Prime Device. A vaguely other-worldly implication. Simultaneously superlative and coldly functional. The name of an artist postmodern in it's metafictional connotation--the name of art for a postmodern age.
As I write this, I'm struck by the scope and breadth of Device's vision: a music that is sublime yet pedestrian; that is rooted in rich tradition, but which is completely iconoclastic. His influences come pouring out as quickly as the next twisted phrase takes yet another left turn. At first listening, some of it may even seem fairly ordinary, but gushing in there, just beneath the surface are references both stated and obtuse, both completely obvious and conspicuous by their absence.
As a casual listener, you may tap your feet, and you might feel the phrase, just to have Device yank it away from you, but you keep counting, just in case he drops it back in again. Then, when you're just about ready to give up on the groove returning, feeling the piece pulling into some strange new direction, the groove returns, marking the phrase, where you didn't even know that you where subconsciously expecting for it to be.
Having worked in the studio with Device, I'm amazed by what I now understand to be his overarching vision, often obscured from the players in his ensembles at the time of the recording. This is the true mark of the artist: the ability to turn randomness and chaos into it's own kind of order, to challenge our understanding of those things that we thought were most familiar.
In assisting Device in the crafting of this space, I spent many hours in conversation with him, talking about his art and his intent. "What," I asked, "would you say the central message of your work is, if you had to pick just one thing for your audience to take away with them?"
Without pausing, Device said, "That it's really important for people to make up their own minds about things. That they've got to challenge everything that they encounter--hold it up to the light--examine it, and to not experience life passively, but to take an active role in shaping a future that they'd want to be a part of."
Sprinkled throughout his work are thus warnings about the future. Cautionary tales about what happens when people don't remember the lessons that history has to teach us. Marcel Duchamp once wrote "The only thing that is not art is inattention" The art of Prime Device moves his audience because of the acute attention which he pays to the smallest of details, crafting his work in ways that make us challenge our own preconceptions, and question our assignment of values, not only to his work, but to the larger questions in life.
Come inside the world of Prime Device. Have a look around. We hope that here you will encounter things that make you think, things that make you laugh, things that make you weep. But know this going in: If what you encounter changes your mind, changes your mood, or challenges your imagination, then you've gotten the point. This is the avant garde.