Sam Kulik is an American, Queens-based trombonist and multi-instrumentalist, and graphic artist, known for his part in Joachim Badenhorst’s Carate Urio Orchestra, and his collaboration with the Dadaist provocateurs Talibam!. He says that the trombone is the instrument that he plays every day, and he can usually count on to best express himself with. But, he quotes Frank Zappa, who said, «you can’t write a chord ugly enough to say what you want sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream». The headline of his website says: «like an elephant giving a lecture on philosophy».

Putting a Hand on the World is Kulik’s debut solo trombone album. It was conceived in late 2022, when Kulik became a father and lost his father in quick succession. This music on the album represents a conversation between Kulik’s many «selves», who met at that nexus of birth and death, sharing what they felt about the past, the present, and the future.

Kulik uses an impressive array of extended breathing techniques, all parts of the trombone (and bass trombone), and studio effects as amplified distortion and percussive textures, to enrich the trombone’s sonic spectrum and create a stream, literally, of detailed, often eccentric and provocative, talkative story-like narratives. The six pieces are offer a deeply personal and emotional journey, swinging between painful feelings of loss and mourning and the joy of birth and family life set in different seasons and sonic environments, indoors (in Queens) and outdoors (at Worthington, Massachusetts, where Kulik was born and raised), with and without multitracking, spacious effects, a chorus of hundreds of frogs, and sounds of water, birds, wind, and insects. All sounds, including the supposedly natural ones, were made on the trombone, or part of the trombone, and in many cases put through electronic processing. The trombone becomes an orchestra full of like-affirming, stimulating sounds.

Eyal Hareuveni

Sam Kulik (trombone, bass trombone, electronic processing)