?

- The Ghost is a longstanding project I’ve been working on that attempts to recontextualize the traditional free jazz trio within a homoerotic framework. Free Jazz is often spoken about in a masculinist framework that always felt deeply uncomfortable to me, and usually accompanied by a degree of heterosexism, while also being homosocial. I wanted to challenge this paradigm directly by placing those fetishized aesthetics of masculinist catharsis within an overtly homoerotic context, and away from a homosocial one. For this project I draw inspiration from 70s/80s leather culture, which similarly tackles and problematizes depictions of masculinity and catharsis, but also the work of Jean Genet, Derek Jarman, and the queer pinku films of Hisayasu Sato. This was also a reaction to, at the time, the lack of queer musicians in the scene, and the unchallenged homophobia and sexism. Around the time this project began, I was obsessed with the work of noise artist Richard Ramirez and his various projects that put queer sexuality front and center, contextualizing his work in a way I found deeply inspiring, and much needed within improvised musics. The Ghost, like many of my projects now, consists only of queer musicians striving to tackle the tropes and structures of free jazz with a mix of self-awareness and total abandon. We’ve recently been working on collaborations with bondage performers which has been really inspiring, and has taught me so much about how our music can better reflect their values of intimacy and trust.   

The ‘Pioneer Works - Residency’, stated that you work «between noise, improvisation, the jazz tradition, and queer theoretical practices». Can you tell me more about the noise part?

- I love harsh noise! I’ve been deeply inspired by artists such as Richard Ramirez, The Rita, The Gerogerigegege, The Incapacitants, LAFMS, Sewer Election, Heinz Hopf, K2, and countless others. In addition to my saxophonic work, I also work within harsh noise using microphones, mixers, samples, etc. I find a lot of noise musicians are extremely sophisticated improvisers, creating really unique structures from totally idiosyncratic instruments and set ups. I try to collaborate with noise artists as much as possible, as those collaborations really make possibilities feel endless. I also draw inspiration from their work and apply it to my saxophonic work, specifically for considerations of tone production and resonance. I see a lot of overlap between the work of someone like The Rita and a huge toned saxophonist like Eddie Lockjaw Davis, both of whom deeply (and fetishistically) engage with texture and nuance within tone. I used to practice long tones while listening to Harsh Noise Wall (i.e, Vomir) in hopes that the enormity of sound they produce would rub off on my tone. I also love cut up noise and the extreme approach to phrasing, often using mute buttons to create hard cuts of silence or sound, which has been immensely influential to my approach. Additionally, noise albums often engage directly with non-musical contexts, taking a fetishistic approach to thematic material that informs the work, which has also influenced me tremendously. Seeing the tapes of a queer artist like Richard Ramirez I felt “gave me permission” to integrate queer contexts into my work. In improvised music there can be a troubling trend of de-sexualization and abstraction without context, which is something I want to combat in my work, and in noise music these contexts are often front and center. 

It seems you are also thoroughly invested in the queer viewpoint, the above mentioned ‘practices’ but also as co-founder of ‘Queer Trash’ - can you briefly talk about ‘Queer Trash’ and ‘queer theoretical practices’? And how do they influence our sound?

- Queer Trash was formed by myself and Richard Kamerman (my other half in The New York Review of Cocksucking), after realizing we were often the only queer people at most experimental music shows. We hated that our lives as musicians and as queers had to be separate, so we formed Queer Trash to remedy this, and to host unapologetically gay experimental music shows. We wanted to feel safe bringing boyfriends, lovers, partners to our shows and not have them feel alienated by the overwhelming heterosexism. It’s exhausting to be around so many straight cis men all the time, and it’s also totally uninviting to people who might be interested in the music. It also makes the shows BORING and totally unsexy, and this music SHOULD be sexy and relevant to people’s lives. Improvised music shows can be so dull, so sexless, so male, so straight, so polite, and that’s so contrary to what the music should be in 2025. 

I think of improvisation as a specifically queer practice that explores interrelationality and intimacy between collaborators, which is something queer people are defined by; their ability and freedom to construct new conceptions of self and interpersonal relationships. The work of writers like Leo Bersani, David Halperin, Foucault, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia and Jose Muñoz directly inspire my approach to improvisation. Their work inspires an awareness of the nuances of interrelationality between myself and my collaborators, and proposing new ways of formulating our shared structures. 

Last question, thanks for bearing with me (!) - please tell about The New York Review of Cocksucking? (Too wonderfully salacious  wording to pass up without a tiny question)

- NYRoCS is one of my longest standing collaborations with Richard Kamerman. We met through Tinder when I was working for Meredith Monk’s foundation and hung out at a noise show, and quickly started making music together. NYRoCS can be really quiet “reductionist” type improvisation, or a full on harsh noise duo, or both depending on our mood. We often integrate erotic texts into our work, drawing inspiration from the Boyd McDonald zine, Straight to Hell, which had many alternate names, one of which was The New York Review of Cocksucking. We often utilize samples from films, the news, or other songs (like Madonna, Alanis Morrisette, Judy Garland, etc) as a way of forcibly inserting concrete context into our improvisations. For whatever shock value we may utilize, we also aim to make work that is in touch with a distinctly queer melancholy. We’re both immensely proud of this project and how it’s developed over the years. 

Tonight@2030 w/Kari Rønnekleiv solo CC (250/190), age: 20.

Blow Out! is supported by Arts Council Norway and Oslo Municipality. In collaboration with Konsertforeninga