Someone who has been indirectly and directly linked to Zero Times Everything from its earliest days is Bradley Eros. I think of him as the Shadow Member of the band - always lurking in the shadows causing mayhem and inspiration. It’s written that he “is an artist, experimental filmmaker, mediamystic, maverick curator, sound collage, photographer, expanded cinema, performance, writer & poet, nomadic teacher and private investigator. He has created dozens of ‘zines, posters, soundtracks, unique artist’s books, and film performances in the unfixed universe of ephemeral cinema.” But, trust me, that’s not even the half of it.
It would be impossible to write convincingly and thoroughly about my friend Bradley so I’m not even going to try. He so full of contradictions that the minute I write something on paper about him or attempt to describe him in words I could very easily have written the exact opposite and it would ring true.
I have collaborated with Bradley more than with anyone else I can think of. And our collaborations come in myriad forms. For instance, recently I made music (on the fly) to accompany films he projected about insect sex in the Lower East Side garden Le Petite Versaille run by the illustrious Jack Waters and Peter Cramer. We recently also became the House DJ’s at Synesthesia in Brooklyn. We call ourselves the Vampÿrates. More on that later.
But I’m here to write specifically about his contributions to the Sound Of Music. In some respects he permeates the entire record. Besides collaborating we also hang out together quite a lot and always have a ton to say to one another about every topic under the sun. There's never a loss of words. You can often catch us talking about how the sunplay on early Egyptian Heiroglyphics inside pyramids was an early form of cinema, or the energy inhalation of black holes in space; we even collaborated on a short film called Black Hole Cinema that includes poetry written by Bradley that ZXE uses for the track Milky Black Sun - an extraordinary tongue twisting play on words that conjures up spiritual solar masses. This song also features the wild prepared piano of Matteo Ramon Arevalos who I wrote about in update number 9, number 9, number 9... Bradley is one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever been around and everything from the ideas of black holes, white holes, collapsing space, mathematics, colliding and collapsing stars, the art of the ephemeral, the cinema of expansion, etc… that we use for inspiration in the album or even for our live shows has its roots in our conversations and in that mediamystic brain of his.
He also lends his voice to the final track on the record called The Sound whose words were written by my daughter Sønje Sylvarnes and he’s featured in the video of the song. In my interview with Mikey Kirkpatrick on the Wild Lakes radio show, from update number 10, I spoke about the chilling emptiness of New York City in April of 2020. The images that you see from the beginning of the video were taken in Soho and Little Italy in Manhattan from that time. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Chilling to say the least. It felt like the end of the world. Here’s a link to the video:
One night Bradley and I were at a club and the DJ, although famous, was “dialing it in” - shall we say. We both thought “damn we could do better than that” and dared ourselves to do so. That moment birthed the Vampÿrates - the DJ duo of Bradley and I. Sometime later this year (here comes another shameless promotion) we will also release an album filled with, you guessed it - stolen material. As Bradley likes to say “what part of the name Vampÿrates do you not get?" New York is slowly beginning to open up and we performed on the rooftop of Synesthesia. We invited Reg Bloor to help us attack culture and she came to lend a hand - and a guitar to shred. Although in some respects this video is not directly about ZXE, the three people pictured in the video are all a part of ZXE; whether being a band member, collaborator, a great source of inspiration, or a friend. Here’s a link to the video which is a little over 26 minutes long, then we blew the electrical circuit. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x3X8VojAhQ&t=909s
In order to prep for this update I decided to read an interview with Bradley. It was the first time I ever did that in all the years I've known him. His closing sentence rang true to me and I will let you decide what "it" means. And I quote: "It all begins with a moment of consciousness and personal responsibility, then from that awareness, our personal choices and actions follow."
In the next update let's talk about art.
Till then,
Richard