David Roush, frontman and songwriter of Ecce Shnak chats to us about their new EP, philosophy and making art in a chaotic world.
Interview by Jane Howkins
Hello David. We checked out Ecce Shnak’s music and wanted to ask you a few questions.
Hey there Jane and everyone at York Calling! David Roush here, singer, composer and bassist of Ecce Shnak. Thanks for your interest in our band, and thank you so much for your patience in waiting for me to reply! I’ll be happy to answer these questions.
With the release of your EP coming out Shadows Grow Fangs, what can fans expect from the record?
It is the 4th release of ours. So far, we have released two other EPs, Letters to German Vasquez Rubio and Joke Oso, and a full-length album Metamorphejawns.
There are a lot of special things about this EP. For one, Shadows Grow Fangs is the first Ecce Shnak release that features our new singer Bella Komodromos joining me on vocals. In addition, we believe that this record covers a wide sonic landscape both more succinctly and more expansively than the other two EPs. In just 5 songs, we offer fans a wholegrain indie-rock song (Prayer on Love), an Avant-hip hop song (The Internet), a funny-metered prog-garage song (Shadows Grow Fangs), a choral-hued math-metal song (Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy), and the band’s first folk song to date (Stroll With Me).
The lyrics address the complex phenomenology of love, the absurdity of the internet, the madness of loneliness, the tragicomic fate of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and the grief one can feel from the death of a beloved friend to suicide.
We have also released a music video for every song. As is the case with most of our other videos, these videos were produced and directed by Brooklyn’s Milton Walker/Walking House Productions. We are tremendously proud of these pieces in themselves and as cinematic representations of the themes and imagery of these songs.
In addition, we are going on tour for eleven shows on the West coast this summer with Spacehog and EMF! We are utterly, ridonculously thrilled and honoured to be a part of this tour, and will play our bums off at every show!
How has the reception to your new singles been so far, and where can your EP be purchased?
We have had a bunch of celebratory reviews from music blogs internationally, Spill Magazine in Canada, De Queruza in Argentina, Real Gone in the UK, and others, and a lot of radio play on college radio in the US and elsewhere. Interestingly, our Latin American and South East Asian audiences have expanded significantly. It’s about darn time we go Brazil, Thailand, and elsewhere!
You can buy the EP on our Bandcamp page.
It’s a big feat to record an EP or album. Tell us about your band members and production crew.
So bandmemberistically, we got: myself, David Roush (composer/bassist/singer); Bella Komodromos (singer); Chris Krasnow (guitar); Gannon Ferrel (guitar); and Henry Buchanan-Vaughn (drums).
The album was produced and engineered by Jeff Lucci at the Art Farm, mixed by Nicolas Vernhes, and mastered by Joe Laporta.
What can you tell us about your song Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy? Am I right in thinking that the title of the song is a reference to the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham? What prompted you to write a song about him, and can we expect more philosophy-themed tunes in the future? I’m a bit of a philosophy buff myself!
Yes, you are right about that reference. I used to live around the corner from the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is now a museum, but it was once a functioning prison. I learned from visiting the penitentiary that they were one of the first prisons in the US to utilize solitary confinement under the suggestion of Jeremy Bentham. I knew nothing about him at the time, and so I assumed he must have a been a cruel dumbass to have advocated for this pointlessly brutal policy. However, he was not at all a cruel dumbass, at least not entirely. He was just confused and alienated. It was one of those Hell-from-good-intentions circumstances.
I studied a bit about him and found his ideas fascinating. His utilitarian political philosophy arguably serves as one of Karl Marx’s main influences. Perhaps most bizarre and telling was his curious relationship with his own mortality. Before he died, he arranged for his body to be taxidermied and displayed in his usual attire in seating position, top-hat and all, in a glass case. Isn’t his head still on display somewherein London? How macabre!
I found all of this fascinating, absurd, sad, inspiring, angering, and funny. I had a bouncy instrumental lying around. I thought to myself: what if I just shouted ‘Jeremy!’ at the beginning of that one and just ran my mouth about him for that track? The rest is history, pun intended!
And yes, there are philosophical themes throughout our songs, and there will be more in the future. The name of the band, in fact, is a reference to Nietzsche’s autobiography, Ecce Homo. In Latin, “ecce” means “behold.” The word “Shnak” is a word I came up with when I was a young man that means whatever you want it to mean. In a combination of Latin and personal nonsense, “ecce shnak” means “hey, look at this!”
Your music has a really distinctive sound. What/who are your main influences?
Thank you! I would say that my compositions are various combinations of heavy music, classical music, and pop music. Deerhoof, Gogol Bordello, Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Bjork, Queen, and the Roots are some of my biggest influences. Sheesh, they really are all over the map! From the “art-music” side of things, I would say that Harry Partch, John Coltrane, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Benjamin Britten, and Ornette Coleman are some composers/instrumentalists that have been life-changing for me.
You’re from New York City. What is the music scene there like at the moment?
I think there is a sense of exhaustion in our cultural lives generally now, maybe throughout the world, as things are in such chaos, peril, and transformation. That said, people still make friqq’n art, after all. A couple months ago, I saw one of the better hardcore bands I’ve ever seen, Rebelmatic, open for Billie Woods, one of the best hip hop artists to have ever lived, at Brooklyn’s Baby’s Alright. Rebelmatic then joined us for our EP release party a couple of days ago at the Red Pavilion. The bill was rounded out by genre-and-gender bending art-rocks MZZTR. It was a stupendous evening! In the throes of all the crapola, people still do our damndest to have celebration and community.
Do you have anything else exciting coming up over the next few months? Are you already composing new music?
So, we have a full-length album fully tracked, actually – 12+ songs! We’re really really really excited about that material, too. We’re in the the mix/master/A&R stages for that record and are schlepping out to LA to shoot some music videos in May.
Do you have any live dates or tour lined up? Might we anticipate seeing you perform here in the UK some time?
See above re: the West Coast tour with Spacehog and EMF. We would absolutely *¡love!* to play in the UK. We are crunching the numbers now on the how and when, but rest assured that as soon as we can, we will fly our little asses over there and rock out with you. If we have our shite together with this tour, well then maybe those blokes will just keep us on the bus with them when they go home later this year!
Any last words for the fans?
¡¡¡Dear Ecce Shnak fans!!! We are sososososo fooqin’ thrilled to play this music and our older music for you. Should you come to a show, please wear your fav dancing shoes and the most preposterously garrish outfit you have and dance as much of your whole asses off as possible, if not 100% of your whole asses. We are ready to rock and shnak that hard. Stay in touch with your loved ones and with yourselves. Try to do small works of focused care and justice in this cuckoo world in which we live. And take very good care of your very good selves!
Shadows Grow Fangs is out now and you can give it a listen below.