David Handler Life Like Violence

Composer, violinist, and NYC impresario David Handler composes acoustic and electronic music that has been described by the New York Times as “eerie and superbly wrought…exploring polarities of light and dark, the sacred and the profane.” This attraction to juxtaposition is also evident in Handler’s role as co-founder of (Le) Poisson Rouge (LPR), the boundary-breaking downtown New York venue that has opened doors for his fellow performers and connected audiences with unheard music since 2008.

Life Like Violence explores the everyday tumult of the mind: fear, whim, rage, pain, fancy. As Handler puts it: “this is the sound of my psyche.” It is music that attacks itself, eating itself from the inside out. Ideas invade and gnaw at each other. They undermine, taunt, assault, exalt, and tease. Physical gestures disrupt long narratives whose melodies are obscured, revealed, decayed, destroyed, and mourned. What emerges is a broken beauty of spirit that has endured.

Handler plays most or all instruments on all tracks, save for the album’s sole orchestral work, and his inner dialogue permeates each piece–tangibly, in the form of spoken word on the album’s title track.

“The music is not intended to accompany, but rather to arrest,” the composer says. It is meant to take over, not allowing the listener to do anything else. In this respect, as Handler explains: “it invites presence through overload.”