Tortoiseshell Music Home of composer Nathan Curtis

Listen to This: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Today, I wish to draw your attention to composer, bandleader, and extraordinary gentleman Darcy James Argue. Argue and his 18-piece big band, dubbed the "Secret Society," received a lot of attention from the jazz press last year, centered on the release of their debut album, Infernal Machines. Infernal Machines has a lot to recommend itself to listeners: a tight ensemble, some great solos, and Argue's deft compositional pen. Argue has also been held up as a poster child for establishing a fan base through the internet; long before Infernal Machines came out, Argue was putting up live recordings of his gigs and posting insightful commentary about the New York jazz scene at his site. Throw in a positively ecumenical mix of musical influences ranging from contemporary big bands to indie rock groups to post-minimalist composers, and it's easy to see why so many media outlets are eager to brand Argue's Secret Society as the fresh new face of jazz.

This is all very well and good, but doesn't fully explain why I hold Argue in such high regard. No, I've been harboring a composer-crush on Argue because he's a great composer, great bandleader, savvy internet marketer, and a big ol' geek. He's an avid comic-book reader, taking inspiration for his ensemble from Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He is unashamed about his enthusiasm for a marginalized and practically obsolete performance medium. And most notably, he turns these potentially stigmatizing attributes into virtues, calling his style "steampunk big band." And he really means it.

By "steampunk big band," I don't mean a big band that performs in Victorian attire with brass accessories, though Argue himself has been known to cut a dapper figure elsewhere. I mean that he has taken the steampunk conceit of using obsolete technology to achieve modernistic ends and applied it to the medium of the big band. In his music for Secret Society, Argue "evokes an alternate musical history in which the dance orchestras that ruled the Swing Era never went extinct, but remained a popular and vital part of the evolving musical landscape." To that end, he draws heavily on indie rock style and compositional practice. He cites as inspirations such bands as Animal Collective and Tortoise, and for the latter inclusion I should take notice simply as a matter of principle. (I should also listen to more Tortoise, as a matter of principle. I haven't heard much, but I like what I've heard.) Which is not to say that Secret Society is a glorified rock band; swinging hard and rocking out both come easily to the group. And if that's not enough, Argue also likes to build compositions around polyrhythmic and metametric techniques inspired by the likes of Steve Reich and the Bang on a Can composers. There's an awful lot going on in a steampunk big band, apparently.

But what does a steampunk big band sound like, you ask? Well, I don't have to try to explain, because Argue has been so generous with his recordings. As I said before, just about all of Secret Society's live performances have been archived online, and Argue's label, New Amsterdam Records, has been equally generous with Infernal Machines, allowing you to preview the entire album. I could easily get lost in the live performance archives, so let me walk you through the tracks on Infernal Machines:

• Phobos: Argue has said that he made a point of starting the album off with something that didn't sound anything like a conventional big band, and drummer Jon Wikan's intro on digitally processed cajón is a far cry indeed from Count Basie or Glenn Miller. But in my opinion, the highlight of this track comes at the end. In the last three and a half minutes, as Mark Small's tenor sax solo dies down, the horns come in with a gorgeous harmonization of the opening melody, leading into an ending which would suffer from any attempts at explanation.
• Zeno: This is one of those pieces that draws on the metametric techniques I mentioned earlier. Metametrics, to borrow a term from Dutch composer Samuel Vriezen, refers to the superposition or juxtaposition of rhythms suggesting multiple tempos. In this case, rhythmic subdivisions in 5/4, 12/8, and 6/4 all contend for dominance, creating an illusion of shifting downbeats which is perhaps meant to recall Zeno's paradoxes of motion.
• Transit: This song hews most closely to the big band tradition -- it is in a straight-ahead 4/4 swing feel most of the way through, and the overall structure is recognizably similar to the standard head-solos-head structure of most jazz tunes. At the same time, Ingrid Jensen's flugelhorn solo illustrates a distinctive feature of Argue's compositions: the use of improvised solos as an integral part of the arc of the piece. In most big band jazz, the arc of the piece is concentrated entirely in the written sections, with the improvised solos standing apart from the continuity. But in "Transit," Jensen picks up the arc and carries it most of the way through. In some of the earlier live recordings, it sounds as though the soloists are unused to this concept, but on /Infernal Machines/, they are uniformly solid in this regard.
• Redeye: If "Transit" is the most traditional big band composition, then "Redeye" is the closest to indie rock in sound and style. Sebastian Noelle's guitar is front and center almost the whole way through, while Argue engages in timbral explorations with the synthesizer and muted horns. The piece is in 7/4 throughout, but it's so seamless that you wouldn't know it without counting beats. "Redeye" also gets some of the most beautiful melodies on the disc.
• Jacobin Club: Another piece in a slow 7/4, but that's all it has in common with "Redeye." While "Redeye" is hazily beautiful, "Jacobin Club" is sharp-edged and sinister. The piece opens with tenor saxophone, trombone, and bass clarinet in sinuous counterpoint, and Jon Wikan's snare drum is a menacing presence when the rest of the band comes in. Sam Sadigursky and Mike Fahie improvise a conspiratorial duet together, and the intensity builds up to what I can only presume to be Robespierre's execution.
• Habeas Corpus: This is by far the darkest piece on the album. Dedicated to Maher Arar, a Canadian national who fell victim to the US's policy of extraordinary rendition, it ranges in mood from somber to desperate. Throbbing repeated notes in the band and James Hirschfeld's raw trombone solo anchor the piece.
• Obsidian Flow: This is the other heavily metametric piece on the album. Here, the rhythms all center around different subdivisions of 9/8, splitting 9 eighth notes into 3+3+3 or 4+3+2, and occasionally pitting one of these rhythms against a straight 4/4 beat, with a stray beat throw in every other measure to keep things even. And I have no qualms whatsoever with Argue's bass trombone writing, especially prominent in the ending.
  
  So that's Infernal Machines, featuring Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. I hope you enjoyed the tracks, and if you did, I hope you will support Argue by purchasing the album. If you look at the performance archives, it is clear that Argue and the Secret Society easily have another album's worth of material ready, and I for one would like to hear their sophomore release. But Infernal Machines was an expensive venture for Argue, and it would take a lot of support to make a second album a reality. Another way to show your support is by seeing Secret Society live in concert. They play a lot of gigs in New York, but this Thursday they are making their Boston-area debut at Regattabar in Cambridge. I'll be there; will you?