Bandleader Darcy James Argue on the Genesis of Brooklyn Babylon

Darcy James Argue describes his 18-piece Secret Society ensemble as a "steampunk big band," but that's not exactly literal. The composer and bandleader does operate on a similar, cross-genre and -era aesthetic as steampunk, but his jazz big band doesn't fully embrace the subculture's outlandish fashion, for one, and it also works with elements of indie rock, world music, and sometimes comic-book culture. The latter in particular, in the case of his second album Brooklyn Babylon. It is the musical end of a collaboration with Croatian comic artist Danijel Zezelj, who created an animation to go along with live performance. Ahead of Argue's performance of Brooklyn Babylon's music at the Atlas on Saturday, the bandleader talked to Washington City Paper about the nature of multimedia collaboration, the music with and without animation, and how improvising fits into the framework.

Washington City Paper: What was the genesis of the Brooklyn Babylonproject?

Darcy James Argue: Well, basically, shortly after Infernal Machines came out, I was called up for a meet-and-greet with Joe Melillo, who's the executive director of BAM. It was sort of billed as a very casual meet-and-greet, but at the end he asked—and I'd had sort of an inkling that he might—"Well listen, if there's every any artistic project that you have in mind that might require BAM's financial resources to execute, let us know."

And so I actually said, "Well, funny you should mention that," and I whipped out one of Danijel's forthcoming graphic novels that a friend of mine at Vertigo had kindly slipped me an advance copy of. At that point I hadn't met Danijel, but I knew going into that meeting that I'd need something prepared to pitch him. So I thought about what it might entail, and it went through a lot of different possibilities and potential collaborations with artists outside of the jazz world. Something with dance? Something with film? And I ultimately decided, "Well, something with a comic book artist would be cool."

As I said, I had a friend who was working at Vertigo, which is a comic and graphic-novel imprint, and she recommended some people. I saw Danijel's website and instantly thought, "OK, this is the guy," and I bought everything I could get my hands on of his. Then I discovered that he was very experienced with multimedia collaborations with musicians–he'd done many collaborations with [saxophonist/composer] Jessica Lurie—and the visual style was a perfect mesh with my sensibilities. So then it was just a matter of me sitting down with him and saying, "We might be able to pitch something to BAM if you're interested." I think he was pretty skeptical when we first met for coffee; I don't think he was necessarily a big-band fan, but when he heard the record he was like, "OK, this makes sense."

Read more: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2013/05/17/bandleader-darcy-james-argue-on-the-genesis-of-brooklyn-babylon/