The Ampeater Review

1: “The Wan­derer” — Trans­la­tions (AEM101)
2: “Wade in the Water” — Jean-Rene Ella (AEM020)
3: “For Spar­row” — Cab­i­net of Nat­ural Curiosi­ties (AEM058)
4: “Alain Delon” — Fran­cois Peglau (AEM107)
5: “Dog­wood” — Ashraya Gupta (AEM010)
6: “I Don’t See It That Way” — Extra Life (AEM006)
7: “Set­tlers Song” — Uncles (AEM092)
8: “We Are the Hunters” — The D’Urbervilles (AEM066)
9: “Satel­lite of Love” — Color of Clouds (AEM009)
10: “Empire State of Mind Edit” — Blissed Out (AEM114)

An ex-girlfriend once accused me of trans­pos­ing my anx­i­ety regard­ing an upcom­ing exam onto our rela­tion­ship. Put off by such indis­crete psy­cho­analy­sis, I dis­missed her com­ment, and within a month we had parted ways, despite the fact that my exams and any anx­i­ety they had allegedly pro­voked were already behind me. I recalled my ex-girlfriend’s words recently, though, as I scoured hun­dreds of record­ings in search of the hand­ful that would become the inau­gural Con­crete Expe­ri­ence Dig­i­tal Mix­tape.

My ex-girlfriend stud­ied Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture; a detail which I failed to appre­ci­ate at the time but now seems enor­mously con­se­quen­tial. If she had pre­ferred lin­ear alge­bra to poetry, her notion of trans­po­si­tion may have involved points and axes rather than romance. Had she stud­ied music, she may have con­cep­tu­al­ized it as a fixed-interval melodic shift. Of the count­less ways to define trans­po­si­tion, some are inher­ently more mal­leable than oth­ers. In ret­ro­spect, my ex-girlfriend’s indis­creet psy­cho­analy­sis was a bless­ing in dis­guise, because it pushed me to approach the theme from a prin­ci­pally emo­tional angle—had I decided to write about fixed-interval melodic shifts, I would have already run out of things to say. More­over, it prompted me to eval­u­ate the moral impli­ca­tions. Per­haps I really did trans­pose my anx­i­ety but, so what? What’s so bad about transposition?

Yeats muses, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Along the same lines of inquiry, we may ques­tion whether music could exist with­out the musician—or for that mat­ter, if it could exist with­out the lis­tener. Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, I pro­pose that it could not, just as we needn’t pay taxes on the imag­i­nary num­ber i. A some­what more pro­saic metaphor may be the famous conun­drum—when a tree falls in the for­est and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?—for which the only rea­son­able con­clu­sion is who the fuck cares? Music unheard bears no rel­e­vance to human­ity. By this stan­dard, all rel­e­vant music must involve the lis­tener and becomes, ergo, an act of trans­po­si­tion. So, why these ten tracks?

The mix is intended to stand on merit of the music alone, with its ten diverse tracks offer­ing some­thing for every­one. The rela­tion­ship between the indi­vid­ual songs, how­ever, as well as the rela­tion­ship between the songs and the theme, is a lit­tle more abstract.

Let’s begin with “Alain Delon”, a humor­ous and totally groovy explo­ration of an impos­si­ble dream. “I can’t take it,” whines Fran­cois Peglau in the open­ing lyric. “I’ll never be Alain Delon.” He’s refer­ring to the star of vin­tage French cin­ema known for his mem­o­rable of role as le soli­taire—a suave, hand­some and brood­ing anti-villain. Con­cep­tu­ally, Peglau’s wish is easy to relate to, since nearly every­body has hoped to become a star. How­ever, as the song unfolds, we sense a hint of sar­casm, and are drawn to ques­tion whether the true idol is the man or the char­ac­ter. The ten­sion esca­lates in the bridge (if you can under­stand French) with sound clips from a 1970s inter­view in which the aging actor explains his recur­ring role. Does an actor step­ping into char­ac­ter sig­nify an act of trans­po­si­tion? If so, we must spec­u­late about the agency involved. In other words, does the man become the char­ac­ter or does the char­ac­ter become the man? Who is the real Alain Delon, or has he ceased to exist?

Of course, the nota­tion of iden­tity is com­pli­cated for actors and non-actors alike, per­haps espe­cially so for some­one like Peglau, who describes him­self as Peruvian/French/Argentinean. He began his career as gui­tarist of Lima-based indie phe­nom­e­non Los Fuckin’ Som­breros, but now resides in Lon­don where he recently recorded a solo album. I men­tion this not tan­gen­tially, but to point out that Peglau, so to speak, wears many hats, a trait shared by sev­eral artists on this mix. Ashraya Gupta was born in India and lived in Eng­land and Cincin­nati before wind­ing up in New York. Jean-Rene Ella was born and raised in Cameroon but even­tu­ally made his way to Indi­ana where, most improb­a­bly, he now works as an organic chemist. Of course, a com­pelling back­ground does not nec­es­sar­ily lead to good transposition—nor does good trans­po­si­tion nec­es­sar­ily lead to good music—but it cer­tainly gives the artist inspi­ra­tion to draw upon.

Although Gupta’s inter­na­tional back­ground is not imme­di­ately evi­dent in this small sam­ple of her work, the process of con­tin­u­ally rein­vent­ing her­self has left indeli­ble marks on her music. This is clear when you look at her artis­tic pro­gres­sion. She’s best known as singer of The Kitchen Cab­i­net, an indie folk-pop quar­tet, yet her solo music rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant and bold leap for Gupta, who man­ages to forge new aural ground with just a key­board and her own vocal chords. Gabe Birn­baum, who pro­filed Gupta back in Octo­ber 2009, observed that “though this bare­bones set-up could prove monot­o­nous or bor­ing in another’s hands, Gupta car­ries [the music] with her voice alone.” Even though her vocals are rel­a­tively low in the mix, the inti­macy of Gupta’s deliv­ery and her sparse har­monic arrange­ments make them seem extremely close, as if we’re lis­ten­ing to her singing to her­self alone in her apart­ment. The music, which occa­sion­ally swells to high vol­umes, unfolds so organ­i­cally and hyp­not­i­cally that we’re only aware of these ebbs and flows peripherally.

I’ve never heard a more authen­tic blues record­ing than Ella’s ren­di­tion of “Wade in the Water”—a bold claim to make of any song but par­tic­u­larly of one released on YouTube in the site’s fledg­ling years. The song’s charm lies in its un-indulgent sim­plic­ity and emo­tional hon­esty. Any­one who’s picked up an elec­tric gui­tar under­stands the seduc­tive allure of the three-chord twelve-bar blues. It prac­ti­cally begs for gra­tu­itous shred-solos. As a result, many blues musi­cians are no more taste­ful than the aver­age 80’s hair band—and con­sid­er­ably less enter­tain­ing. Peo­ple tend to think of the blues as an Amer­i­can arche­type, like base­ball or apple pie, but we must remem­ber that the ingre­di­ents are con­sid­er­ably more diverse—African rhythms and Euro­pean har­monic con­ven­tions bap­tized in the holy water of the muddy Mis­sis­sippi. That Ella made the transat­lantic jour­ney him­self may explain his authen­tic­ity. His par­ents also played a role.  Ella’s French-born mother intro­duced him to the folk music of her coun­try while his father got him hooked on Gospel. When Ella sings the blues, it is a per­sonal his­tory, a her­itage, that he’s tap­ping into. Organic chem­istry may not be ter­ri­bly rel­e­vant, but it indi­cates a lot about Ella’s lifestyle. He’s not famous, nor does he seem to aspire to star­dom. We wouldn’t have heard from him at all were it not for a series of home­made videos on YouTube, which he posted only after encour­age­ment from friends.

To return to Peglau, it is worth not­ing that his per­sonal his­tory has influ­enced not just his musi­cal or lyri­cal con­tent, but the very code in which it is writ­ten. His recent songs are in Eng­lish. For any­one who grew up in an Eng­lish speak­ing coun­try, this fact may seem insignif­i­cant, but for Peglau, who used to write more in Span­ish or French, it involved con­scious effort. Peglau explains that, when he first arrived in Lon­don, he was uncom­fort­able with the lan­guage, and used song­writ­ing as a way to increase his flu­ency. Is trans­la­tion also a form of transposition?

We might expect a band called Trans­la­tions to shed light on this mat­ter. Indeed, they do, although the type of trans­la­tion they employ has noth­ing to do with lan­guage. Ben Heller touched upon this dichotomy in his orig­i­nal Ampeater write-up of the band in June 2010: “Trans­la­tions are acutely aware of their place in his­tory, even before that place has been cul­tur­ally affirmed by more than a small hand­ful of fans and crit­ics.” In other words, Trans­la­tions is a band that can tell us not only where they’re going, but also where they’ve been, and with remark­able accu­racy. They man­age to sound both cut­ting edge and retro at once, with crunchy punk-era gui­tars off­set by electronics—surprisingly pre­med­i­tated for a band whose atti­tude and exu­ber­ance might sug­gest a sin­gu­lar focus on rock­ing out. In spite of the hid­den self-awareness, though, Heller notes that the mem­bers of Trans­la­tions place their music at “dif­fer­ent cross­roads on the map of New York rock & roll.” This high­lights just how much per­sonal lee­way the act of trans­la­tion involves, and might explain why Google Trans­late is still search­ing for the per­fect algorithm.

In fact, genre transposition—the re-contextualization of diverse and often archaic influences—is a dom­i­nant theme on this mix. The process becomes par­tic­u­larly clear in cover songs, such as “Satel­lite of Love” by Color of Clouds, since it’s eas­ier to spot points of alter­ation. In this instance, singer Kelli Scarr’s airy vocals and the song’s extended final cho­rus trans­forms Lou Reed’s embit­tered orig­i­nal into a dreamy fan­tasy. “We Are the Hunters” by The D’Urbervilles and “For Spar­row” by Cab­i­net of Nat­ural Curiosi­ties, while not cov­ers, also fall under this gen­eral mode of trans­po­si­tion. In con­trast to the delib­er­ate con­scious­ness that sets Trans­la­tions apart, Extra Life takes a more holis­tic approach in “I Don’t See It That Way”, bor­row­ing from metal, medieval folk and math-rock. If you’re won­der­ing how such diverse influ­ences can coex­ist peace­fully in a sin­gle song, they don’t. Jolt­ing between time sig­na­tures, it’s rhyth­mi­cally so unpre­dictable that you’d have a hard time find­ing some­thing to tap your foot to, let along dance to, but if you just let it sweep you around, you’ll get an inter­est­ing ride. The song con­stantly seems to be wag­ing war on itself to the extent that you won­der if the band is even in con­trol of what hap­pens.  Of course, they must be, as the parts are so com­plex that it must have taken a lot of rehearsal.  Yet, Jake Brun­ner, who penned Ampeater’s post on the band in Octo­ber 2009, notes that front­man Char­lie Looker’s manip­u­la­tion of musi­cal mate­r­ial “goes far beyond the look-what-I-can-do aes­thetic of many sim­i­larly tech­ni­cally pro­fi­cient musi­cians,” and that his com­po­si­tional process lets “the notes tell him … the rhyth­mic orga­ni­za­tion, as opposed to enter­ing the cre­ative zone with a pre­con­ceived idea of which moves to employ.”

With Uncles, this manip­u­la­tion is both musi­cal and lyri­cal. I was skep­ti­cal when I first heard New York native Dan Bateman’s thick south­ern accent which, sus­pi­ciously, is present only when he sings. It turns out, though, that there’s a nat­ural expla­na­tion. As a child, Bate­man often vis­ited his uncle in Alabama, who intro­duced him to music by singing to him in that same thick drawl. Even­tu­ally, Bate­man took these songs back to New York and col­lab­o­rated with Will Schwartz to cre­ate Uncles (so named in homage to his Alabama kin, one assumes). Yet Uncles is not ashamed of its urban roots and the duo’s lyrics—ranging from pro­found to profane—sound a lot more like Jack Ker­ouac than any­thing Bateman’s uncle might have sung. “Replac­ing Words with Other Words,” the title of Uncles’ lat­est album, alludes to this jux­ta­po­si­tion. The music brings sep­a­rate worlds together and seeks to rec­on­cile them, such that we walk away from it with a height­ened per­spec­tive of each. When I think of set­tlers, I imag­ine Ply­mouth Rock, the Ore­gon Trail, or some­thing sim­i­larly obso­lete in this world yet “Settler’s Song” addresses set­tlers of a dif­fer­ent sort, find­ing poetry in the urban grit and poverty of the immigrant’s New York. Above a sen­ti­men­tal gui­tar fig­ure and war­bling synth, Bate­man sings:

Cracked and torn
Faces scorn
Domini­cans sip­ping 40 ounces
Sit­ting bent up on the metal grate on the nail salon
I want to hear my shit pump­ing
from an SUV down a side street bend
Or on the lips of obese women
Yakkity yakking in the supermarket

I’m reminded of a piv­otal moment in Milan Kundera’s The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being when a Euro­pean dis­cusses the beauty of New York. “Beauty in the Euro­pean sense has always had a pre­med­i­tated qual­ity to it,” observes the novel’s pro­tag­o­nist.  “The beauty of New York rests on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent base. Its unin­ten­tional… Forms which are in them­selves quite ugly turn up for­tu­itously, with­out design, in such incred­i­ble sur­round­ings that they sparkle with a sud­den won­drous poetry.” His lover, an artist, cryp­ti­cally sug­gests that such unin­ten­tional beauty is the final phase in the his­tory of beauty. What does “final” imply? Do we infer that it sig­ni­fies the demise of beauty, or the pin­na­cle, or both?

Either way, it’s easy to see why such an unin­ten­tional art is the most resilient, as it requires no motive. Per­haps, after all, music can exist with­out the musi­cian. With­out the musi­cian, how­ever, the lis­tener becomes respon­si­ble for rec­og­niz­ing music in the honk­ing of horns or the pelt­ing of the rain against the win­dow­pane. We might even say that the lis­tener becomes the musi­cian, just as prac­ti­tion­ers of found art are called artists. Oscar Wilde’s Vivian attests to this in the author’s 1891 essay, “The Decay of Lying:”

To look at a thing is very dif­fer­ent from see­ing a thing. One does not see any­thing until one sees its beauty. Then—and then only—does it come into exis­tence. At present, peo­ple see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mys­te­ri­ous love­li­ness of such effects. There may have been fogs for cen­turies in Lon­don. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know any­thing about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them.

It seems the process of trans­po­si­tion is reversed in unin­ten­tional art, for instead of con­vert­ing intan­gi­ble expe­ri­ence into art, we’re tak­ing exist­ing forms and con­vert­ing them into emo­tion. Plato ban­ished artists from his utopian Repub­lic on the pre­text that rep­re­sen­ta­tion dilutes an ideal. He was talk­ing about inten­tional art, yet I sus­pect that he would have been even more crit­i­cal of unin­ten­tional art, for if inten­tional art obscures an ideal, unin­ten­tional art doesn’t even attempt to relate to an ideal. Plato seems to have viewed art as a pho­to­copy, where each suc­ces­sive copy is fainter than the last, until finally the page is blank. What he doesn’t account for is what we add, and our addi­tions are often unin­tended.  Alvin Lucier’s sem­i­nal sound exper­i­ment “I am sit­ting in a room” demon­strates the fail­ure of the copy machine metaphor. He records his voice and plays it back into the room which he records and replays again, repeat­ing this process ad infini­tum (or so it seems, the total work is about 45 min­utes long).  His voice is quickly warped, mor­ph­ing into the res­o­nant fre­quen­cies of the room, cre­at­ing a haunt­ing ambi­ent sound­scape rather than silence.

And so, the last track on the mix is a remix that rev­els in a glitch. The orig­i­nal song, Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” is one that every­one is famil­iar with, unless you’ve been liv­ing under a rock for the past two years. What we may not have noticed—I myself did not until Ben Lasman’s August 2010 review drew my atten­tion to it—is the minis­cule glitch that occurs at the 21-second mark in and repeats every so often after­wards… Blissed Out’s remix, “Empire State of Mind Edit,” is the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of that glitch to extreme heights. Of course, Blissed Out is quite aware of what they’re doing and, as Las­man sur­mises, so was Jay-Z.

It’s a strange lit­tle imper­fec­tion to find in a more or less immac­u­lately con­structed pop song. Some­thing osten­si­bly unre­lated to musi­cian­ship or writ­ing, but still too much there to be con­sid­ered an over­sight. Every ten sec­onds or so it pops up out of nowhere, grind­ing at the gears of the cho­rus, tear­ing the whole jam apart from the inside out like an arm­ful of bot fly babies … Rap is quite a bit dif­fer­ent today than it was a decade ago, sure, but where most heads like to whine about the lyri­cal tran­si­tion from the socially-conscious to the fiscally-conservative, it’s also impor­tant to note how that the­matic shift has been mir­rored in the genre’s musi­cal method­ol­ogy. Sam­pling, record scratch­ing, the infi­nite rep­e­ti­tion of a break­beat were all tran­scen­dent sonic mal­func­tions, punk ges­tures stem­ming from the same kind of tech­no­log­i­cal anti-humanism as play­ing slide gui­tar with a lead pipe or cut­ting up your torso with a bunch of bro­ken beer bot­tles thrown hate­fully at the stage … Which is why, when Hova’s biggest hit in years comes acci­den­tally equipped with inces­sant, intru­sive nois­i­ness, we not only get a throw­back to the auto-destructing golden years of rap, but an excit­ing insight into how this sort of musi­cal antag­o­nism could pop a hole in hip-hop’s fat-suit.

But if that’s so, we’re tread­ing into another phase of beauty that Kundera’s cou­ple did not imag­ine, since this is the delib­er­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of unin­ten­tional beauty. And so, with each suc­ces­sive layer of trans­po­si­tion we vac­il­late between the tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble, the real and imag­ined, and some­where in the midst of all of this a com­plete pic­ture begins to emerge.

Unfor­tu­nately for my girl­friend, her accu­sa­tion back­fired. Rather than seek­ing to appease her, in the fol­low­ing week I grew even more con­cerned about the upcom­ing exam. Per­haps I’d flipped the switch, and had begun to trans­pose my roman­tic wor­ries onto aca­d­e­mics. More likely, though, I just resented her for mak­ing me so self con­scious about it all, which is why I urge you to push every­thing you’ve just read to the back of your mind and give the tracks a relaxed listen.

CONCRETE EXPERIENCE is a new jour­nal of con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy and cre­ative art pub­lished quar­terly and based in Seoul, South Korea com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing an engag­ing alter­na­tive to stan­dard art and lit­er­a­ture peri­od­i­cals to creative-minded audi­ences. Incor­po­rat­ing a vari­ety of writ­ing styles and aes­thetic sen­si­bil­i­ties, it locates itself at the inter­stices of high and low art, lit­mag and fanzine, fic­tion and jour­nal­ism, con­cep­tual and con­crete, all wrapped up in a beau­ti­ful and endur­ing journal-cum-objet d’art. Our guid­ing mantra—“let the words vibrate”—embraces the way we want read­ers to inter­act with CONCRETE EXPERIENCE; rather than churn out a lineup of unre­lated arti­cles or pho­tog­ra­phy fea­tures, we care­fully curate the mag­a­zine as a whole, pro­vid­ing read­ers with a cohe­sive and com­pre­hen­sive unit.

Nate Green­berg

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