We recently connected with Eric Novak and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I recorded an album back in 2021 with my band WHTVR FRVR. Classified as dinosaur jazz, the music sought to find links back to the past through music by attempting to tap into the spirits of the past and future. In order to do this, I tried a different more intuitive way of writing the music. I composed melodies and chord progressions but I never bothered to see how all the parts would sound like together or how the songs would be arranged. I wrote all the music on paper with pen and ink and made it feel much more special and unique. And old. The band came about from a recording session for my record “Absurd, Obscene!” back in March 2020, a week before the pandemic hit. That session was pretty short notice and it went so well. It felt like this configuration of musicians had a special intuitive energy. Naydja Bruton on drums, Ohni on bass, Evan Opitz on guitar and myself on woodwinds and keyboards, the band was formed. We started rehearsing in March of 2021 around a year after that first session. Putting the songs together was surprisingly easy and very emotional. The emotions of the past year were very raw and potent and we were integrating them into the music in ways I’ve never experienced before. A lot of problems came up leading to the session that I attributed to the universe being a little bitch and the first session had a very magical, chaotic energy. We weren’t getting one of the songs down and I could tell people were getting discouraged. I didn’t want the session to go down like that so I asked everyone to stop for a second and scream at the top of our lungs for as long as possible. We screamed for like a straight minute then played the song and it was as perfect a take as I could have imagined. It was pretty wild. Also at the end of the night we recorded a take of one of the songs and as we finished there was still a strange sound lingering behind. We all looked at each other like “what is making that noise” and none of us could figure it out until I walked over to my pedalboard and saw that something had recorded a loop on my glitch/looper pedal. I had turned the pedalboard off during that take so that was pretty baffling. We chalked it up to ghosts. Anyway we recorded the album in two sessions over the course of a month and played everything live. I couldn’t believe we finished it just in time for Evan to move to Nashville. A day before he left we played our first show at the Golden Dagger in Chicago July 2021. It was that magical time when everyone thought Covid was essentially over and music was feeling very electric and hopeful for the first time since the pandemic started. The show was fucking insane. It was the first time I’ve ever felt like the audience and the musicians were one, everyone seemed to be on the same wavelength and it was really beautiful and cathartic. We were definitely getting some shit out and I talked to some people who said it made them cry. We played the album all the way through for the first time and played the theme song from Hey Arnold! all with no rehearsal. After the show I got called by some kind of strange interdimensional ghost at 1:30 in the morning and it was a very unexplainable experience. It was now clear to me that WHTVR FRVR was some kinda vehicle for getting in touch with spirits and experiencing supernatural phenomenon. We did that shit.

Eric, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When I was a kid, everyone called me the bug kid. It was pretty universal, like a cartoon. My childhood was often like a cartoon which helped me to see the absurdity of life early on. I spent a lot of my time exploring various places around my neighborhood: window wells, empty lots, ponds, forests and various suburban decay. I think all this alone time also made me more predisposed to creating things. I have been drawing things basically since I was two years old so shits been around for a while. I started by just drawing things I saw, whether it was bugs from field guides, creatures from Magic cards, or portraits of my friends, I was pretty attached to my sketchbook. I filled up dozens of books of drawings, gradually incorporating anime characters and people from movies into my drawings. Eventually I got into other media like painting, illustration and printmaking. Around that time I started getting interested in playing music. I grew up listening to movie soundtracks and classical music which had a lot of oboe in them, a sound I gravitated towards for some unknown reason. I joined band in 6th grade and got deep into it, developing my circle of friends around it. When I got into college I really started experimenting with it, doing free improvs in the top floor room of the music building with two friends I had met in the cafeteria. I played mainly oboe but these jams got me curious about other instruments and styles of playing. Up until that point I had basically only ever played classical music. Now I was getting into jazz and the blues, two genres that would vastly shift and form my core musical identity. I started teaching myself piano and started to experiment more with my voice. The jazz band instructor was short a bari sax player so I started teaching myself saxophone. Then later came flute, clarinet, percussion and bass. I was seldom satiated. I always needed to be working on something, I have a ravenous imagination. It devours many things in its way and I feel compelled to translate those things into ideas and projects. I create compulsively, usually independent from whether I’m feeling incredible or terrible. I released 14 albums of my own music last year, with at least one album a month and don’t really plan on slowing down. Well maybe a little cuz one album a month isn’t that sustainable at the moment. I moved to Chicago in 2016 after I had experimented a lot with learning my way around these various instruments from taking acid and connecting with my alto saxophone for the first time the same night Ornette Coleman died or organizing a series of pop up improvisational concerts without the blessings of the administration. Chicago is where I really did a lot of maturing both personally and musically. I started playing with a jazz fusion band called Cordoba that created an opportunity for me to play out in the city as well as network with other DIY musicians. It’s in this area that I think I’m unique. I’ve played with over 30 different bands in the city from a truly wide variety of genres. I’ve played jazz, hip hop, soul, R&B, metal, punk, rock, indie, alternative, folk, country, musical theatre, classical, experimental and others. There’s not a whole lot of styles that I haven’t at least dipped my toes into at some point. I like to consider myself a musical chameleon, as I’m always changing to serve what I’m working on at the time. It’s just fun to always be changing my conception of how and what to play. I don’t think there are really many other musicians that have as much variety or put out as much work with as much variety. I spend a lot of time working on other people’s projects but I still find time somehow to lead my own bands too. I lead WHTVR FRVR and Heuristic as well as random one off groups and am trying to start a new King Crimson esque band called Mercedez Benzedrine. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve put out over a span of a little less than a decade. I’ve put out or played on around 76 records so far and that’s just me getting started. I just don’t see other people my age with this kind of catalog, as scatterbrained as it is. I just like things that are emotionally genuine, raw and tapping into unknown places and feelings. I sometimes see ghosts and hear things so those unknown creeping feelings also influence most things I do. I just think art is a very potent way of communing with those on another plane and sometimes I feel like those spirits are coming into my body while I’m performing and taking over. It’s a powerful feeling and I don’t think we should have to shy away from things that are hard to pin down or frightening. Those are the mysteries that make life interesting enough to warrant continued existence despite all of our systems being broken beyond repair.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Yes. Absolutely. I don’t think people really realize how much work and around the clock effort goes into being a creative. You’re never truly off work, there’s always something you could be doing, whether it’s writing that string arrangement you’ve been putting off, writing grants or practicing your craft. Plus for musicians that doesn’t include going to rehearsals, going to shows, photo shoots, writing sessions, recording sessions or whatever else. I know that seems glamorous on the surface but damn it gets exhausting. When things are really busy it’s hard to find even one day off a month. Additionally, the culture around being a creative has become very influenced by the internet in ways that only fuel the more exhausting sides of things. We have to work very hard just to keep our heads afloat and often don’t see much in the way of returns for our work for a long time. So often we will have to take other unrelated jobs to make ends meet. So not only are we dealing with the very demanding lifestyle of being a working artist, but we are also having to work other jobs we’re not passionate about just to make enough money to continue exhausting ourselves. This is by no means a good system but it’s hard to stay out of it unless you have a lot of money. It’s just an unfortunate reality if you want to make this your life.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think the most rewarding aspect of creation is when things really click. I’ve played shows where everything falls into place and it literally becomes magic. Music has a way of channeling your emotions into sound and it’s really beautiful when you’re able to process difficult life shit through playing a show or writing a song. Shows like the WHTVR FRVR debut show just reaffirm to me that there are other forces in the world and music makes those forces more available to us. When you record a song live in the studio and you can just feel the raw emotion coming out through the performance. Whew. When I’m listening back to a song I wrote and just understanding what the song means to me and how it reflects on my life is a powerful form of self therapy. Music can illuminate things that were trapped in your subconscious that were difficult to express with words. I’ve done so much self reflecting through music and it’s really helped me become a more aware and feeling person.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dissonantdessert.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/dissonantdessert?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@dissonantdessert5112

Image Credits
Sammy Bramble Jon Grammer Isiah Veney Roc Star Studios Roman Sobus Caro Fotos