See Jazz
On November 10, See Jazz the Brooklyn-based recording project of Aaron Pfannebecker will release their debut album Is This Anything? The project uses drum machines and synthesizers as collaborators and templates for warped bedroom collage pop guitars and earworm vocals. The band exists to make songs that are textures on top of textures. Inspired by outsider art and living in space and a world all its own, See Jazz is music for outsiders.
See Jazz is excited to share "Dance With Me," the first single to be released from Is This Anything?. The track, out now on Flower Sounds, can be shared at YouTube or Bandcamp and is available on all streaming services for any playlist shares.
On the song the band's Aaron Pfannebecker says:
'Dance With Me' is about the distance between people in the city or the suburbs. It’s all the same. Perspectives shift in song between two people. Both are alone and can’t contact each other. They’re both trying to comfort themselves and that other person who’s beyond the reach of any communication besides the ethereal. 'Dance With Me' features Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride, Jeanines) on bass. It’s a bedroom synth jam you can dance to and get lost in and a collage pop dance song with a hooky bass line. Ears might think of New Order memories.
Is This Anything? was recorded in NYC in Queens and Western Massachusetts before and after the pandemic but not during. “I couldn’t make anything during that time,” Pfannebecker says. “I lost someone close to me, and the world was so out of whack. I went into a cocoon.”
Lyrically, See Jazz sings about America now and what it feels like to be lost in it. See Jazz sounds like what would happen if Nick Nicely, New Order, and The The had a baby.
Adam Langellotti from Kurt Vile and the Violators plays bass on all songs but one. Jed Smith from My Teenage Stride and Jeanines plays bass on "Dance With Me." Zara Bode from Sweetback Sisters, whose grandfather was Vaughn Bode (the Beastie Boys have a line about him, “I’m a Cheech Wizard like Vaughn Bode) sings on "1982" and background vocals on "Heaven Is."
See Jazz is for uncool people everywhere scattered to the edges of contemporary popularity contests. Is This Anything? is a patchwork quilt of melodies made to make your ears dance and help make you new friends.
Aaron Pfannebecker has played in Drawing Boards and Sisters and been covered in Stereogum, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, NYLON Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, and played shows with Atlas Sound, Dum Dum Girls, No Age, A Place to Bury Strangers, Jeff The Brotherhood and many more.