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SCAVENGER
art from the abyss
text – music – visual
“scavengers are essential for ecological functioning because they speed up the decomposition process” avibirds.com.
SCAVENGER was originally conceived as a musical project where the majority of the songs would be built from discarded sound files.
In November 2023 Richard X Bennett was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and SCAVENGER became something else entirely: a multi-media exploration of pain, garbage and chemotherapy, created during his six month long treatment.
The music is soaring, grooving and emotional. The twenty-five minute six part video is lo-fi and raw, drawing on images of trash, botany, mutating cells, prison destruction and rXb’s own idiosyncratic dancing. An inveterate story teller, Bennett even draws on life experiences as backgammon gambler and trash collector in weaving his metaphorical web.
The movie “SCAVENGER in six parts” is ambient in nature.
“It’s like stained glass windows in motion, to be seen running in a loop on walls, floors or roofs. Text is used but never becomes foreground. It’s all in the mosaic.”
The six parts are:
1) twelve days of chemo
art installation slowly torn down
2) all i have left is my words
memory and loss
3) love and garbage
destroy the jail
4) how to kill a plant
amaryllis arrives and dies
5) backgammon
gambler makes ultimate bet
6) my elegy
afterlife fantasy
About the SCAVENGER music Bennett says “I didn’t stop being funky just because I was sick. The easiest thing on the piano is to sound depressing so that was avoided. Vibes are also featured prominently. My vibes were rescued from an abandoned storage container so they fit the theme perfectly. People sent me tracks from around the world and I layered them on top of mine.” Along with the studio tracks is an eighteen minute raga development taken from a concert at Columbia University in February.
The SCAVENGER world also features “Love and Forgetting” (Ropeadope release: 12/6/24) an imaginative reimagining/remix album with the British electronic musician Aaron Dolton (aka HUW). “L&F” has poetry by Paula Jeanine Bennett as well as rXb that refers (however obliquely) to illness. There are also recitations about metaphysics, mortality, pilgrimage and cell phones.
rXb says: “it’s beautiful music. HUW takes obscure parts of my new songs and creates a boombap jazz universe. Lay back and listen to it and your problems will disappear.”
SCAVENGER in six parts uses music from both releases.
Asked about theme, rXb says “obviously cancer overwhelms your life, but making art during this time was cathartic. Hopefully these pieces will impact and help others as well. I’d be delighted if it gave people some deep pleasure.”
richard x bennett – videos, songs, piano, vibes, harmonica & melodica
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Pianist/Composer/Filmmaker Richard X Bennett plays modernistic and soulful music with a wide ranging sound all his own. He has numerous jazz and electronica releases on Ropeadope Records, Ubuntu Music and BYNK Records as well as six critically acclaimed raga-based records on Indian labels. Beyond the sonic, lies the visual. rXb’s videos evoke a myriad of emotions through their abstract, whimsical, and esoteric nature. The music is all about groove and beauty, while the visuals are raw and ambient. These different elements are juxtaposed to create fresh art that doesn’t care about tradition or convention.
“unabashedly joyous, groove-centric, spiritually danceable” NYC Jazz Record
“fresh and inviting…Bennett pursues his own path to take us somewhere unexpected” DownBeat Magazine
“rambunctious, rude and downright catchy” Paste Magazine