Steve Holtje spent years afraid to take a piano proficiency test, so he never finished his music degree at Columbia. Now he makes his living managing one of jazz's most storied labels while playing trombone through distortion pedals in Brooklyn. His noise duo Phantom Honeymoon combines his buzzing brass with Alexandra Beneski's effects-laden theremin in music that would probably terrify his old composition professors.
The duo's new EP Interstellar Underpass captures five improvised pieces recorded in a single studio session. Holtje uses his trombone as what he calls a "noise machine," switching between that and keyboard while Beneski manipulates her theremin through an array of effects pedals. The results range from spacey drones to buzzing textures that confused the vinyl pressing plant's quality control team.
After spending two decades writing classical music and filing it away, Holtje returned to performance through Brooklyn's DIY venues. The Bushwick and Ridgewood noise scenes gave him permission to stop worrying about technical perfection and focus on what happens when two musicians listen to each other in real time.
Lawrence Peryer: How did you and Alexandra connect to form Phantom Honeymoon? The combination of theremin and keyboard/trombone seems unusual even for experimental music.
Steve: Alex had bought a used theremin with the idea that when combined with an array of effects pedals, it would be an interesting instrument to hear in a noise context. We started as just trombone and theremin—for a short set at the Freak World Festival—and I chose trombone for that partly to differentiate it from my other groups where I play keyboard (33 Chords and the Truth, What You May Call It, etc.), and partly because trombone is a great noise-making machine and allows for unlimited microtonality. But when we started playing longer sets, I added keyboard to give my lips a rest and to allow for more variety of sounds. So it's a mix of conceptual thinking and practicality.
Lawrence: You mentioned Phantom Honeymoon came out of the Bushwick/Ridgewood noise scene. What is special or unique about that particular community, and how does it differ from other experimental music circles you've encountered?
Steve: It's the most open, loving, supportive scene I've ever witnessed from the inside. Anything goes, anything can happen, and nobody's being competitive or saying "that's not how you're supposed to play that instrument." I've been mesmerized by Bob Bellerue (who puts together the amazing End Tymes Festival every year) pushing metal bowls around on a concrete floor for fifteen minutes. In a way, it's a combination of Duchamp and Cage: putting a frame around something not normally considered 'art' or 'music' concentrates one's attention in a way that focuses appreciation and makes one more aware of the interesting aspects of what's happening sonically and/or conceptually.
Lawrence: Your extensive background includes music criticism, label management at ESP-Disk, and academic editing. How does this editorial and curatorial experience inform your approach to improvised music?
Steve: My work in cognitive neuroscience editing for Oxford University Press gave me some ideas about creativity and perception that freed me from thinking strictly about notes. It reinforced in my mind the Albert Ayler quote, "It's not about notes anymore. It's a sound—a feeling." There's also a certain amount of Zen involved—I read a lot of D. T. Suzuki and sat zazen for a while before my knees got too damaged from sports. My old career in music journalism exposed me to a lot more kinds of music than I otherwise would have heard. My music business experience with ESP and, before that, Black Saint has had much less influence, aside from inculcating a tendency to enjoy combining players from differing backgrounds and practices. Although without having met David Drucker of Painted Faces (two albums on ESP), I wouldn't have been nearly as aware of the Bushwick/Ridgewood scene, and he's also how I met Alexandra, so there's that.
Lawrence: What made you decide to take your music from private exploration to public performance?
Steve: I had classical training. I mean, I joke that everybody who ever had piano lessons had "classical training," but I studied music theory and composition at Columbia. Ironically, I didn't get my degree in music because I was afraid of the piano proficiency test that was required. Anything requiring perfection scares me, and I have to go through some mental gymnastics to play in public. But for two decades after the last performance of my college post-punk band in 1983, I kept composing classical music. Work it out at the piano, write it down on staff paper, stick it in a drawer (although I did put together a concert in 1988 featuring three of my classical song cycles, and there were occasional private performances at house concerts—but always with a more skilled pianist than me playing what I'd composed).
Then from 2004 to 2010, I worked at a record store in Williamsburg, and met a lot of twentysomething musicians who made me realize that technology had evolved to the point where anybody could make an album in their room and put it out on CDRs or whatever. For a while, I shared my apartment with fellow record-store employee Ray Raposa (R.I.P.), who at that point was leading a protean band named Castanets and would just have people come over and lay down a track. We began to jokingly call our apartment 'the studio.' Some of the folks I met through the store ran underground (and not always exactly legal) performance spaces, and I got back into putting my music out into the world in various ways, though performance was kind of tangential.
A little after that period, drummer Ken Kobayashi, an alum of Tama Art University who knew my wife of the time through the New York Tama alumni group, started pushing me to jam with him. Though somewhat shy about improvising, I eventually acquiesced, and the second group we were in, Caterpillar Quartet, played a gig the night of the Super Bowl in the back room of a bar. Only one person showed up, and he's a friend of mine who had been in the previous band with Ken. Playing in a context where there was zero pressure was very freeing for me. It helped me be less self-conscious about improvising, and not being afraid to play "wrong notes" led to fewer wrong notes and then to the realization that there are no wrong notes in free improvisation, just notes played with a Zen-like awareness of what's happening in the moment. This, combined with the idea that music's about shapes and gestures, helped me shed my last inhibitions about improvising and performing in public.
Lawrence: How does the performance context affect your improvisations?
Steve: It's very hard for me to put into words. There are so many factors—a general vibe from the audience, a more specific but still undefined vibe of the different musicians interacting with each other and with the vibe of the audience, the way the instruments and pedals feel that day and within the acoustic of the space, and more subtle things. I will admit that in more formal venues, I will make a point of quoting something familiar to establish that yes, I do have that formal training, even though it may not be obvious on the surface. Bach and Monk are favorite touchstones for that.
Lawrence: You recorded this at Park West Studios with Jim Clouse rather than in a live setting. How did the studio environment change your improvisational dynamic?
Steve: The main effect is that little things could be tweaked, not least the after-the-fact reverb Jim put on the trombone on "Solaris." I did get into some particular sounds that day based on the particular setting of my distortion pedal and the settings on my Yamaha PSR-282, and I could explore them at greater length than I might in concert—and, of course, only the best parts got chosen for the EP in the end, so there's no angst if an improvisation doesn't go well.
Lawrence: What happens in "Alpha Centauri Calling,” the seven+ minute track that opens the EP, that requires an extended duration?
Steve: I formed a particular focus, inspired by the sounds we were getting out of our instruments, about communication across the vast reaches of space, and in the moment, that seemed to need room and time to spread out in.
Lawrence: Alternately, “Haacker" stands out as the shortest piece at under two minutes. What else makes it different from the others?
Steve: Sometimes we move through a variety of moods, but this one stuck to one idea, and when it had said all there was to be said, we ended it. I very much follow Alex's lead, though I think she feels like she's following my lead. That's probably why we work well together; we can be very intuitive with each other.
Lawrence: You're releasing this on vinyl at 45 RPM on a twelve-inch—an unusual format choice. What drove that decision, and how does it serve the music?
Steve: Sound quality is crucial for music such as this, which depends on texture for its effect, and 45 RPM on a twelve-inch, where the sides are not lengthy in terms of time, really allows the sound to blossom fully.
Speaking of sound, a funny thing happened during manufacturing: the quality-control folks at A to Z Media alerted me that they were concerned about some spots that had distortion. Of course, I checked the points they'd identified; I was happy to report to them that the distortion was produced not by digital clipping but rather is a deliberately produced buzzing effect on the trombone. Since, as mentioned, I'm using trombone as a noise machine, I relish that confusion.
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