In the summer of 2018, nestled in the Catskill Mountains, five eclectic musicians embarked on a five-day retreat, crafting 39 improvisational tracks that traversed diverse moods and styles.

The chosen venue, a rustic barn studio transformed into a musical sanctuary, was integral to the project.

Here, in this serene environment, a select group of musicians was invited to participate in an ambitious five-day improvisational journey.

Conceptualized by OSC founder and composer Christopher Bono, the project was born during 2018, when Bono organized four different collaborative projects following the completion of the still love album from Ghost Against Ghost. Bono contacted a group of friends to form an new improvisational group.

Among these friends were multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris and bassist Christopher Pravdica, both celebrated for their work with the influential post-punk band Swans, as well as cross-disciplinary musician Anni Rossi, and acclaimed record producer Kevin McMahon.

Bono also invited some guest artists to stop by on special days. These included jazz legend Karl Berger, drummer Jeremy Kinney, singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer, and Buke and Gase founder Arone Dyer.

The setting: summer 2018, a converted barn studio in the Catskill mountains. Sunlight streams in through vertical windows, illuminating the latticework of microphones, effects pedals, and instrument cables strewn about the carpet. In this picturesque setting, five genre-allergic musicians scurry around like giddy insects, locking into free-form improvisations that twist and tumble into various moods—some brooding and metallic, some jazzy and atmospheric, others contemplative and cosmic. Violas snarl. Bass riffs lurch. Marimbas meander. Musical seeds bloom into behemoths. 

At one point during this five-day artistic retreat, somewhere around lunchtime, Thor Harris—the sculptor, artist, carpenter, plumber, and instrument-maker best known for his work with Swans, Shearwater, and Xiu Xiu—picks up a megaphone and playfully christens this endeavor, calling "all campers" to their stations. "I was like, 'OK, we should call this Experimental Music Summer Camp," says player and initial ringleader Christopher Bono (Nous, Ghost Against Ghost, Gabbarein, Nous Alpha). "And it just kinda stuck." 

The result of the group’s prolific sonic prodding: 39 heady, expansive tracks structured into four curated volumes of music. For those listeners with a curiosity for the celestial, Experimental Music Summer Camp is a treasure trove of exploratory jams, edited by Bono—with surgical precision that evokes both Can and Teo Macero—into pieces that thrive on tension and release, on the sound of five players skipping into the unknown. 

The lightness and openness of this endeavor emerged as a reaction to darkness and suffocation. Bono had experienced some frustrating artistic roadblocks in recent years, including the dissolution of his ambitious Nous project, and found himself emotionally and psychologically drained by the year-long process of renovating his barn studio near Woodstock, New York.

"It put me into a pretty depressing place, and I had a pretty profound silent retreat in Hawaii that kinda blew all that open in January 2018," he recalls. "Going into that retreat was one of the 'dark night of the soul' eras of my life, but I came into that year super rejuvenated and creatively infused, [2019’s Without Falsehood, Bono’s first collaboration with Gareth Jones under the name Nous Alpha] was the first album I did that year, and it was the most beautiful recording process I’d ever experienced. It was just five days. Usually making music for me is a painful process, either because of the duration—the stamina and endurance required—or I’ve had collaborations that were very frustrating. But this just flowed. It was a beautiful, communal experience with a friend."

It also reignited Bono’s communal spirit—and, suddenly, the creative dam broke with a series of eclectic projects (some still forthcoming), including what became EMSC. Bono had one big philosophical question: "Who do I trust to trust to be open with?" First, he recruited his producer-engineer buddy Kevin McMahon (Swans, Real Estate, Titus Andronicus), and from there they assembled a cast of quiet giants from the realm of experimental/indie rock: their mutual collaborator Harris, viola-playing singer-songwriter Anni Rossi, and Swans bassist Christopher Pravdica. 

Everyone was open to entering with a blank slate, but Bono—in the spirit of a classical composer doing musical "research"—prepared for the five-day odyssey by re-investigating some of his favorite krautrock (including Can) and world music rhythms (particularly Babatunde Olatunji). They also pow-wowed as a group one month before, assessing their collective attitude toward improvisation. 

"I was definitely fixated on this concept of, 'How are we gonna get something interesting?'" says McMahon. "There’s a difference between really good improvisation where people are listening and reacting off of each other and the masturbatory thing where people do the same thing they’ve always done and all just stay in the same key." 

The crew, guided by McMahon, devised a series of strategies to avoid the pitfalls of wanky improv—the most crucial being the instrument-switching that kept everyone on their toes, maintaining that state of beginner’s mind. "A lot of these pieces have this naive exploration feeling," says Harris, enthusing about the approach. 

"We did a thing we would make sure that everyone had a chance to start an idea without preconceived notion," adds Pravdica. "I remember a [strategy] where each day would inform the next day. We’d play something, and it would kind of evolve, and we’d try it again to get a more concise improv out of it. By the third day, we were thinking more and more about the moods and styles we were going to be doing." 

The players quickly built a comfort level and dialogue, heightened by the natural beauty of their surroundings. "I remember us waking up and me doing some yoga on the deck, and Thor would come out and we’d do some stretching," says Rossi. "I have nice memories of us enjoying that view, and everyone just goofing off."

Eventually, everyone was making noise—including McMahon, no longer just the producer, and assistant engineer Jeremy Kinney—along with an array of guest players, including iconic jazz keyboardist/vibraphonist Karl Berger (who co-founded Woodstock’s Creative Music Studio in 1972 and, sadly, died in April 2023) and experimental indie-pop artist Arone Dyer (one half of duo Buke & Gase). (Revered singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer dropped by and played some spirited piano, but her contributions aren’t audible on the album.) 

"You could see how Arone and Karl influenced the way we played," says McMahon. "I remember her being a bit of a firecracker and moving around on things really fast. She was coming into this thing that was fully happening, but it felt like she was making it her own space—not in a self-indulgent way but just in a confident way. I had a lot of pressure with Karl—especially because of my feelings about improv, I remember feeling self-conscious in a way that was really fun to play with because of the legacy of what he’s done and his mix of humbleness and ability." 

But the beauty of EMSC is the sense of freedom, the balance of naivety and sophistication, the complete lack of ego—whether they’re storming through a space-prog drone or gently massaging a serene, ECM-like groove, it feels like the musical democracy Bono once dreamt of. 

"A lot of times, in an improvisational setting, someone dominates," Bono reflects. [In the original Nous project], I was trying to create a truly leaderless situation. But I realized that in some ways it’s problematic. It was actually an experiment in communal anarchy that totally failed. In this case, it actually worked." 

For Harris, this sort of camaraderie—the experiential nature of the event itself—is the ultimate currency. "Improvised music is completely about trust," he says. "Christopher Bono has this generosity of spirit that fills this cavernous room full of instruments.

"I’m 58," he adds. "I’m the oldest person here. Occasionally music has paid my bills. Most years it hasn’t. I’m also a plumber and a carpenter. But music is amazing at building community. It’s a fairly terrible way to make a living, but as far as I can tell, it’s the best way to meet the coolest people in the world."