A Practical Course In Musical Shapeshifting - Julien Cantelm of Abnormal Mammal, Kilikili, JUX, The Danny Green Trio, and Kelp Giant
On the off chance you're the type of individual who has ever been in a public setting with live music in San Diego, there's a good chance you've heard Julien Cantelm. As one of the most sought after session players in Southern California, Julien's easy going demeanor and deep reservoir of unassuming skill has made him one of the most popular girls at the party that is San Diego music.
Still don't remember him? Let me jog your memory: Do you remember that time you were casually walking down a street in North Park and feelings of satisfaction and inadequacy triggered by equivalent amounts of dopamine and serotonin bubbled up? Chances are, that was you as a musician walking by a Cantelm session.
A few years back, in The Before Time, as my friend Chad Deal has coined the era before Covid 19, Anastasya and I are on one of our long and meandering walks through Normal Heights. We end up a few miles away from where we started at The Black Cat, a rare bar and one we go out of our way for. In the dimly lit interior, owner Matt Parker serves drinks with bartender Tara Reis while some nameless band plays whispery acoustic guitar songs in changing time signatures.
Matt is a tall, wiry man, kind to musicians and bar flies. He could be Jack Skellington's brother, offering the cheap therapy of open ears and stiff drinks. I check the Black Cat Instagram for the band lineup and to satisfy my addiction to social media. Fresh Veggies, it says. Abnormal Mammal.
I'm drawn into the changing meters of Abnormal Mammal. When a musician writes music you can't dance to, I know they're something of a kindred spirit—a fellow soul tangling with the difficulties of solipsism in a social art as they explore music for music's sake. The show is good; aesthetically different from the hyper masculine nature that the math rock genre can contain. It's a gentle music, more akin to a math folk, as though a Joni Mitchell archetype had spent more time exploring rhythm. The resulting long and meandering melodies hover over moody chord progressions.
We stay for the gig. And so we encounter Julien for the first time on his acoustic guitar, singing. With him on a stage, lit by the backs of neon signs, jazz guitarist Louis Valenzuela plays on bass, accompanied by drummer Michael Hayes. Their set is several dynamic levels softer than what you'd expect in a dive and Anastasya says, “When music is soft, it invites you in. It draws the listener closer.”
Abnormal Mammal is weird, different, compelling, interesting, and I want to find out more.
A couple years and a bunch of gigs later, we're packed in my car driving to Glamis. Vanya Voronin, Anastasya's cousin, a therapist, sits shotgun. Behind us, squeezed into one row, are Anastasya, Julien Cantelm, and his girlfriend, composer and vocalist Lexi Pulido.
Vanya is decidedly more Russian than Anastasya and is something of a rogue intellectual type. He's tattooed, works out a lot, and has an affinity for fancy leather footwear and muscle shirts. On a long enough timeline, all my friends become my shrink, and it helps when the friend is actually a shrink. It's not my best characteristic. It's not even in my top three. Vanya's a funny dude, and always has a good Mexico story that makes you feel like showering after you hear it. A couple decades earlier, Anastasya and Vanya would run around in Russian fields, picking berries. A couple decades later, they still know each other, they're still friends, and there's something beautiful about that.
Behind Vanya is Lexi, and Lexi is half Filipino and half some kind of white. I have vague memories of riding a bus around UCSD with her in a previous life where I lived with a chemist in graduate student housing. She's dark hair and dark eyes, a large voice, and a good heart. She seems animated; not in a “lively” kind of sense, but in the I'm-quite-possibly-stuck-in-a-perpetual-performance-although-at-it's-heart-it's-genuine kind of sense.
And next to Lexi is Julien who has cultivated an image of the musical monk. If life were a martial arts movie, Julien is the musician you would meet in a cave in the woods practicing quintuplets with an arm tied around his back. With a slight build, long hair, and a narrow face, he's quick to smile and laugh. One of the busiest musicians in town, Julien participates in a wide variety of projects ranging from the aforementioned Abnormal Mammal where he sings and plays guitar, to bands such as JUX, The Danny Green Trio, and Kilikili, where he lives behind a drum set.
Glamis is other worldly, a serene and alien landscape with a healthy sprinkling of off road vehicles sporting Trump and confederate flags. The temporary inhabitants of the desert are not the most enlightened individuals, but they seem to be having fun and I suppose someone's existential duty is keeping southern rock alive for future generations. We should be thankful that that burden hasn't fallen upon our shoulders.
For the Bottom Feeders photo shoot, Anastasya wants Lexi to represent water and Julien to represent earth and they're both people who take comments like “Be water,” and “Be earth,” in stride, without question. Perhaps UCSD trained Lexi to be able to handle these kinds of instructions. The rest of us are just inherently weird, and Lexi has more than once regretfully mentioned that “Some people need school.” Then again, maybe it's a chicken and egg situation.
We play in the sand as a small hum of anxiety accompanies the dirt bikes spinning around our haunt. Anastasya makes Julien dump jugs of water on Lexi's head, and Lexi is a good sport, albeit cold as the sun begins setting. Julien is made to trek the dunes while holding his cymbal like a shield. The day ends with salami and crackers and mandarin oranges.
Then, a several hour drive home as Julien discusses how music helped him come of age after a wild Floridian childhood dictated by a one handed schizophrenic mother, an absent father, and bouts of homelessness till he made his way west.
Kilikili's recent album, Agency, exists in a landscape between musical theater, Oingo Boingo, jazz, and indie rock. The brainchild of Lexi Pulido, the band is backed by a talented group of musicians assembled by Julien which includes Harley Magsino of OrchidxMantis on bass, Grant Fisher of JUX on guitar, and Sam Pratt on tenor saxophone. “I couldn't believe they wanted to play with me,” says Lexi, humbly. “I think it's only because Julien asked them to.”
Agency opens with the track, “Done Done It”. Grant and Julien start with a rhythmic ostinato that simultaneously creates and fills in space. Lexi's spoken word rhythms enter and Julien's drum beats weave in and out with her rapid vocals. Lexi creates contrast as the piece progresses with longer breaths and more legato lines, juxtaposing her initial tact. The piece continues into rhythmic abstractions while Sam's saxophone line quotes aspects of Lexi's opening before finally arriving at the compositional device of saxophone and voice momentarily synthesizing before parting ways. This technique is employed to great effect at multiple instances throughout the duration of the album. The A section of the song re-enters with vocal variations. Grant and Julien end the piece with the unassuming guitar lines and rhythms of the beginning, creating a compact box for the piece to live within. Structurally, this is an intelligent way to play out from the initial ideas of a piece, while reminding the listener what it is they are listening to.
Following “Done Done It” is “Hansel and Gretel,” the featured single off the album, complete with it's own video by the talented director Bobby Best of Broady's Work. From a lyrical perspective, half of Agency is a Lexi Pulido self meditation while the other half is a social commentary that goes between ironic assessments of the situation we happen to find ourselves in, and incredulity. This song is an embodiment of the latter. Minimal instrumentation colors this second track, accentuating the rapid vocal lines that have a breathless and racing quality. Grant tastefully ends the piece with a well executed ritardando.
Third up is “Kilikili,” a composition with a great sense of building energy. Lexi's ability to think energetically about music is on display as well as Julien's ability to support and elevate any musical situation — a heightened characteristic Julien brings to all his projects. “Savior Ambition,” a title which is a play on the lyrics “Save your ambition / For the kitchen,” skewers the hidden misogynist and works as something of an earthy feminist anthem. Lexi's intelligent use of vocals and saxophone in unison lines creates a powerful backdrop to an already powerful voice creating high points in a lush center section framed by angular rhythms.
The only cover on the album, “Once Upon A December,” is barely reminiscent of the original piece from the movie Anastasia. I've sight read through the tune a few times in the past as Anastasya (the person, not the character) sang along. However, the Kilikili cover comes across as a parallel universe version of the song; a universe in which Rasputin must have put the whole of Russia under a spell that requires minimum amounts of diminished 5ths for songs to be released to the public. With that being said, I'm a fan of Primus, the 20th Century Fox movie, and the oddity of Kilikili’s cover.
“Fadtashtik” shows another dimension of Lexi's singing ability. She sing-laughs through the song, which would be at home in the Oingo Boingo musical, The Forbidden Zone — but would also be comfortable on Of Montreal's surrealist album Cocquelicot Asleep in the Poppies. Following “Fadtashtik” is “Free Trade,” a piece that begins with a relaxed samba, almost lazy sounding, and is followed by a large crescendo and a very contrasting operatic quality in the chorus. Lexi's voice sounds carnivorous. In my notes, I write, “Meat is a weird word to sing passionately.”
The album ends with “Life Is All Over The Place,” a song containing my favorite lyrics. “Time is a curious disease / Eating away at lonely people like me.” Julien employs orchestral drumming ideas, creating a large and emotionally impactful ending to an excellent album.
Agency as a whole has a feeling of inevitability combined with coalescing and dispersing energy. Lexi, San Diego's resident vocal juggernaut, backed by Julien and friends, combine their expansive skill sets for an album worth being proud of. Then again, with this lineup of musicians, of course it was going to be good.
It's been a few months since Glamis, and I send off the first half of the article to give Julien an idea of what is happening. He takes issue with the line:
“Then, a several hour drive home as Julien discusses how music helped him come of age after a wild Floridian childhood dictated by a one handed schizophrenic mother, an absent father, and bouts of homelessness till he made his way west.”
He sends me a couple rewrites before saying, “As messed up as she is, and as insane as the things she's done which really are borderline evil and schizophrenic, I don't want to bash her at all. It's not her fault. She's just fucked up, whatever the medical terms are for it, and can't help herself.”
I ask him if I can include what he said and his desire for a rewrite instead of actually rewriting anything, and he says, “Sure.” He then relates a story about his mom trying to have an exorcism performed on him by two priests when he was a teenager.
The day before publishing he sends another rewrite stating, “Then, a several hour drive home as Julien discusses how music helped him come of age from a wild Northern Californian childhood to a borderline insane Southern Floridian adolescence, which was somewhat dictated by his extremely unstable and disabled Mother, an absent father, and bouts of homelessness till he made his way west.”
My take away from our brief conversation is that whatever parents decide to do, on some level, we love them. As adults, we establish boundaries, but whether its biological or simply illogical, it's something we all contend with. And we can't understand children without understanding their parents, and we can't understand parents without understanding their parents, and so on and so forth until we're back looking at proto-humans making questionable child rearing decisions and perhaps even further back than that. But for a moment, let's pause that line of thinking, which happens to be one of my favorite lines of thinking, one I explored briefly in the Moans article, and move forward.
Another month goes by and I call Julien again for some clarification on his teenage years.
“Freshmen and sophomore years (of highschool) were toxic nightmares,” he says. “It was horrible. It got to the point where it wasn't safe to be home. My mom would pick up a pan or a candle holder and chuck it at me. She sent me to a juvenile detention center. I'd stay at friends’ houses. I had two or three friends and I would kind of bunny hop from house to house. I'd stay at one place for a month or a month and a half, and then I'd stay at my uncle's place for a few days. He owned a duplex, and when I was a junior I was working on boats as a valet... so I threw some cash down on that efficiency and I lived there for a few years and six months. That's when I played in a weird punk band with Eric Andre.”
Something in Julien's nature and musical sensibilities stems from those experiences. The kid with messy parents grows up to be a neat freak. The kid with unstable parents grows up to be an accountant with a white picket fence. The kid with uneducated parents grows up to be a college professor. The kid with an abusive mom hiring priests to perform exorcisms grows up to be a talented drummer? Maybe there's something off in my formula. Maybe seeking to understand people is a lost battle at best.
I started this article back in the The Before Time. Back when musicians still gigged, and we all still had jobs. Now, in “The After Time,” all the musicians I know have been scrambling. Everyone's out of work now, and it's been hard. But the gigging jazz community has been hit the hardest, with Julien among them.
It may be a while before we see the regularly gigging musicians of the world back to their work, sound-tracking our society with their aesthetics. There's always been an element of uncertainty that accompanies our profession, and Covid 19 in combination with AB5 has been the equivalent of a wrecking ball to many careers. There's an accompanying injustice as well, that those individuals who honed their skill sets to the points that they can work solely as performing musicians, are now stuck in a strange and unchosen indefinite purgatory, exacerbated by an ineffectual government.
If I had a few years to dedicate to reviewing Julien's discography, album by album, I would. Instead, here's a survey of some of a handful of his bands.
The Danny Green Trio is palatable and inoffensive with a high level of technical skill at play. There is a sense of jazz meeting film score. Overall, while there is a greater sense of composition than in a lot of the contemporary jazz repertoire I've heard, my primary emotion in listening to the music was “containment.” While every song has interesting moments, it's also jazz in a suit, or jazz in a library. The classical pianist in me wants to politely applaud and purchase one compact disc, if it's not too expensive. Katabasis was my favorite piece off their two available albums on Spotify and October Ballad, with it's introspective and pretty playing, came across as the most sincere.
Contrasting The Danny Green Trio would be the jams. In The Before Time, jams were these situations where people would get together and play music. It's difficult to suspend your disbelief, I know. The jams have a heightened sense of wilderness. For example, the time I saw the Joshua White, Mackenzie Leighton, and Julien Cantelm jam at North Park Brewing. Joshua White is something of the Zarathustra of jazz in town, and it's always nice to hear what he has to say to the plebes when he comes down from the mountain. To me, the most exciting jazz is the kind that feels constantly on the brink, but the world is big enough for all kinds of jazz. Except maybe smooth jazz. Point being, the world is a big place.
Kelp Giant is Lexi's favorite Julien project. A collaboration between guitar virtuoso Dusty Brough, Julien, and alto saxophonist Paul Bertin, the music is the most intensely rhythmic of Julien's discography, and perhaps the best current representation of his abilities as a musician. Their self titled album, Kelp Giant is an energetic and excellent exploration. The track “Power of Three” is a two minute solo drum performance, and a worthy if slight documentation of Julien's drum stylings.
JUX is another interesting focal point although the one recording they have out is a little rough around the edges which is fine and it's own aesthetic. All three members happen to be in Kilikili. Led by Grant Fisher, one of the more talented guitarists in San Diego and another musically open minded individual, his compositional style has soft edges that blend into one another organically. With Harley Magsino and Julien as the rhythm section, their musical ideas are clear and interactive.
I ask Grant what it’s like to work with Julien and Harley in JUX versus Kilikili, and what kind of sensibility he brings to the table. He says, “In JUX, I try to guide the form of our songs. We often spontaneously change our arrangements and forms. Sometimes I try and lead the direction in JUX but I also try to let everyone have the power to decide when and where a song will go. That way everyone is listening and the music is more of a live experience.“
“I always enjoy listening to shows that have that live improvised feel where you don't know where the band will go next so I try to make sure that spirit is always alive when we are performing.The first JUX and KiliKili recordings actually had a very similar process, they were even recorded mostly in the same studio! Basically Harley, Julien, and I live tracked together in the studio for both projects.”
“In Kilikili, Lexi recorded her vocals on top along with some acoustic guitar and kalimba too I think. The next JUX recording is very different. Instead of a ‘live’ recording, we are recording our parts remotely and I am editing everything together. I started by making mockup tracks with rough MIDI sketches of the drum and bass parts and then we kind of write our parts in iterations and record them in our own home studios. The result is very different and a more polished studio sound.”
“It is fun for me, because it gives me a chance to explore my DAW and all the different sound possibilities with plugins and such. I don't know if my musical sensibility is particularly ‘unique’ but I would say that I might be more comfortable with dissonance and space then some people and I think that definitely contributes to the sound of both groups. I like the sound of jangley, out of tune open strings and try to think sound instead of chords or notes. The result is not entirely consistent but I like to be surprised and it keeps me listening and exploring.”
Mat:
When did you start listening to music? How did you originally come to music?
Julien:
I'm pretty sure my earliest musical memories are classical music. I remember seeing a piano at my grandmother's house in Philadelphia and recalling my only memory of my great grandmother while I was sitting and listening to her play piano. My uncle Ronnie, Ronald Cantelm, played upright bass with the Pittsburgh symphony. I believe he was the one who put a violin in my hands. I briefly had Suzuki method when I was three. My dad played orchestral percussion and drum set. My Aunts were classical pianists and painters and sculptors.
On my mom's side it seemed most were dancers and artists in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Everyone had art, athletic or math related backgrounds as well as some military. I was told my grandfather on my mothers side was Lebanese Air Force and my grandmothers side emigrated from Jerusalem to Cuba a few generations back.
Outside of classical music, I heard some jazz and latin, and a lot of rock. My mom listened to hair rock, if that’s a term? Corny shit too, like Aerosmith and that realm, but she’d sometimes play Cuban music and other stuff. So, growing up I was around music, musicians and weird hippies directly or indirectly. But yea, I guess I attribute my ear development early on to listening to classical music, although everything plays a role. I always sought out new bands and albums to listen to. I was pretty proactive about it as a kid, going to record shops and just gambling on bands I’d never heard of before. Music was quite a saving outlet for me. By the time middle school and high school came around I was listening to all types of shit – punk, grunge, prog, ska, jazz, big band, fusion, rap, funk, pop, and afro cuban was easily accessible being in the Miami Ft. Lauderdale areas. I’d go to shows all the time, every warped tour I could and would play on local stages. In high school I was in a handful of performing bands and the school big band. I was in a band named Dooms de Pop with an older friend Garo Gallo and now a widely successful comedian and actor Eric Andre. Those times were so fun, so punk rock, and such a great outlet and chance to learn amidst the insanity.
I was primarily self taught. I took one guitar lesson and didn’t like it. I never learned or sought out conventional approaches to chords or scales or any theory like that in my younger years mainly because I didn’t enjoy the way it sounded when I played it. I learned through writing and exploring really. Drums were kinda the same, and I took some lessons with a couple different people, but nothing too extensive until my mid twenties. I taught myself to read a bit and follow charts out of necessity of those I was playing and performing with, then started to enjoy and appreciate it more. And really all of the people I’ve played with and opportunities I’ve had from the beginning to this day have taught me a lot and continue to.
Mat:
That's crazy. You taught yourself to read music? What's your philosophy on playing?
Julien:
I think I'm just trying to be honest with whatever I'm hearing and feeling in the moment. Or trying to evolve into a place where I'm able to find myself and the other players in a flow state. Or be part of something that allows things to spontaneously happen in any moment that maybe surpasses our ability in a preconceived situation. It’s liberating when you can find a level of being free from thinking too much and just allow things to be what they're going to be and feel fulfilled by that experience. Hopefully the audience experiences parts of that too.
I’m open ears in a jazz setting when I'm playing kit. I mean I am in any style of music, but especially music that has a lot of improvisation. I'm just observing where people want to push things to or being a part of pushing things in different directions. If everyone's listening to each other and comfortable then we can all elevate each other and make something great happen.
When it comes to writing music, fundamentally, it comes down to me being honest with my inner ear, searching some, and feeling resolve and being real with how something makes me feel as I compose and that it’s meaningful in someway to me. I believe if that can come through in the music that there’s opportunity it can touch people in a real way. It’s the way I feel when I’m moved by others’ music or anything really. That undeniable feeling that something has inspired you.
A funny polarizing thing is I've always had a hard time playing cover tunes on guitar and especially singing. My personal relating and feeling moved by it in that has mostly felt unnatural. There’s only been a dozen or so non-original tunes I’ve revisited and genuinely felt kindred with. It’s also been easier for me to connect to if it’s instrumental usually. But yea, I’ve definitely learned others music and am inspired by many. My relationship to drumming in that sense is a lot different though. I feel that behind a drum set I can relate, be moved and share in a vastly more dynamic way than I can in my process of writing from a singer “songwritery” sort of way. With drumming I feel at home and able to mold to situations or create situations.
After several months of intentionally exploring Julien's work, it's clear that he is a musician elevating the work of the people he plays with. While he's already created a substantial discography, what I'm most interested in seeing is the continuation of his solo work, and how he develops his own voice and idiosyncrasies untethered to the ideas of other people. Abnormal Mammal shows great potential and their debut album will be one of the more interesting records that's come out locally in several years.
In the meantime, he'll be making everyone else sound a little better, and a little more sophisticated, while adding those sweet sweet Cantelm credibility points.
