I’m not sure how many other locals are aware of it, but the great actor Steve Buscemi (“Boardwalk Empire,” Reservoir Dogs, Ghost World, Fargo, etc.) has been an Ulster County resident for several years. Sorry, I’m not going to say what town he’s in; I figure most A-list actors move up here instead of Hollywood because they like their anonymity and they love the area for the same reasons the rest of us do—and of course I respect that anonymity, as you should as well. I only bring Buscemi up here because he’s a local and was recently involved with a very cool musical project. And, as you may know, local musical stuff is my beat at Chronogram.
In 2014, Buscemi paired up with revered New York experimental guitarist Elliot Sharp for a performance at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room as part of a city-wide celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of literary legend William S. Burroughs. For the collaboration, Buscemi read several retooled edits of the legendary Beat writer’s “cut-up” passages as Sharp created appropriately unsettling sound fields behind him. Luckily, for those of us who weren’t in attendance, the recorder was rolling, and the resulting document was released this year as Rub Out the World. On the disc, Buscemi’s disturbingly droning delivery is perfectly paranoid and Cold War-era-claustrophobic a la the spirit of the man himself. In fact, the whole affair shines a light on the perhaps heretofore unrecognized influence of the Naked Lunch author’s art on Buscemi’s approach to certain characters he’s played on screen.
Here’s the chilling “Taking the Virus”:
Rub Out the World is out now on the Infrequent Seams label. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/infrequentseams/.
This article appears in December 2016.
