Seasonal Beast – the band’s name suggests something wild and ever-changing. The sound is dark and delicious, with lush texture and a sense of volcanic force pulsating beneath the dreamy surface. Yuval Semo’s musical project, Seasonal Beast will be in Tel Aviv for one night only at The Zone, on Saturday, September 16, 2017 – a pre-release show for their debut album Muscle Memory. Performing with Semo will be New York based musicians Yula Beeri – vocals, Isaac Henry Gardner – drums, and Israeli musicians Nahdi Lazar – bass, Khen Chen Price – guitar, and Idit Mintzer – wind instruments. Semo took a quick break from rehearsals to talk to Midnight East about music, muscle memory, and the heart of it all.
Muscle Memory
Warm, open, and spontaneous in conversation, Semo was off and running as soon as I asked him to comment on the title of his debut album.
“The title was the last thing I had to come up with, it took me a long time. I had some guidelines: I didn’t want to call it Seasonal Beast, or by the title of one of the songs. I was talking to people, friends, and I had a method – I would ask them a question and they had 5 seconds to answer: What’s the name of my album?”
On one of these occasions, Semo asked the question, then instinctively answered it himself: Muscle Memory.
“It means many things,” Semo elaborated, “from a musician’s point of view, it’s something you utilize when you learn to play – this is just the surface. It’s also the heart, a muscle, and the things that it went through and remembers. It’s a mechanism in the human body, it’s there to save you and help you survive. It’s how we walk, it’s when something startles us and we react, something our body does to protect us. It puts you in a habit, and you do things whether you want to or not. It’s about survival, and it can also make you stagnate.”
On the band’s name – Seasonal Beast
“Coming up with names is very hard. No band name is a good name. With Seasonal Beast – first I had the songs, then the band members, then I booked a show and I had to come up with a name. I first thought of Kingsland, because that was my cross street. One night at 3am I was coming home after hanging out, and saw a post on facebook with a quote from Robert Wyatt’s Sea Song: “You’ll be different in the spring, I know
You’re a seasonal beast.”
Listening to Seasonal Beast’s songs and the introspective tone of the lyrics, it comes as no surprise that the journey towards the album has been a solitary one. Semo writes and produces the songs in his home studio in Brooklyn, playing most of the instruments.
“It’s a long process,” he said, “me cooking the songs. It’s not very collaborative until that dreadful moment – the point when I am forced to start sharing them with other people.”
Onstage with Semo at the Zone will be music collaborators both past and present: “Yula is the singer, unfortunately, I cannot sing,” Semo easily confesses, “She’s my alter ego. Isaac Gardner, her husband, is a renaissance man, he’s a Blue Man in New York, a carpenter and a great drummer. Khen Price used to live in New York, he played in the first incarnation of Seasonal Beast. Idit Mintzer is a good friend, she’s performed with the Andalusian Orchestra, and many ensembles. Nahdi Lazar has been a friend for… 20 years, we met in the army through a friend and bonded over music. We used to have epic sessions, he was one of those people who had a computer, and we’d experiment.”
Musical Journeys
“I was never…music was always a hobby for me,” said Semo, “I grew up around musicians but never considered myself one of them. Music was just ‘something that I do’ – with no aspirations. I studied film in high school, and served in a film unit in the army.”
At some point, he decided: “Fuck it, I’m going to Berklee.”
“I’ve been playing piano since the age of 10. I taught myself, which is both good and bad,” Semo reflected, “I took piano lessons as a kid, but quit at the age of 10. I didn’t really learn but I always played. It was my favorite room in the house. I played with Rona Kenan, Eatliz on their first album. At Berklee I spent four years feeling very frustrated that I can’t play like Charlie Parker, the way everyone else could. But once I began the composing chapter, I rediscovered my place in music.”
Semo composed music for films and commercials, and also began performing, something he says, “I didn’t have the balls to do, too scared and intimidated, at Berklee. My own music was always on the side.” He performed with Kaki King and the Mountain Goats after composing string arrangements for their album, appearing with them on the David Letterman show. Eventually, he “decided it was time to do my own thing, get them [the songs] out of my hard drive.”
So far just three of the album’s songs have been released, but many have been hiding in Semo’s hard drive for several years. “There is one song I wrote in Boston in 2005,” he said, “four songs that were finished four years ago. It’s really a release, they are released after being captured for such a long time.”
Where do the songs begin, is it from a musical phrase?
“Yes,” Semo affirmed, “it always starts from a musical phrase, an improvisation…or more like a search. Not necessarily near the piano. The memo recorder on the iphone, the shower where great ideas come. The piano happens to be the easiest for me to express music on, but I try to avoid writing music on it, it limits me, because of muscle memory… sometimes it helps me. My mic is always connected, it’s very easy for me to record an idea. I sing in gibberish, in English, words that come to my mind, and sometimes those words end up staying. Usually, what turns me on, what attracts me, is a musical phrase, even a sound, rarely a lyric. Music gives me much more, time to understand what I want to say and how…stuff comes out of the music and I don’t know what it is…I’m playing words, but I’m not like one of those people that have a notebook filled with poems, waking up and strolling to the river with a notebook. It comes from the music.”
Seasonal Beast will be performing at The Zone (13 Harechev) on Saturday, September 16, 2017. Doors open at 21:00, tickets are 40 NIS in advance/50 NIS at the door, and may be ordered online via this link. Check the facebook event for updates.
The New York album release show will take place on October 13, 2017, at Rockwood Music Hall, stage 2.
Links: Seasonal Beast website, facebook page.
