from 8pm to 12:30am-something, i attended a show at The Atrium. For $5 and some red wine, i enjoyed myself to the tune of kill your darlings and whatever else the venue had to fill the time with.

having made out with a cadence, in some black nonsense getup i had fun preparing, i got to casually interview brett and jayme across a few conversations.

brett eschews social media, even resisted mentioning their bandcamp and facebook. he mentioned their instagram “that i never check”.

the band doesn’t capitalize their band name or description on bandcamp, so i won’t either. i see you. i retain capitalization for my use of Instruction Case and Helpful Nouns.

though brett plays in a few genres, he helped make the band real, adding his abilities to his wife jayme’s desire for goth goth goth. i should interview her more, to better describe the motivation for goth goth goth.

dancing to the jams that wouldn’t exist without Their Motive, i knew they were doing something they loved. jayme hit that drum pad like she knew the song inside her core, and brett played his keytar and sang like he was there to carry us the as far as we needed, until we could dance the savage slow tempo on our own.

ai spends its time mastering everything so well that it does nothing well at all, but these humans challenged their inexperience to Do Something New.

brett said something that i had only encountered in my own voice:

Ephemerality.

he had practiced soundscapes in his basement, expressly unrecorded. they were meant for a moment, an audience of one. music need not always be Made For Capital.

goth night was about being present, moving and dressed. i enjoyed the murky vocals and clear percussion. edm sometimes confuses itself with in its tempo and audience, but goth make neither mistake.

in today’s culture of Capitalization, ephemerality is rarely valued but prized So Deeply by those who can. ephemeral works are not a lonely endeavor: few or many, they bear witness to that which is ephemeral, and many may spread tell of its happening. none are powerful enough to reproduce what was made in a moment. improvised or plotted, the ephemeral is for a moment and cannot be reproduced.

live music does this by happenstance, but People do this By Design. replication is what We need, but perhaps each instance is its own performance.

sometimes i have wondered at live performances, how much faked. with the conceit of a backing track, jayme in the musical voice of KYD faked nothing. she gave us every beat that made us dance our weight. without her, the music would have been too untethered. without brett, the music would have been too simple. performance is an art, separate from the art being rendered. a recording put on bandcamp can’t rumble your body the way Local People can, with the help of electricity and amps.

i have spent a small amount of time with ai musicians, those who make up numerous “bands” with personalities which they engineer fanfic to breathe to a semblance of life. these authors strive for notoriety and sometimes achieve something like it. there is something missing from these hoax bands with personalities, who all have the same vocabulary.

music which can be replayed ad nauseam can lose its luster, but that which is ephemeral cannot fade except by a flaw in the memory. it is perfect, because it is what it was and cannot be brought to some revision of perfection. its concept had to be embodied in sonic data that expired, and remembered as a token of respect. it can expire or inspire; the choice is up to the rememberer.

brett discussed his traversal through Reason and then Ableton. these are software tools i have bounced off of in the past, either because of OS requirements or complexity. i recounted that i had chosen Logic Pro X because it came with a drum machine that had flexibility and could play for me to some extent, though I also discussed with him the way i found that my sounds could sound samey from track to track, if i didn’t bring a high concept to it wash outwith some creative impetus. personally, i embraced sameness for high concept, to make a feature of a liability.

at the after-party gathering, i asked if he knew each of the people there at the booth, and he did. i was perhaps the only strange face in the group, having been invited to stay by the bartender who looked out for me, having listened quite close to some of what i had said that night.

i worried that had intruded somewhat, but brett was alive with details and motivation. they hope to play monthly, and i easily believed that jayme’s motivation to play and replicate sound will lead them to do so.

brett discussed combining cassette audio, mixing field recordings with digital drum patches (literally grinding broken glass into the sound), and doing it since 2001. i wish i’d had the presence of mind to ask about their method for lyrical work and what kind of combinations those were.

their track Wispwasp featured the backing vocals of another local, who plays in a related band. it is left as an exercise to you to find out who that is. the knowledge is not ephemeral, though my memory of it is.

this piece is not about what you should come to hear with your own ears. it is about what you cannot hear, and what is real in the hearts of others despite your inability to hear.

Do Something with your autonomy, that others may notice.

You can reach Autumn Ryan to be heard about this subject at [email protected]. Do not transmit sensitive or private information if it’s unsuitable for others to have.