Music
Press
By Donnell Gavin; photo by Kathleen Koch
Yale University prides itself on graduating students who are as diverse as they are talented. The members of Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine, who will receive their Yale diplomas this May, are no exception.
When they started playing together, drummer Charysse Redwood — a self-taught Bay Area native, whose influences include metal and jazz — and frontman David Kant — who grew up listening to punk and classical music — had some trouble finding common ground.
Though the band members belatedly realized the first CD each of them ever bought was Green Day’s Dookie, their ambient-folk-punkrock- free-jazz-noise sound has come more from combination and collaboration than instant agreement.
“There are definitely things that I like that Charysse doesn’t like,” Kant said. “And stuff that she likes that I don’t like and that tends to get filtered out or re-contextualized.”
Both eager to form a band despite the University’s limited music scene, Redwood and Kant were introduced by mutual friends. After spending a few weeks jamming, with Kant occasionally objecting to Redwood’s aggressive drumming and Redwood rejecting his “straight Sleater-Kinney” guitar, they began to craft a sound that is
at times punk, folk, rock and jazz, while incorporating elements of contemporary classical music to free their song structure from the constraints of verse-chorus-verse.
“We provide good counterpoint for each other,” Redwood explained. “We come from fairly different musical backgrounds. I think where we do intersect is where our coolest parts come out.” Soon after meeting, the pair realized that one thing they definitely had in common was an interest in improvisation. As Redwood and Kant sit on a couch in a basement recording studio on Yale’s campus, their shared love of improvisation is palpable, as they interrupt each other and themselves mid-sentence to play a few notes on the melodica or a few bars on an acoustic guitar.
This kind of off-the-cuff composition is reflected in their songs, which shift genres frequently, never lingering in one melody for long in a complex pastiche of their favorite musical styles. “It’s hard for us to draw the distinctions between songs because
the way we approached it is that we started with fragments of pieces,” Kant said. “Whether it’s a short two bar vocal melody or a drum beat — and then we separate the fragments with improvisation or different sections.”
Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine have just finished recording their first full-length album and the studio is littered with instruments and cables, the evidence of many hours snatched between classes and homework over the past
four months.
“Recording was difficult because we didn’t have an engineer or a producer,” Kant said. “So the same day we had to worry about actuallyperforming, we also had to worry
about getting good drum sounds.” Add to that the difficulty of juggling their music with their lives as full-time students, both band members agree that the months of
recording definitely took its toll. After they finish mixing the album, though, it will all be worth it, because recording has allowed the band to transcend the limits of a two-piece. Even with their use of found sound material, effects pedals and Kant doing double, sometimes triple duty on guitar, vocals and saxophone, Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine has found a world of new possibilities in the studio.
“I think coming into the studio created way more opportunities to expand our sound,”
Redwood said. “The album doesn’t really sound like what we play live, or it does, but it’s bigger. Because we’re only two people, but there are a lot of channels.”
Having reconciled their difference, the band jokingly look forward to “money, drugs, women, cats and dogs” when they finish mixing (and graduating). The one thing they haven’t settled on, though, is their name, which is a play on Lady Ada Lovelace, who
helped to invent the calculator. Kant says it fits their sound, but both agree it’s too long, doesn’t fit on bills and is hard to say. It’s
just that nobody’s thought of a better one. - Performer Magazine
By Donnell Gavin; photo by Kathleen Koch
Yale University prides itself on graduating students who are as diverse as they are talented. The members of Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine, who will receive their Yale diplomas this May, are no exception.
When they started playing together, drummer Charysse Redwood — a self-taught Bay Area native, whose influences include metal and jazz — and frontman David Kant — who grew up listening to punk and classical music — had some trouble finding common ground.
Though the band members belatedly realized the first CD each of them ever bought was Green Day’s Dookie, their ambient-folk-punkrock- free-jazz-noise sound has come more from combination and collaboration than instant agreement.
“There are definitely things that I like that Charysse doesn’t like,” Kant said. “And stuff that she likes that I don’t like and that tends to get filtered out or re-contextualized.”
Both eager to form a band despite the University’s limited music scene, Redwood and Kant were introduced by mutual friends. After spending a few weeks jamming, with Kant occasionally objecting to Redwood’s aggressive drumming and Redwood rejecting his “straight Sleater-Kinney” guitar, they began to craft a sound that is
at times punk, folk, rock and jazz, while incorporating elements of contemporary classical music to free their song structure from the constraints of verse-chorus-verse.
“We provide good counterpoint for each other,” Redwood explained. “We come from fairly different musical backgrounds. I think where we do intersect is where our coolest parts come out.” Soon after meeting, the pair realized that one thing they definitely had in common was an interest in improvisation. As Redwood and Kant sit on a couch in a basement recording studio on Yale’s campus, their shared love of improvisation is palpable, as they interrupt each other and themselves mid-sentence to play a few notes on the melodica or a few bars on an acoustic guitar.
This kind of off-the-cuff composition is reflected in their songs, which shift genres frequently, never lingering in one melody for long in a complex pastiche of their favorite musical styles. “It’s hard for us to draw the distinctions between songs because
the way we approached it is that we started with fragments of pieces,” Kant said. “Whether it’s a short two bar vocal melody or a drum beat — and then we separate the fragments with improvisation or different sections.”
Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine have just finished recording their first full-length album and the studio is littered with instruments and cables, the evidence of many hours snatched between classes and homework over the past
four months.
“Recording was difficult because we didn’t have an engineer or a producer,” Kant said. “So the same day we had to worry about actuallyperforming, we also had to worry
about getting good drum sounds.” Add to that the difficulty of juggling their music with their lives as full-time students, both band members agree that the months of
recording definitely took its toll. After they finish mixing the album, though, it will all be worth it, because recording has allowed the band to transcend the limits of a two-piece. Even with their use of found sound material, effects pedals and Kant doing double, sometimes triple duty on guitar, vocals and saxophone, Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine has found a world of new possibilities in the studio.
“I think coming into the studio created way more opportunities to expand our sound,”
Redwood said. “The album doesn’t really sound like what we play live, or it does, but it’s bigger. Because we’re only two people, but there are a lot of channels.”
Having reconciled their difference, the band jokingly look forward to “money, drugs, women, cats and dogs” when they finish mixing (and graduating). The one thing they haven’t settled on, though, is their name, which is a play on Lady Ada Lovelace, who
helped to invent the calculator. Kant says it fits their sound, but both agree it’s too long, doesn’t fit on bills and is hard to say. It’s
just that nobody’s thought of a better one. - Performer Magazine
Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine, the duo now turned three piece, are about to release their new album Music for Two Musicians. David Kant, singer and multi-instrumentalist, tells me that the new project is “one large piece. So, in that sense, it’s not really an album at all. The album is divided into sections where new ideas emerge and where we thought track breaks would be convenient.”
Performing live, Lady Lovelace is a surprisingly dense experience, showcasing Charysse Redwood’s hard hitting drum beats and percussion behind Kant’s frantic sampling, saxophone playing, and guitar noise. Echoes of free jazz and folk rock are the biggest underlying themes, at least to most ears.
These new recordings are surprisingly similar to the live sound, and they no doubt show a rare attention to detail, which is especially impressive considering the improvisatory nature of the compositions’ formation. The whole album can be streamed on their MySpace, but Parts V and VI can be downloaded here, and only here my friends. - The Hippodrome
Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine, the duo now turned three piece, are about to release their new album Music for Two Musicians. David Kant, singer and multi-instrumentalist, tells me that the new project is “one large piece. So, in that sense, it’s not really an album at all. The album is divided into sections where new ideas emerge and where we thought track breaks would be convenient.”
Performing live, Lady Lovelace is a surprisingly dense experience, showcasing Charysse Redwood’s hard hitting drum beats and percussion behind Kant’s frantic sampling, saxophone playing, and guitar noise. Echoes of free jazz and folk rock are the biggest underlying themes, at least to most ears.
These new recordings are surprisingly similar to the live sound, and they no doubt show a rare attention to detail, which is especially impressive considering the improvisatory nature of the compositions’ formation. The whole album can be streamed on their MySpace, but Parts V and VI can be downloaded here, and only here my friends. - The Hippodrome
Discography
Goodbye, Charles Babbage EP (2008)
Music for Two Musicians (2008)
Photos
Bio
Tracks off Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine's four song demo, "Goodbye, Charles Babbage" combine folk, noise and rock, as well as free improvisation techniques that stem from the bandmembers' interests in jazz.
With only two permanent members, the band is forced to multi-task, playing several instruments a piece to make up for their small size, and using tape machines, guitar pedals, and computers for recording and playback manipulations. In addition to guitar and vocals, David Kant--a Connecticut native--also plays saxophone and some percussion. Drummer Charysse Redwood plays a variety of percussion instruments, including an assortment of African noisemakers and an electric guitar she balances precariously atop a drum throne and strikes with a drumstick.
Redwood, who hails from the Bay Area, says her influences include early '90s alternative rock, the Mars Volta and the soul records her mother listened to at home.
"From the time I was really young, I always listened to the drumming," Redwood said. "I finally got a set when I was twelve but it didn't have any hardware so the only way I could play was to put a drumstick in the hole on my bunk bed and put a high hat through a stick. I've never heard anything so shitty in my entire life and I was playing left-handed--even though I'm right-handed--because Zach Hanson was a left-handed drummer."
Kant, who also composes contemporary classical music, says this background also influences the band's songs.
"I don't try to distinguish between my work as a composer and my work in the band," Kant said. "What I really take from art music is a conception of larger works. The stuff we're doing now is probably 45 minutes and it's definitely more of a whole piece rather separate pieces and that's definitely something I borrowed from art music."
Because of its members different musical backgrounds, Kant describes the band's earliest practices as "more playing at each other than with each other." It was only with the discovery of their shared love for improvisation that they were able to reconcile their differences and begin making music together.
In addition to incorporating improvisation into their standard set list, the band also utilize pre-recorded materials on a hand-held tape recorder, and live recording and playback with a loop machine. Their use of electronics, as well as the members' varied influences, also helped to inspire their polysyllabic name.
"The name Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine is the result of a game of telephone we played with band names," Kant said. "I was also thinking about old punk bands from the '80s like Richard Hell and the Voidoids and I wanted to evoke that but in a new and sort of bizarre way."
The band has just finished mixing their first album, which will be available shortly.
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