bizarre

the family subotnick, inertia, meaninglessness

January, 2006. profile.


On the wall to the left of Jacob Subotnick’s bedroom door are three-foot letters spelling out “BEER” in green spray paint. Red plastic cups and Stella Artois bottles are strewn about the living room on the coffee table and folding TV trays in front of a television blaring an old episode of Law and Order. There are bits of toilet paper on the floor. Jacob shares the Bushwick loft with three other NYU students, one of whom asks if Jacob would like him to turn off the TV. Jacob says it doesn’t matter.
He moved out to Bushwick because it’s cheaper, and because he put off finding an apartment until the last minute, when no more East Village leases were to be had. “I certainly like it more out here. To me it somehow fees like the country, even though I live amidst a bunch of warehouses and factories,” he says over the melodic clink-clunk-clunk-clink of the metal factory across the street. He takes a green disposable lighter and a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket and places them on the table next to a Stella bottle containing a couple inches of cigarette butts and ash. Jacob is scruffy and barefoot, wearing a black T-shirt and dark jeans, looking rumpled and tired as if he just rolled out of bed at two in the afternoon, which doesn’t seem entirely unlikely. His speech is measured and he yawns frequently, sometimes taking off his glasses off to rub his eyes.
Jacob is a senior at NYU where he studies music production. “He has a definite talent in the medium,” says his friend Jesse Malmed. “I wonder sometimes if he will live up to his potential.” But Jacob sees music less as his calling and more as a last resort. “It was the only logical way to go,” he says between drags from his cigarette. “The way that I got started was we just had all this extra equipment in our house so I could record all these bands in high school.”
Jacob was born in Santa Monica on September 2, 1984 to Joan La Barbara, a renowned singer, and Morton Subotnick, one of the premier composers of electronic music in the U.S. and a celebrated professor. When Jacob was six months old, the family moved to Pecos, a small town in New Mexico. As an only child, he accompanied his parents on their near-constant travels. “I would always go with them to all these bizarre places.” He pauses. “Well, not that bizarre, like Western Europe. But their music was certainly bizarre.” Morton Subotnick’s compositions are more soundscapes than traditional songs, and Joan La Barbara has worked with everyone from John Cage to Steve Reich.
They’re both bold-faced names in the New York City music world that Jacob is trying to maneuver through relatively unnoticed, which is nearly impossible when your dad teaches at your college, in your department. “The first like couple semesters, every music class I was in, they’d do the roll and be like, Oh, are you Mort’s kid?” He sighs. “But it doesn’t, like, bother me necessarily.” During the final for his ear training class, Jacob was singing off-key when the professor stopped him. “He was like, well, I trust that you actually can do this based on your parents. And I think I probably passed specifically because the guy had faith that I was actually capable of doing it even though I didn’t try.” I ask if he thinks he could’ve passed on his own merits if he had tried. He shrugs and lights another cigarette.
In recent years, the electronica movement in contemporary music has introduced Morton Subotnick to younger fans. He’s influenced popular bands from Radiohead to Animal Collective to Caribou, whose most recent album includes a track entitled “Subotnick.” “When I first moved out here one of the people who worked at the store across the street looked at my credit card and was like, Subotnick? Are you related to the one?” He laughs and shakes his head. “The majority of people who live in this area are like into that avant garde kind of stuff,” he says. There have been a few “bizarre” low-fi electronica concerts in Bushwick that Jacob’s friends and neighbors went to, but he doesn’t like the music.
Jacob’s friend Ari Phillips realized just what kind of music Jacob prefers when they were driving from New York to New Mexico two summers ago along the southern route. “I had brought my entire CD collection for the road trip and all Jacob wanted to listen to was pop-country radio stations,” Ari says. “I memorized ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw.”
When I ask Jacob if he likes his father’s music, he says, “No,” then quickly backpedals, laughing. “I mean, I don’t dislike it, but I’m certainly not actively interested in it.” Nor is he interested in composing music at all, preferring to collaborate with others as a musician or producer. Like most of his friends in New Mexico, Jacob learned guitar and played in indie rock bands on and off throughout high school and college. His high school band was called “Jacob’s Room,” inspired by their choice of practice space – and the poster in the room for the avant garde opera of the same name that Jacob’s parents premiered in 1985.
So what does his father think about his son doing music? “He’s never really said much about it,” Jacob says, flipping the lighter between his fingers. “He does keep saying it would be neat if there was a lawyer in the family.”
In September, Jacob had his first experience being paid to record and produce in a professional studio when a musician friend flew him out to San Francisco. “The final day we decided to try to do like a rough mix of everything. We went from noon ‘til eight in the morning the next day. From what I hear from my parents you just have days that are like 24 hours straight. Which is somehow appealing to me,” he says. “I just enjoy recording. But as far as like a job it’s pretty sweet. Like, everything is so laid back.” At that, he drops the lighter under the table and groans, and, with what seems an infinite amount of energy, leans down, grabs it and places it on the far corner of the table.
Aside from recording marathons, Jacob’s life is relatively laid back and sweet itself. When I ask what a typical day is like for him, his eyes glaze over and he taps his cheek with his finger. “I don’t know if there is a typical day…” he trails off. “I just sort of do whatever seems to happen.”