In which Greg Tate interviews Greg Tate about Burnt Sugar’s New Album ‘The Rites’ and Related Matters

Burnt Sugar vs. Stravin­sky? How did we get here? Why y’all tripping?

GT It was really more a case of Burnt Sugar vs. Butch Mor­ris. Uncle Igor was just an inno­cent bystander who got caught in our crosshairs or our short­hairs as the case might be. This project has an odd cir­cu­lar his­tory. About two years ago Burnt Sugar was approached by the chore­o­g­ra­pher Gabri Christa who was inter­ested in us com­ing together to work on a large scale Robert Wilsonesque col­lab­o­ra­tion we took to call­ing ‘Rites of The Amer­i­cas’. I had come up with the idea of adapt­ing motifs from Le Sacre Du Print­emps for a series of impro­vi­sa­tions. Fund­ing for that project fell through but when Gabri’s com­pany Dan­za­sia was invited to do Cen­tral Park Sum­mer­stage last year we revived the Stravin­sky idea and brought in Butch. Given how many sick bass lines there are in his writ­ing, Stravin­sky makes per­fect sense for a band that loves to vamp as much as we do. S’no won­der he rec­og­nized James Brown as a kin­dred soul.

I thought Butch was your friend. Why abuse him so? Every­body knows your band doesn’t like to play any­thing the same way once.

GT I’d been look­ing for a way to bring Butch into the mix since we started this band back in ’99. Though I always acknowl­edge that our con­duc­tion method­ol­ogy is based on his, I felt there needed to be a well-promoted and pub­lic recog­ni­tion of our debt to Butch. Sum­mer­stage brought him into con­tact with our audi­ence. In the rehearsals Gabri was so bowled over by Butch she adapted con­duc­tion to dance. So we had dancers and musi­cians being con­ducted on the same stage. The record­ing was done sev­eral months later after the band had for­got­ten every­thing we’d learned for Sum­mer­stage so we spent about four hours reac­quaint­ing every­one with the basic baton ges­tures and hand sig­nals. I secretly and sado­masochis­ticly caught a thrill watch­ing Butch wear their inat­ten­tive asses down. Negroes left that ses­sion with headaches, Yo. Believe that.

Pete Cosey, Yo! That was a coup.

GT Serendip­ity all the way Yo. Another icon of every gui­tar player in this band. We had been want­ing to record with Pete since he came and saw us at The Empty Bot­tle in Chicago. I remem­ber he told us he was so excited by the music he wanted to jump on stage but restrained him­self because he didn’t know the for­mat. I told him he was the for­mat. Those 70s Miles joints–Agharta, Pangea, Dark Magus, Get Up With It –are you kid­ding? Pete just hap­pened to be in town to do an episode of The People’s Court. No lie. This club pro­moter had roy­ally stiffed his band Chil­dren of Agharta so he sued him and won on The People’s Court. No lie. Pete met Butch in the stu­dio and what can you say: he laced the tracks lovely. Re Melvin’s par­tic­i­pa­tion: our reg­u­lar bassist Jared Nick­er­son was out of town so we grabbed Gibbs. It made sense because he and Pete have played together a num­ber of times since the 80s. In fact they went off to do another ses­sion some­where way out in bone­fuck­Brook­lyn after they were done with ours.

This is Burnt Sugar’s fifth album in three years. Why is the boop­sie so obsessive-compulsive?

GT I live to make records. Mak­ing music is just a means to the end. Rel­a­tive to what Toni Mor­ri­son and Samuel Delany said about their nov­els, I make records I’d like to hear but can’t find. I have some­thing of an ill romance going on with all aspects of the process—the record­ing, the mix­ing, the mas­ter­ing, the pack­ag­ing, the liner notes, the reviews, the release party, the whole damn she­bang. It’s the one thing I could do twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and not get krazy­mad­bored with myself. That said we’re actu­ally releas­ing six albums this year of which ‘The Rites’ is the first—there’ll be another dou­ble set of orig­i­nal mate­r­ial com­ing out in July (BLOODYBLACKSEX YALL LIBERATION & RANDOMVIOLETS), a Miles Davis trib­ute album com­ing out in Octo­ber, a solos, duets and trios set on the heels of that, a ‘Rites’ remix project, and a truly ‘black metal’ thing com­ing out around Christ­mas as part of a ten CD box set of all our work to date. Clearly we’re about all self-canonization in the ‘03.

Any other hid­den agen­das you’d care to reveal?

GT ‘Real time impro­vi­sa­tion with con­tem­po­rary musi­cal tech­nol­ogy in con­tem­po­rary musi­cal ver­nac­u­lar.’ Same as every­body else who never got over their Weather Report period.

Greg Tate. May, 2003