Acollectíve// And Then There Were Seven Monkeys Jumping On The Bed

It’s two o’clock in Wilmington, North Carolina. It’s nine o’clock in Tel Aviv, Israel. Thanks to free international calling on the Internet, I’m having a faceless conversation with a stranger. On the other side is a man with a sexy accent. This isn’t what happens if you click on one of those junk e-mails promising a larger something-or-other or a Russian bride, or even a virtual escort service, but I do have to resist the urge to ask him what he’s wearing//

I’m talking to Idan Rabinovici. Idan has lived all over the world—anywhere from California to London to Israel, where he was born and currently lives—and so has this sort of internationally ambiguous accent. It’s tough to tell where he’s from (you might even say Scotland from his rounded, non-palatalized “r’s”), but chances are, anywhere he goes would immediately pin him both an alien and a native in one swift blow.

Idan Rabinovici is one of seven who make up the band Acollectíve (that’s a soft “a”)—their name lends itself more accurately to a description of what they do than the word “band.” If you threw any of the seven guys any musical instrument, it’s likely that they already play it or even teach it. Rabinovici is a classically trained pianist and he taught himself a few others like the melodica, the guitar, and the harmonica, but each of the guys play at least a dozen or so apiece. Having instruments thrown at them is probably not all that foreign to them either, that’s kind of what a live performance looks like. In one of of their song,“Whisky Eyes” (notice the European spelling), Rabinovici bounces back and forth between a mic and a keyboard that his brother and fellow band member, Roy, is already playing. There’s plenty of hearty brass and they aren’t shy of the harmonica.

Idan Rabinovici, Roy Rabinovici, Roy Rieck, Daniel Shoham, Chef Luzia, Emanuel Slonin, and Joseph E-shine grew up in Tel Aviv, all going to different art schools or music schools and got involved in music at a young age. By early high school, they had met but were no more than messing around with sound. Military enlistment in Israel is mandatory for all citizens over eighteen, so music was suspended for the boys at least for a time. When they returned from military service, they would meet in a friend’s rehearsal room and play with no agenda other than to make noise. “It took us a while to understand that we were a band, in the common sense. I think, at first, we tried to be a group of musicians that were involved in various projects and who didn’t have one dedicated project that they work under. We started living together [in London (he likens it to living with monkeys)], we started touring together [in the UK and France], and we started writing a lot of the material together. It started making more sense,” says Rabinovici. “We were just stubborn and naïve enough to keep doing it as we grew older.”

Stubborn isn’t a bad word, either. Acollectíve is not only self-managed, but they’re also on their own label, and each of the seven fulfills administrative duties. This self-sufficiency is a mark of youthful hubris, sure, but also a hard and fast rule for excellence and painstaking attention to detail—sometimes outsourcing tastes room temperature. What they landed on is their own brand of “construction yard folk.” At least that’s what he calls it, but some things are getting lost in translation.

Their first album, Onwards, released in March of 2011, is a result of a year and a half of the band putting themselves together in some conventional fashion. “A lot of Onwards was written while we were touring, while we were looking for somewhere to be based, while we were becoming a band and deciding what it is we want to do with our lives.” Understandable for such a young band—all of them fall between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven. Such is the message that Onwards sends, though Rabinovici was reluctant to distill the record to a proverbial “message.” “A lot of it is about how important it is to be in constant motion in your life and your surroundings,” he says. “Not even in the sense of having something to look forward to, but being a part of an ongoing process.”

Their first album did well in the UK and Israel, and Acollectíve has been working on new material, too, but it won’t necessarily be ready for a 2012 release. Like I said, painstaking attention to detail—they like to polish, but they also leave room for spontaneity. “This album is been different [from Onwards], but I don’t even understand it yet.”

Rabinovici tries to relate an Israeli idiom: “leechiot beh seret” (phonetic), but it doesn’t really translate (“living a movie” is the closest we can get). “The idea is that one is fully dedicated to whatever idea they may have at that moment,” he explains. “The good thing about music or art or film is that it is what you want to say, but once you put it into words, it can lose the context you want it to be appreciated in.”

But this is the risk with any attempt at language, no? Be it artistic or otherwise, everyone (creator and appreciator alike) is subject to the influence of his or her own Weltanschauung. That’s why art is just a shot in the dark sometimes. Its exhibition requests an audience while its conception necessitates solitude—relative solitude, at least. And here are seven guys collectively inventing while an international audience listens and receives. It’s a miracle that it even works—the experiences of seven translating to thousands—not for lack of talent, but for lack of the natural logic of demographics. You might as well flash the Bat-Signal in the sky or wait for Commissioner Gordon to ring the Bat-Phone.

“Use your ears,” Idan says when I ask him what the world needs to know about Acollectíve. “No problem, sexy voice,” is what I would like to say, but don’t, and it’s then that he says music is ultimately a form of escapism. But it’s not always so cut and dry: It’s not even an escape from the terrible or painful, but from the good too, the unbelievable–a chance for something different that maybe we don’t even understand yet.

 Emily McCrary