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Incense Merchants improv the atmosphere
By Travis Leeper
“We were getting set up to play in one of the School of Music rooms at LSU, and the janitor was in there, and he just started sweeping the floor all over the place,” recalled Bill Kelley. “We were ready to play, so we just all smiled and looked at him and started going off of the sounds he was making.”
And that’s how the music often starts: with something quiet tickling your ears, waiting for its fellow spirits of music to drift out of the woods and join it. It leaves an arcane scent behind, just like a slowly-burnt stick of bizarre incense.
When you go into something unplanned, it’s either awful or amazing and the Baton Rouge experimental-improv group, Incense Merchants, is fairly knowledgeable about such things.
Formed by Kelley, an LSU recording engineer and audio artist, Incense Merchants consists of six LSU-involved musicians that meet every Tuesday to create whatever floats to the top of the mind. But if you think the result must be chaos, disharmonic noise, and randomness, you’re wrong. That only happens half the time.
“Heck no, we don’t talk about [the music] beforehand,” said Kelley in an interview with Tiger Weekly. “It sounds a little radical about it, but initially there was a lot of talking going on and it was taking up fifteen minutes of a two hour session, so we just don’t do that anymore.”
“I mean, it’s very much like meditating,” Kelley continued. “So we’re all in our own mental space, but at the same time we also share community creation. We’re all very internal, I think, very focused on just our ears.”
Incense Merchants consists of Raul Gomez on violin, Eric Shuster with percussion, Bill Kelley with keyboards, keyboardist and saxophonist Brad Walker, Marcello Vieira on cello, and guitarist William Osborne III. With backgrounds ranging from experimental to classical to pop to jazz, Incense Merchants have a sound that’s as unquestioningly genre-free and sublimely mystical. Cellos and simple synthesizers sometimes flutter beneath a sax solo, guitar harmonics, or even the sounds of a janitor’s sweeping caught on tape.
“Personally, I am 100% about creativity. I really try to encourage people constantly to be creative. Don’t do the same thing the way you did it before. You don’t want to get into a place that’s comfortable. I like to suddenly find myself in a jam and try to figure out how to get out of it.”
With no official collection of music released, the music of the Incense Merchants may be a little hard to track down. Their website, incensemerchants.com, not only showcases the musicians and their biographies, but also hosts a select few songs recorded by Kelley at the LSU studio. Some songs exist on CDs handed out at farmer’s markets, while some have never made it to tape. If you’re interested in experiencing the improvised atmosphere of the Incense Merchants live, check them out December 8 at the Red Star bar downtown.
Originally Published: Issue 825 – December 2, 2009