Sometimes I wonder how the sun feels watching us needlessly destroy ourselves. Needless, because our planet, our sun and moon and solar system, provide us with everything we could possibly need. Greed, profit, acquisition accumulation, these are not needs. Just insatiable desires emerging from unexamined senses of lack, an incompleteness that’s uncomfortable to dwell within. So we destroy each other and our capacity to live on/as/with our Earth. Afterglow is a reminder that the Earth will exist even after we throw our pain at each other. Even after all our toxicity, waste, horrifying vibrations fill the planet, it will cleanse itself in our wake. It brings me comfort to know that we cannot destroy Earth, that we can only destroy ourselves.
recorded at Oori Studios, Brooklyn, NY
mixed/mastered by Jeff Cook
cover art my Shakeil Greeley
music video by Sam von Horn
On your signal is an exploration of the present through gestures immanently within a room and simultaneously tuned into its outside. Through the interplay of drums, microphone feedback, and radio frequency reception, the piece grapples with what it means to carry the weight of the present in our day to day movements around the spaces we occupy. Listening for the acoustic resonances of our immediate environs, overlayed with regional and global broadcasts, the piece reaches for an improvisatory field that can be startling, surprising, sometimes comforting, and often terrifying. The use of microphone feedback here is conceptually inspired by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s description of ownership as a kind of “feedback loop - the more you own the more you own yourself” (All Incomplete 16-17). When thought of alongside Moten and Harney, playing with feedback, which can amplify itself to excruciating levels if not intervened upon, becomes more than simple sonic play. It brings us to ask: to what extent do our libidinal investments in gradations of ownership feedback into our daily performances of being? What would it mean to tamper with them, in a room full of the outside, in an effort to dissipate their capacity to harm? How can a practice of opening ourselves up to possibilities beyond our “selves” help us mitigate these loops of feedback as self-ownership?
I performed/recorded the drums for this track.
Many thanks to Jack for allowing this to happen in our shared home.
Appreciation to Michelle, Marissa, Rachel, Olivia, and Alivia for being open to me recording in our shared home as well!