"Anyone is capable of improvising" - An interview with Madam Orange

Madam Orange is the duo project of bass clarinetist Emily Beisel and drummer/percussionist Bill Harris. Beisel and Harris combine their respective sonic worlds into a project that often sounds like far more than two people playing, pushing toward the outer limits of heavy improvisation, rhythmic interlock, amplification, and feedback. Their music moves fluidly between dense, aggressive intensity and spacious, highly sensitive textures, driven by a near-telepathic musical connection and a shared interest in extending acoustic instruments through electronics. Their debut album is available now, and as I wrote in my review, I find it quite fascinating. I wanted to learn more about it, and Beisel and Harris were kind enough to answer questions about it via email. Our conversation is below. 

For those who have never listened to improvisational or experimental music, how do you recommend that they approach the genre? Is there an easy way to get people excited about avant garde music, or do you feel like a certain base level of musical appreciation is required before approaching the genre?

Bill: I think improvised music definitely requires a bit of a need and want to have a new and unknown experience, but I think often times the freeness of it can actually be quite cathartic and doesn’t require much “background.”  In general, anyone is capable of improvising, and so the bar to do so is low (i.e. there is a lot of work by “experienced” improvisers who intentionally work with folks who have never or rarely improvise, because the “newness of the thing” is the interesting part of it), or the idea that sometimes improvised music fails, and the act of watching musicians or artists try to build this living/breathing (but also fleeting) sculpture in real time – that can fail or succeed – is an incredibly interesting and unique experience. Improvisation can range from jam bands like the Grateful Dead to the most experimental and strange, like Wandelweiser, and all of these things share the same improvisatory ethos. The very first notes ever created by humans must have been improvised.

While Parallax isn't a metal album like we normally cover, there are certainly heavy moments. "Rilles" caught my attention initially because it reminded me of bands like Neptunian Maximalism that perform jazz music that connects with heavy audiences. Other tracks are sinister or haunting - "Malingerer," for one. Would you call this a heavy album? What does that term mean to you?

Emily: I’d say this is a heavy album in that we are using a lot of amplification, distortion effects, I do death vocals (though the bass clarinet) and many of the sound worlds are very intense.  Many of our influences are heaving including doom and drone groups like Sunn and Sleep and rhythmically complex groups like Daughters, Car Bomb, and Mars Volta.  “Heavy” to me means that the sound world has a physical weight to it that in performance is felt in the body as well as the mind. I have played a lot of contemporary composed music that often uses sounds that mimic the density and spectral complexity of distortion but are generally lacking the decibel level to bring them into a powerful physical listening experience. It feels great to take those sounds and add the volume level that they can be immersively experienced - you can close your eyes, feel them in your stomach and be swept away by them.  So I think to me “heavy” at it’s best offers a gateway to some level of transcendence.  

What is your relationship with heavy music in general?

Bill: I grew up playing heavier rock and punk music, so I’ve had a long relationship with heavy music. I tend to find the loudness of it cathartic and freeing.  In Madam Orange we tend to incorporate heaviness with moments of quiet and calm, which really accentuates the peaks and valleys of those two worlds.

"Rilles" and "Straight Rilles" open and close the album, and are very similar tracks. Did they start as one song that was broken in two parts, or is one an attempt to recreate the other?

Bill: This was a “zone” we had worked out while we were on our 2023 tour, which immediately proceeded the recording of the record. We intentionally made it short, and when we recorded it in the studio, we did maybe five takes and liked a lot of them. We thought it would be nice to incorporate two of them as bookends, to illustrate that it was an intentional space we wanted to be in, even though it is largely improvised. 

This album stemmed from live improvisation sessions. I've heard many musicians say something to the effect that their art is never complete, it just reaches a point where it's "good enough." Is improvisation just that artistic process on a more immediate scale?

Emily: Releasing a recording of something improvised is always more of an artifact than a finished product, a record of something that’s inherently ephemeral. My approach is generally to do many takes, each within the same sound world, and choose from among them. We did this for the tracks on Parallax that were recorded in the studio: "Rilles", "Apogee", "Arid Place", "Ephemeris", and "Too Fast and Not Enough."  

When recording music in this fashion, what standards do you use to determine if a song has been successfully birthed into the world? Is there material from these recording sessions that just didn't work?

Bill: Definitely, I’d say there was a ton of material in both the live and studio performances we did for the record that did not make the cut, especially the live performance since it was all just one long 45-50 minute performance. We both heavily consider the flow of a record, and so we wanted to find spaces and zones of the recorded material that would fit nicely in a digestible record.  This means cutting a lot of the fat to make something palatable to listen to.

Should you perform music from this album live, will the tracks sound the same, or will they continue to grow and mutate live?

Bill: we have intentional “sound zones” that we like to get in to when we perform, some of which are taken from the Parallax record. But within those zones, we’re fully improvising, so they will never sound the same with each performance.

This is a question for Emily specifically. I would like to hear more about how your work as a curator elevates femme, trans, and nonbinary artists in your community. 

Emily: Thanks for asking!  I have a monthly series that I curate called Pleaides. A big part of the series is the free improv jam sessions that happen at the end of each event which are open to all femme/trans/gender fluid performers. The intention was to create more connections and a sense of special community as well as a chance to play with the curated performers. It was born out of a feeling of frustration with seeing many lineups which would either be entirely male dominated or have one femme/nonbinary person included so there wasn’t always a great chance to connect and play together.  It’s been really joyful to create this space and feel that it is really serving this purpose. I’ve met so many new people and have had new improvisers come out to jam and then go on to perform regularly in the city.  It’s an access point and one that I’m so grateful and honored to provide.  

How do you address societal issues or themes through instrumental music?

Bill: I personally don’t believe that highly abstract music is a good avenue for addressing things as important as societal or political issues, especially niche or underground art that doesn’t have an immediate avenue of addressing large amounts of people. As artists, we need to do so much more than just make art; I don’t believe art is going to save the world. We need to get active, get in the streets, vote, get politically active, organize, get to know your neighbors, create community. Not to say that art isn’t important, the world needs art and art has the great potential to put a magnifying glass to issues in a way that other things can’t.  But the real important thing I see with art is its ability to create community. The world needs more grassroots communities being built and working together, and art has a huge potential to do that.

Shifting gears, we also write about fitness on this site. What is your relationship with fitness like? Do either of you have a preferred routine or exercise?

Bill: both Emily and I are avid bikers, Chicago is a great town to bike in. I personally try to keep in shape, but no specific routine. I try to do body weight exercises each day.  Drumming is also a great cardio and strength exercise.

Is creating music part of your mental wellness routine?

Bill: Absolutely. I couldn’t go on with out it, to be honest.

Emily: One hundred percent.