Ecce Shnak

BIOGRAPHY

If there’s a fine line between wild-eyed, inspired genius and utter, irrepressible insanity, that’s where you’ll find Ecce Shnak, teetering on a neon tightrope.

“The present-day composer in America refuses to die,” was a famous statement from French avant-garde musician Edgar Varese quoted by Frank Zappa on the Mothers of Invention’s 1966 album, Freak Out!. New Haven, CT-born, New York City-based David Roush is living proof of that adage with his own musical project Ecce Shnak (pronounced Eh-kay Sh-knock) – the name taken from both Frederick Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (“ecce” meaning Latin for ‘Consider” or “Look At”) and a word derived from the Yiddish schnockered, meaning inebriated, but repurposed as a teenager for anything he needed it to describe. That may well be the best way to describe Ecce Shnak’s unique mash-up musical universe, a world of his own design he describes as Chamber Punk – “one part popular music, another part classical and a third part punk” with songs “about love, death, sex, change, bravery and food.”

The group subvert notions of style, playfully but reverently embracing multiple forms from across the spectrum, frequently within a single tune, while addressing weighty themes and notable trivia with striking articulacy. “Each genre has its own manner of expression, mannerisms, history, motivations, virtues, flaws, limitations, and so on,” Roush says. “At my best as a composer and lyricist, I listen to and respect each one, then whatever I take from their souls informs mine, inhabiting it, expanding, and merging.”

This musical mash-up offers a host of influences, including Gogol Bordello, Bjork, Deerhoof, Bad Brains, the Clash, and the Roots. Roush counts titans of classical music among his teachers: Claude Debussy, Franz Schubert, Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Leo Brouwer, among others.

With Roush as composer, bassist, and one of two singers, he is joined by Bella Komodromos (vocals), Chris Krasnow (guitar), Gannon Ferrell (guitar), and Henry Buchanan-Vaughn (drums).