Ishmael Ali’s cello work moves through a remarkable range of terrain on Burn the Plastic, Sell the Copper. Jazz rhythms inflected with pointillist electronics create subdued but still infectious grooves. Improvisational rivers flow through the record’s ten tracks, carrying tactile string timbres and quick movements across the fingerboard that spring sharp-angled, strange melodies into existence. Hearing Ali’s voice at the front of the mix in places is fantastic. It adds a center or groundedness to the whirring aural machine moving all around him. His tone is warm and comforting, whether he’s singing plaintively or letting the cello build to a growl. The album fuses multiple styles into a cohesive sonic story, winding between avant experimentation, improvised jazz motifs, vocal incantation, pop intonations, spoken word, and electronics like traversing a fantasy world map. Moments of quiet are like breath, time to regroup before going down another pathway. Beyond the wide array of sounds, there’s so much texture and emotive depth here. This is the work of a cellist’s cellist, someone unafraid to reveal tenderness alongside technical mastery.
Burn the Plastic, Sell the Copper releases this Friday, February 13 via Amalgam. Ali’s website is HERE.
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What are your earliest memories of sound? What were the sounds that first captured your attention as a child?
I lived with my mom, her sister, and my lola and lolo growing up, and they would have lots of parties, so a lot of my early memories were the chattering of dozens of people speaking Tagalog rapidly, ahah. Thank you for unlocking that.
When did you first encounter the cello, and what drew you to it? Was there a particular sound or moment that made you think this was your instrument?
I began really studying music later, in my early 20s—I don’t even know if I saw a cello in real life before then. I don’t even think my undergrad had a string program, but I studied composition there, and the first piece I wrote and finished was for cello and clarinet, though, because that’s what I was hearing.
When I encountered it later in the improvised music world in Chicago, it was through seeing Fred Lonberg-Holm a bunch, and I was super into Okkyung Lee’s music as well. There are so many great cellists here, from Fred, Katinka, Tomeka, Lia, Erica, Wilson—I was fortunate to encounter the instrument so much. I remember listening to this one FLH solo record, Anagram Solos, that really highlighted all the timbral possibilities of the cello and made me really want to dive in.
Can you remember the first time you improvised on the cello? What did that feel like, and how did it differ from playing written music?
Guitar was my main instrument for a long time, and I picked up cello relatively recently—a year or so before the pandemic. Because of that, I didn’t come at it from a rigid classical approach, then open up later, which a lot of string players do. My first gigs on cello were 100% improvised, and I slowly built up traditional techniques as well as added my own over time. Because of that path, the improvisatory bit feels very natural. You can get so much out of the cello if you just try stuff, listen, and try to recreate what you like.
“Burn the Plastic, Sell the Copper” came from a passing comment your friend made about faulty XLR cables. What about that phrase resonated with you enough that it became the album’s title?
I like it because, depending on perspective, it can be interpreted as a phrase regarding resourcefulness or kind of in an opposite, wasteful, exploitative light. Like, “Oh yeah, what do we do with these broken cables?” “B.T.P.S.T.C” or “yeah, these cables are shorting out, should we try and fix them?” “B.T.P.S.T.C.”
To me, it’s also particularly humorous because the person who said it is from Italy and her PHD was in rhetoric (also the wonderful Jim Baker, who is on this record, studied rhetoric, which is apparent by his weekly Facebook posts IYKYK), and she said it so off the cuff and nonchalant. I don’t know, it just stuck with me.
There’s an underlying critique of capitalism in the title. How much does that kind of commentary factor into your work? Are you consciously engaging with those ideas, or do they just naturally seep in?
I mean, if it doesn’t inform your work at all in 2026, you’re either rich or ignorant. That being said, I try to not overthink it. I tend to dislike work that has a direct representation of politics or social issues in them—not on principle but just historically. There’s so many examples of it falling flat or being performative or being a sort of false anesthetic to actual issues.
You’ve assembled quite a crew here spanning different generations of Chicago musicians. How did you decide who to bring into each piece? What does each person’s presence add?
I love everyone so much on this record and have worked with them a lot. I’ve said it before, but I love how unabashedly themselves that they are. The selection per piece was actually pretty arbitrary, but when I was planning and thinking about the record, I just heard their voices in it. In things I’ve done in the past with both Bill and Brianna, they’re both just so great at executing whatever crazy idea I have, and they just lift it up and amplify it/make it better. Looking back, when I recorded the tracks with Jim and Ed and Corey, there were multiple times when they kind of came at it from a direction or angle I wasn’t expecting and surprised me in a good way.
You’re part of Kahil El Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. How has that experience shaped your own approach to playing and composing?
Studying more obscure avenues of music, I feel like there’s a tendency to stray away from more traditional or mainstream approaches, especially at first, but finding ways to balance the abstract and the concrete is something that Kahil is absolutely one of the best at.
Playing with EHE the last few years, I think, made me really love the groove again. Growing up in Ohio, we listened to LOTS of funk music, and Kahil made me want to dance again.
The album moves between solo pieces and collaborative ones. How do those two modes feel different for you? What can happen alone that can’t happen with others, and vice versa?
There’s so much to talk about here, I kind of don’t know where to start. For me, playing with other people is freeing because ideally you’re both contributing ideas and bouncing new ones off each other and negotiating what materializes. When playing solo, you can be free, but it takes a lot more energy to carry it in a convincing way, in my opinion. I find more success solo when you have a general path or aesthetic mapped out or if you’re sticking to/developing one or a few ideas in depth.
This record covers a lot of ground sonically. How do you think about cohesion when you’re working with such varied material? What’s the thread that connects it all?
I’ve been trying to hash out a solo album for at least a few years, and each time I did, I would record hours of music for each different concept—solo acoustic cello, cello + electronics, collaborations, etc. I kind of started by paring down what I absolutely wanted on the record, then eventually scrapped everything else and got the idea to write tunes based off of these grooves that would emerge from the way the SP404 and Bill would interact. I really liked the contrast between the different conceptual modes. Ordering the record (or any) is kind of a large form composition in itself, but one specific example that comes to mind is using timbral similarities as transitions, like from “Stars in My Pocket” to “Fear Chased Hope In Tight Circles.”
You’re singing on “Stars in My Pocket.” When did you decide to bring your voice into the music? What does singing allow you to express that the cello doesn’t?
I have a 4-year-old daughter who got me singing again in general. That kind of grew and grew, and later my ex introduced me to this Paul Robeson album that I couldn’t get out of my head, and made me realize that my voice is almost the exact same range as the cello. I started intentionally working on it after that and try not to force it, but if I’m hearing something that my voice would work with, I’ll do it. The idea of song vs composition is a whole ‘nother beast where you have all these other elements that have historical precedence, etc but a main difference to me in this sort of quasi-pop format is having lyrical content and hooks that stay with you.
“Everness” engages with a Borges text about memory and its fragility. What drew you to that particular piece of writing, and how does it connect to the music you built around it?
Ever since getting into Borges, I can’t stop re-reading him. Over and over again. The act itself is very Borgesian (he’s my Zahir?). That being said, I haven’t gotten super deep in his poetry (only his fiction), and this is one of the first pieces of his poetry that killed me. I’ve had a history of Alzheimer’s in my family, where I’ve watched several of my close relatives progress through it before they passed, and the piece just destroyed me. So naturally I had to use it for something on the album lol (sell the copper.)
Despite all the experimental elements, there’s real tenderness throughout the record. How do you think about vulnerability in improvised music? Is that something you’re consciously bringing, or does it just emerge?
Thank you, I really appreciate that. It was definitely intentional for this record, and while I try and approach everything I do with a raw honesty, for this, I was really trying to wear my heart on my sleeve. It was freeing to be able to present very different aspects of myself in this format. I think the contrast is maybe where the vulnerability comes from.
You had to let go of material to find what was essential. How do you make those choices? What makes something feel necessary versus expendable?
Through a process comprising innumerable hours of listening and painful self-reflection ahaha. I think being able to zoom in and out is really helpful. Questions like: “Do I like this thing in a vacuum?” “Do I think it fits as a whole with the rest of the record?” “What about in this or this context?”
And lastly, as always, to close… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
The ombak (tuning/beating between a pair of instruments) in gamelan music. I just got a set of gender wayang—thanks Putu—so that’s been deep in the mix.
The akazehe greeting/chant in Burundi. (Thinking specifically of the recording from musiques traditionnelles—Thanks Michael Attias— but the thing in general)
A string instrument played with too much bow pressure ponticello.
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