REZN: Shoegazing Into the Metal Abyss

Electronic musicians have tackled a problem that has long stumped many bands - how to navigate the chasm of energy that yawns in between songs. DJs and electronic acts focus on smooth, if not seamless transitions between songs. Bands however, particularly rock bands, rarely have a means of weaving together the raw ends of songs when performing onstage. The time-honored methods of filling pauses between songs are usually given over to tuning strings, cleared throats, individual drum hits, and maybe some banter. 

Rarely does the idea of filling the space between songs with electronic sounds and textures rear its head. Especially in the world of metal, any instrumentalist outside of the canonical triumvirate of guitar/bass/drums is kept on a short lead, and often restricted to a gimmicky scratch-DJ setup, or a theatrical keyboard rack. Noise or chaos are mostly regimented to amp feedback and crash cymbals, and usually a sidecar to the main course of big riffs.

All of this familiar terrain is what sets Chicago-based REZN apart from their peers, and from the often rigidly conservative paths of the metalosphere. A major part of that distinction is due to Spencer Ouellette - a saxophonist and experimental synthesist who is a founding member, and plays a crucial role in a band that straddles the boundaries between stoner doom metal and heavy psychedelic rock interspersed with David Lynchian soundtrack vibes.

The unique ingredients of REZN’s composite blend started when a group of friends who worked at Chicago institution Schuba’s Tavern and its associated concert venue Lincoln Hall, started having jam sessions. “Three of them started messing around in Pat's basement making these, like, sludgy stoner riffs just because it was fun and loud and cool.” Ouellette had been learning his way around a Moog Mother-32 synth and the band pressed him into joining a session where they were going to record a demo. They said, “we want you to just lay down whatever you can with this thing. Just, literally sound effects.” At first, he was resistant to the idea of committing to a band project, but misgivings melted away as soon as the group was jamming together. “It took no time for me to be totally 180 degrees on that. I'm fully in and it's as much my baby as it is any of theirs. And they'll attest to that.” Ouellette’s initial hesitation came down to not knowing how he could fit in as a synth and especially saxophone player in what was, at the outset, mostly metal. “I didn't want to step on their toes with something weird that wasn't what they were trying to do. But as we all grew together musically, they were the ones who convinced me to get the saxophone out.”

The unorthodox layers of Ouellette’s instruments has added to REZN’s blend of styles that make the band stand out from a scene that walks pretty rigidly within fixed lanes. Their output often has as much in common with post-rock experimentalism and shoegaze as metal. This broad palette leaves a lot of space for someone like Ouellette, who’s able to weave sax layers into freewheeling jams that are equal parts stoner metal and psychedelic progressive rock. Ouellette says that getting their first album out and well received brought on a realization among the members that “this is an opportunity to kind of do whatever we want, because we all love so much more than just heavy music. By necessity, there has to be other things going on in the music at this point. Every record we make, at some point during or before the writing process we sit ourselves down and ask routinely the question, ‘how are we going to become better musicians?’”

Putting the pursuit of personal and group development as musicians above dedication to a specific genre or scene has helped make REZN something more than an anomaly. Their fandom seems to thrill at the surprising breaks from norms. At a recent concert in New York, fans made as many approving screams at Ouellette’s synth interludes and sax solos as they did at any of the punishing riffs.

The feedback loop of band members looking at each other to push their limits has fed the band’s development from album to album. “We're all on the same wavelength as far as trying to introduce what otherwise isn't usually in this kind of music, but it’s become more of a question of who's gonna do it? It's easy for the guy with the crazy box and the horn to do that, but everybody's got to do it.”

Approaching each new stage of the band's life as a chance for growth and challenges led to each album having a distinct theme based on an environment, with the intent to immerse the listener in that imagined space. Their recent full-length Burden, was written and recorded at the same time as their last album, Solace. Written and intended as companion pieces, the band intentionally wanted them to be separated rather than a double-album. Spencer describes the pair thus: “Solace has more optimistic, ambitious, ethereal themes and then Burden, the other side of the coin is definitely themes of claustrophobia and misery and darkness - thick, heavy, and dissonant.”

While the band were pushing themselves to work with these concepts and shape the music around themes, they were also angling to find new strata in their songwriting. “We were a little more particular about trying to work with time signatures and tempos. It’s definitely more temporally focused than previous records. That was something that we collectively didn't tap into until then.” This is a recurring aim among the members - stretching the boundaries of the genre space they occupy by stretching themselves as creators. “It's a way of chipping away at our musicianship and leveling it up and seeing how we can dig deeper and make the songwriting the focus, but be particular about the strategy.”

It’s not an accident that the amalgamated result of all these stretches puts them squarely outside of any easy category or subgenre. The members all feed on a broad diet of listening to diverse corners of the music world. As a touring band, “we spend a good amount of time on the road and we listen to a ton of music. I have a weird thing in the van where I don't like to re-listen to any album that we've ever listened to in the band, even past tours or anything.”

Criss-crossing North American and Europe can mean many hours of listening time, and a commitment to avoiding repeats means they have reached some very deep corners of the musical biome. So what tends to get the most traction in the van? “Dub is a big one because dub is almost symbolically the original fusion of the studio and the musician, the electronic and the organic. And so we all cling to that pretty easily, and that is a big source of inspiration. Rob is a huge Scientist fan and King Tubby. Death metal is a big one because well, we are in a metal band, so we gotta stay sharp. And we all definitely, genuinely appreciate death metal. Bands like Death and Darkthrone. There’s a lot of electronic music, rhythmically oriented and ambient stuff, we're all big on that. Rob and I especially love, like, dub techno, of course, and we listen to a lot of the Basic Channel stuff, Huerco S. and Autechre. And everybody's an Aphex Twin fan, of course.”

This puts Ouellette in a prime position, as the synth box wizard for a heavy band, to stretch out, knowing that his bandmates are as keen on King Tubby and Aphex Twin as they are on Darkthrone. From a live perspective, he has a lot to play with. “The modular synth is a core part of the performance. And the saxophone as well, of course. Mostly what the modular is responsible for is, like, lead synth lines, crazy pitch sweep stuff and filter sweeps and fast LFOs, modulating whatever and making bizarre sounds. I've got a couple of Make Noise Morphagenes in the rig that I do a lot of sample manipulation with.”

The leap between studio recording and live performances doesn’t daunt Ouellette. “A lot of the times in the studio when I'm coming up with something with the modular, I don't worry about how it's going to be recreated live and then I have to struggle through the process of recreating whatever I did on the record to make it happen live. I try my best to do exactly what I've done, but I'm not a very good note taker. So I usually have to retrace my steps, hopefully accurately from memory. It keeps me pretty in tune with how the system works because I have to know how to be able to hear something and know what's going on there. I just have to map this to this and, yeah, attenuate this or whatever. When we've recorded a record and we're ready to play songs live, I usually take a couple of weeks to just stay at home while the guys practice, reestablishing not only the sounds that I've made on the record, but a patch that can do all the sounds with minimal changes live.”

His approach to recreating sounds post-facto is an intentional choice to preserve the freedom to go where he wants when recording. “When I'm in the studio, I don't want to think about if this is an economical, patch-wise option to make this sound. I want to just make whatever I want to make. Because I want the record to sound the way I want it to sound. I'll figure out the rest later, you know?”

Download Spencer Ouellette’s free Murmur and Spectral Blessings custom device Racks

*Requires Live 11 Suite or higher as well as several free/donationware 3rd party devices – see detailed notes in the download.

This back and forth relationship between the live show and the studio practice ties back to REZN’s unique approach to filling the gaps between songs on stage. Bassist Phil Cangelosi can trigger WAV files premade by Ouellette from a pedal that have been. “I use Ableton as a modular synth because there's way more that can be done with Max and Ableton than an actual modular synth to create generative music.” The band will create a set list, and then choose from a range of interstitial pieces to weave from one song to the next. “This creates a non-stop sonic set. Because we don't want any silence unless it's part of a song. So while people have an opportunity to tune or do whatever they have to, take a drink of water, this looper will play back these pre-recorded, generative, things that I've made in Ableton.”

During the pandemic, REZN’s onstage sonic threading actually made its way into a cheekily titled album Infected Ambient Works.

As to where the band goes next, it’s a work in progress, but one that all members are committed to making. “It's just unfolding moment by moment, especially since you're working with three other people in this case, and you really never know what weird creative door or actual door is going to open. Ideally, it keeps going this way because people seem to be receptive to this different thing and all I could ask is for it to keep going that way. And as long as we just keep trying to be better at what we do, it's completely artistically fulfilling to just be surrounded by people that are on the same page.”

Follow REZN on their website, Instagram and Bandcamp

Text and interview: Kevin McHugh

Photo: Alex Viscius