Nicholas Szczepanik Interview with Tanner Menard

For about a year now I have been getting to know one of the most talented and driven young men that I have ever dealt with, Nicholas Szczepanik . His new album co-released on Basses Frequences & his own label SRA is by far his best work to date and in my opinion sets the stage for what is to come from this perhaps visionary young sonic artist. With carefully selected photography from the artist and architect Avery McCarthy the ‘Chiasmus’ is a complete artistic package that combines stunning visual beauty with sonic and stylistic innovation.

One of the things that has struck me most about Nicholas in the year that I have known him is his vast vocabulary of musical knowledge. Whereas I come from a classical background, and often understand things in the pseudo-scientific language of music theory, Nicholas has an ear untouched by conventional learning and his voracious appetite for music of all varieties informs his compositional choices in powerful and often surprising ways. What strikes me most about the ‘Chiasmus’ is the fluidity with which he is able to synthesize a variety of styles. In much of the music of the ambient and minimal experimental genres, artists tend to take an approach of utter consistency. It is refreshing and perhaps noteworthy to hear Szczepanik’s forays into recombinant style and form.

Whereas the first movement entitled ‘Another End of New’ takes the listener through a surprising array of changes, the three latter movements take a more traditional drone approach. In our conversations on AIM, I sometimes call Nicholas the dronemeister. For such a young man, he has such a sophisticated sense of how to take a solitary sonority and transform it into a writhing, undulating ocean of melody and emotion. From what I gather, his material is often derived from rather arcane sources, old keyboards, small record players and old microphones combined with his use of various tools on the macintosh. Somehow, he is able to transform these in really amazing ways that defy the austerity of much of the drone music of today. In listening to the ‘Chiasmus’ one might assume many things about the future course of this precocious young composer and one might even take a hint or two about the future of ambient and experimental music. A future of openness and diversity.

If you have to make a choice today between dining out or purchasing the Chiasmus, I recommend putting your money into something that will give your ears and your heart lasting nourishment. Help support all the artists and label owners who contributed to this really amazing project. This is an album that won’t soon leave your playlist and may just influence the course of things to come.

Nicholas Szczepanik Interview with Tanner Menard

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