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3 TEAM Alyana Vera (Editor) Rob Collin(Design)Lewis (Design) Austin Robey (Production) Daniel Blake (Production) CONTRIBUTORS Abby EliArlyAidenColeCooperLaurenLanceMaxAndrewBlakeBexJuliaKylieChapelMaeveDodesDupreeBarnesLeonMarkMuninBroederAkkermanCastrilloKuceraWhyteSamuelsCrehanSaccocioScottZeger ARTISTS Rose Hotel Amy K. AFervorsBormetDayWithout Love datafruitssaliYah Morsifire The Duner Flowers WE ARE DieGlennSleepMeroiticWitheNulsleepFURYHabitsEchoTheMonk Contributors
ByCo-opsDanielBlake(Ampled member, Part-Time Faculty at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts)
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This zine is the result of a collaboration between students at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School and Ampled. As part of the school’s Civic Liberal Arts Curriculum, the course “21st Century Platform Coops” featured a syllabus where students could meet regularly with Ampled co-founder Austin Robey, whose patient expertise helped students to imagine a music economy that more equitably serves artists and their communities. Students also heard from a range of other voices who are pioneers in the alternative platform-era music economy including Ampled worker-owner Alyana Vera, Music Workers Alliance member Jean Cook, and Catalog founder Jeremy Stern. We also explored in the course how Ampled is part of a long history of cooperative organizing and how musicians have often been at the forefront of this organizing. As this history reminds us, it can be difficult for coops to maintain visibility within a capitalist economy that dilutes or even erases true alternatives like Ampled. The attempt to capture the language of cooperatives with catchy but hollow phrases like “stakeholder capitalism” signifies that the time is ripe for cooperatives to once again assume a place of prominence in 21st century cultural and economic consciousness. This kairic moment is in the air— observe the remarkable surge in worker strikes across many industries throughout 2021—and is perhaps why the students were so inspired to delve deeply into Ampled’s community organizing efforts. In putting together this zine, students devoted significant out of class time to attending meetings and public events, studying the workings of Ampled’s platform, and conducting interviews with the newest season of Ampled artists. They produced graphics and layout ideas and worked diligently with the dedicated workers of Ampled to complete a document that has allowed them to bring their education out into the world. This partnership between The New School and Ampled will continue in the coming year, as we look forward to offering “21st Century Platform Co-ops” again in Fall 2022!
Intro: 21st Century Platform
Having a strong support system on Ampled is one of the most important things for an artist to succeed and thrive on the platform. It is important to start building an audience as soon as possible—even before your page launches. When thinking about promoting your art, most artists feel that the easiest option is to post on social media.
Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok can be great ways to lure in more supporters and get your work out into the world. It’s important to come together as a community to help one another start to grow support. One way artists can do this is by cross-posting. Cross-posting is done by posting the same text or media to multiple social media platforms, mailing lists, or newsgroups. In addition to this, we can further promote artist sponsorship by emphasizing collaboration. Artists can bounce off of one another’s social media followings by doing things like dueting each other on TikTok, reposting Instagram posts and stories, giving shoutouts, retweeting teaser video clips on Twitter, and much more. Social media is a powerful tool, but it doesn’t have to stop there. It is imperative that you establish a direct connection to your fanbase because it will both make your supporters feel that you care about them and that they are getting the most for their subscription fee, thus allowing you to gain more supporters. Some ways that you can take marketing offline include making an individual artist newsletter as well as a collaborative newsletter with other artists on Ampled. For example, artists from Season 2 have discussed being successful in sending out personalized postcards to their fans to thank them for their support. Another great strategy is to take advantage of meeting fans in person at your performances. Collect emails, make texts and mailing lists, and have prints to handout; you can make small business cards with a scannable QR code that takes you directly to your Ampled page. You can also use these QR codes on other things like stickers or posters to hang or stick on things like street poles, in coffee shops or bars, and music venues. You can come together with your Ampled peers on Discord to share techniques, ideas, contacts, and more to further promote each other and share the task of building an audience on Ampled. Abby Dodes
The Heart of Ampled: Community Support By
THE5 HEART OF AMPLED: COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Words by Jordan Reynolds, Transcription by Maeve and Chapel
Rose Advice for Getting Started On Ampled
As Ampled grows as a platform, as well as into itself, it’s important that it continues to champion its ideals: support for artists, authenticity, and supporting oneself through music. Back in October, Artist-owner Jordan Reynolds of Rose Hotel spoke to our Season 3 cohort about launching their pages. Below you’ll find some of that advice, but you can watch the entire workshop on the Ampled Youtube page.
Think about your personal reasons for joining Ampled: Is it an accessible platform? Does the cooperative aspect fall in line with your morals? Speak to your audience about that! It’s not just about your fans wanting to hear your music, it’s about them wanting to support you, including your vision of what the music industry should be. Read the original Artist’s Handbook and guidelines one month before launch and go through your email list. This will give you some time to mentally prepare for your launch and get you in the right headspace. Get ready to relocate/start new: If you’re moving over from a platform like Patreon, it’s time to tell your current listeners on those sites. Let your fans know you will be moving platforms, including an explanation as to why. Along with this, get ready by setting aside some content that you will already have up on your Ampled page when it’s launched. Find a couple of people to support you ahead of time (for example your dad, best friends, not-so-best-friends, really anyone with opposable thumbs will do) to join your Ampled page so when people see your profile, you already have supporters.
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Hotel’s
ROSE7 HOTEL’S ADVICE FOR GETTING STARTED ON AMPLED
Reach out: Have your email list all ready? Great, send out emails in preparation for soft and hard launches. There’s far more reach doing this than Instagram. Don’t have an email list? No problem! Head over to Bandcamp. When someone has downloaded your music you can see who they are and get their email. Use this to build your list. By doing this, it’ll help get you to the Ampled artistowner level quicker: be like Mario and level up! Soft Launch: About one to two weeks out, start posting on your social media about your new journey with Ampled! Talk about the kind of content you will be posting on there. Make something fun like postcards to personally mail out to your supporters to get them excited. A great website for this is MOO. You could also offer an early stream of content (albums, singles, etc) on your Ampled page for supporters who join. Give ‘em something to talk about.
Post-Launch: Remember to keep posting on your social media platforms about the kind of content that can be found on your Ampled page. And don’t forget to thank your audience for their support! With these steps in mind, your followers will likely be attracted to your mission as well as the music they already enjoyed. Momentum often builds slowly, but consistency is key, as well as engaging with your audience. Don’t be afraid to post more than just your music. Your audience is not just subscribing to hear your music, but also to get to know you.
WHO: The artist-owners on Ampled are the voters.
WHERE: Online! All the votes are pulled and counted by a system that displays two bar graphs for every option. One bar graph shows the amount of credits used to vote for a certain option, and the other displays how many individual people voted for an option. It’s an easy way to see who did and didn’t put all their eggs in one basket!
WHEN: As frequently as needed. The first time Ampled used it was to prioritize several different features that could be added to the platform. Some of the categories that have been voted on include artist communication (notifications, messaging, threaded replies); artists post (image posts, audio posts, multiple image, multiple audio); payment and money flow (pay what’s fair, accounting and admin); and dashboard analytics (building on the existing dashboard). Quadratic voting made it easy for each artist-owner to weigh their preferences across multiple features at once.
By Kylie Leon
WHAT: Quadratic voting is a system that gives each voter a set amount of tokens that they can either spread among multiple options or put all on one option. The more votes you want to give something, the more credits it will (quadratically) run you: four credits to put down two votes, nine credits to put down three votes, etc. Ampled used RadicalxChange’s in-house Quadratic Voting tool to help the Product Development team survey artistowners on what they should focus on next.
QUADRATIC VOTING AND THE POWER OF A CREDIT
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WHY: It allows Ampled workers to see the wants and needs of artists in an efficient and clear-cut way so they know what should be prioritized. Quadratic voting also incentivizes voters to seriously consider all the options in front of them, as their votes hold greater weight when they’re spread across more options.
QUADRATIC9 VOTING AND THE POWER OF A CREDIT
voting has been experimental so far, but it has shown a lot of promise and given artist-owners a louder and clearer voice than ever before in a way that is simple to digest and view. The method isn’t perfect, but with more practice and trial and error, it may get pretty damn close.
COMPROMISE: When longer term projects are highly voted, the developer engineers should inform the artists how much time and resources these projects will take, and what other projects will be put on the backburner as a result. Then a second voting round should be held to see if it is still something the artists find Theworthwhile.useofquadratic
CONS: Relying solely on what the artists have in mind, rather than taking into account what the developer engineers think would be best practice, can result in projects that seem helpful in theory but take way too long to produce and refine.
By Andrew Akkerman
Ampled’s dashboard is much more user-friendly than Patreon’s counterpart. While each perform basically the same task, Patreon’s version is filled with many more components that seem to overcomplicate the whole user experience. Ampled’s dashboard is new, sleek, and easy to use. With other platforms, you just become another artist among thousands of others. Ampled is different. Ampled is the musician’s company, or should I say, cooperative. It’s run by musicians for musicians, for the sole purpose that the artist will get financial gain out of it. Ampled is a tool for musicians looking to expand their audience and become part of an ever-growing community of like-minded artists. The Artist Dashboard is just one of many great things Ampled has to offer, and according to DeShon “...this is just the beginning.”
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An exciting new feature has been added to Ampled’s artist interface: the Artist Dashboard. According to lead developer Ryan DeShon, “the Artist Dashboard was built to give [artists] an easier way of getting a top-down overview of what kind of support they are getting.” The new dashboard allows artists to view how much capital they have earned over the course of a month, how many supporters they have, and the average amount of money that supporters put down for the said artist. It also shows how long each supporter has been supporting the artist in question. Along with that, the Artist Dashboard allows artists to see auto-generated images to help them promote their page. But it doesn’t stop there! DeShon has said, “As the Ampled community grows, the dashboard also gives artists more insight to the product side of Ampled and how to get involved...and really it’s just a starting point. We wanted to create a place where we can give the artists more tools to connect with their supporters.” Overall, the Artist Dashboard is meant to help Ampled artists keep track of their supporters and their earnings within the platform.
Introducing: The Artist Dashboard
In this interview, D.C.-based pianist, vocalist, and composer Amy K. Bormet talks about how she found community with other women in jazz and created the Washington Women in Jazz festival to platform and celebrate them. Collectives with Amy K. Bormet
Amy: I’ve been working as a musician since I was a teenager. I went to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts here in D.C. and played a lot of jazz music. I was 16 and we would play all over all over the place, just gigging. That was really a wild way of figuring out how to play music and how to interact with musicians. I was lucky enough to be somewhere where there were a lot of older musicians who accepted me and let me come work with them. A lot of people that I worked with when I was younger were older Black men, who really helped me try to figure out how to how to play music, but also how to pay my bills, how to be professional, and how to book gigs and parties. I’ve always been able to pick up enough work that is at least tangentially music-related. I couldn’t get on festival line-ups when I started releasing music. You look at the lineup at the D.C. Jazz Festival, and only one of [the performers] in 2011 was a woman. Look at jazz critics; you can’t find anyone to review your albums and then you go onto the Jazz Journalists Association and only 7% of the people who are listed are women. There’s are a lot of disparities that I have tried to address in my career and I have really sought out relationships with women as mentors. I went to the University of Michigan because the
Creating Equitable Local Communities & Online
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By Blake Broeder
Blake: How long have you been making music and how has the music industry changed since you’ve started?
pianist Ellen Rowe–the only woman who was a director of a jazz program at that time–recruited me. And then I studied with another wonderful pianist, Geri Allen, for four years, came back to D.C., and started my festival. How did you start the Washington Women in Jazz Festival and what inspired it? One of the first things that I ever saw in D.C. when I was 15 was the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival, which at the time was a women in jazz festival and the only one in the country. Then when I was in my 20s I got this residency at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts during this festival and I was blown away. I had never been around that many women musicians, even when I was in college. I noticed that some of the women in the big band were actually living in D.C. and I never played with them. I was like wait a minute, how come we haven’t played together? So I approached this club that closed during the pandemic, unfortunately, but was a woman-owned jazz club [called Twins]. I’ve played there before and so I said: “I really want to throw this festival here and I need five nights and I’m gonna do all women musicians.” Everybody came out and then I started getting bites from different performing art centers and then it just kind of sort of built from there. I try to keep it very locally focused where it’s D.C. women and we bring in other artists that we’d like to work with. Now women in the community come to me and say, “Hey, you know, I’ve been really wanting XYZ to happen or I have a CD release or I want to do a live recording at your festival.” It’s turned into this moment where we can all collectively highlight each other and support each other in a non-competitive way. We have older women and younger women learning from each other. It’s beautiful.
CREATING13 EQUITABLE LOCAL COMMUNITIES & ONLINE COLLECTIVES
PHOTO BY CHRIS UBIK
I feel like that can kind of be translated into Ampled, with the collaborations and the pooling of resources. With COVID, did you have or find an online community that was solely for women musicians?
I was going to ask what the most important benefit you wanted to gain from Ampled was, but it seems like you want to connect?
Yeah, definitely just connecting with people and, you know, I want to try out something that’s different because I have been putting all my music on Spotify and on all these other services, even on Bandcamp, and financially it’s not really working as a way to bring in income. But selling tickets, merchandise, and CDs at shows is not always going to get me what I need. Also as we move into the space of having live-streamed concerts and events, having a fan base that’s based on the internet also makes sense to me. Once I start doing some more touring in the Spring, I want to connect to my fans and have somewhere where they can frequently check in on me and see what I’m doing, even when I’m not in their city.
There have been other organizations that have popped up that I’ve been able to connect with. There’s a woman in South Africa that runs a jazz girls camp, and she created this international women in jazz hang. We all go on Zoom and talk about different projects we’re working on, which has led to a lot of really cool collaborations. So I think it’s a really cool time to connect with people and to have other people who are interested in the same values that you have come from all over the world. It’s kind of a revelation for me, especially because I love traveling and I love being able to make those connections. Eventually, I can go to Italy and have a trumpet player to play with or Japan and have a drummer to perform with. I have a track record of creating community spaces and collaborative efforts, so to me, this co-op idea and asking for people to give money for something that seems intangible is really fascinating to me and I’m very optimistic about it. I feel very intimate with my audience and I am extremely grateful for them, so how do I express my gratitude but also get them involved with what I am trying to do with this new platform?
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I think it’s insane that co-ops are just getting buzz now. As I’ve learned this semester, there have always been coops but they never really got any formal recognition. It just makes so much more sense with the art and culture model. So many people are like “the gig economy is gonna be great.” Like no, musicians and artists have been doing it since the beginning. It is not easy to do it on our own. The reality is that we don’t do it on our own, and the more we can actually collaborate and function the better we’ll be able to do. Otherwise, it’s just this myth of the individual Americana bullshit. So I think it’s crucial. So many people are like “the gig economy is gonna be great.” Like no, musicians and artists have been doing it since the beginning. It is not easy to do it on our own. The reality is that we don’t do it on our own, and the more we can actually collaborate and function the better we’ll be able to do. Otherwise, it’s just this myth of the individual Americana bullshit.
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LONDONMARCUSBYPHOTO
Fervor’s Evy Duskey reflects on the benefits of making music abroad, finding community, and Argentina’s organizing tradition.
Fervors on ByCommunityBuildingAbroadMaxCastrillo
Evy: Oh, you gotta love it. Well, on one side of things, there’s this beautiful thing about Argentina, which is that when you ask people in bars here “what do you do?” they don’t usually respond with their day job. They usually respond with their passion project. The vocation is a huge part of the culture here, and I think that’s definitely a big part of the reason why I’ve decided to make my home here. There are these places called central culturales that are dedicated to art and music, and the government usually
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Max: For you and Chris being both members outside of the country, what’s it like being a musician in Argentina?
subsidizes them, at least partially, because they believe it’s very important. Here, I think it’s a really great place to grow as a musician. I feel like the idea of trying to play out in New York, for example, would have seemed incredibly intimidating to me at 24 or 23, when I started playing with Chris. I didn’t even call myself a musician until a couple years ago. But I do think that Buenos Aires is more loving and a kinder place to kind of grow your craft and start playing out. On the other hand, for me and Chris as foreigners from a colonizing world power, you’re not always looked at very kindly trying to stick yourself in a local scene–and with good reason. We don’t blame anyone for that attitude towards us at all. And so that was a big part of the reason we decided to do the house party. Let’s open up the space and make our own community, you know? Let’s just choose people based purely on their talent and on how good their music is. What’s the cultural attitude that Argentina has towards co-ops? There’s a huge co-op tradition. There are restaurants here that are owned by all the waiters, and they’re awesome because the waiters are usually all like 50 year old dudes who’ve been waiters for 30 years and their level of service is unparalleled, and it’s because they own it and they can take all the pride and also the earnings of how well that restaurant does. There’s also a huge union movement here. What sort of expectations do you have for Ampled? And how that could probably help with the band’s success in promoting your work?
FERVORS17 ON BUILDING COMMUNITY ABROAD
Ampled has to continue to grow for it to be able to serve artists in the way that it’s hoping to, because it needs more people to adopt the platform and for more people to listen to it. I think one of the best things that Ampled could do is partner more with Bandcamp because I think actually Bandcamp is one of the only platforms out there that is trying to do right by its musicians and highlight artists they think have the potential to grow and boost the platform with that.
Self-Care and the Power of Community w/ A Day Without Love
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STREICHERBILLBYPHOTO
On a bright November day, Brian Walker and I sat down for a chat several hundred miles apart. Mugs of tea in front of us, we talked about his project A Day Without Love (ADWL). Brian is a Philly-based activist and advocate whose project spans folk, punk, indie, emo, blues, jazz, and EDM. Brian makes difficult conversations approachable through art, addressing mental health, the socio-political climate, and other challenging topics. In addition to creating music, Brian hosts the Dreams Not Memes podcast and recently released Safe x Sound, a documentary he assistantdirected about the underground music scene.
By Julia Mark
SELF-CARE19 AND THE POWER OF COMMUNITY W/ A DAY WITHOUT LOVE
Julia: In college you broke up an altercation outside of your dorm and subsequently wrote a poem called “A Day Without Love.” What is the connection between that poem and your musical Brian:project?
The poem had a line that I wrote that said, “The day that you stop loving yourself is the day that you find chaos,” describing that a day without love is a day of chaos and confusion and pain and struggle. During my third semester of grad school, I was kicked out of my apartment and I didn’t have a place to stay. I was couch-surfing and sometimes I even had to sleep on benches and still go to work, still go to classes. And I thought about that poem. I was like, “Well, do I love myself? Does anyone love me?” I decided to start this project called A Day Without Love as a sign to not give up on myself and inspire other people not to give up on each other. To create this community around rising above adversity, fighting for what’s right, and embracing creative liberation. Self-care is a big part of your music and your whole vibe as A Day Without Love. What advice do you have for artists to help them be more proactive about their self-care and self-love? I think the first thing to remember is self-care means something different for everyone. And it’s all about progress, not being perfect. I think of self-care as an action of practice: Being selfaware to know what you need and then having the willingness to commit to how you’re going to take care of yourself a lot more. Because it’s very easy to rely on outside things to determine your self-care. But really, it’s a journey of: How are you going to get better day-to-day? I know for me it was a lot about losing weight, being more mobile, stretching, sleeping, eating better, and things like that led to being a better musician. What was the impetus for creating the documentary Safe x Sound with filmmaker Brianna Spause? Philadelphia has a DIY culture, but I’ve been exposed to so many other cultures from touring. I told [Brianna], “What if we did a Southern Midwest tour where we talked to people about their cultural experiences with being an artist or a DIY curator?” It all came down to topics like diversity and inclusion, consent and safety, how to establish a safe space infrastructurally, and how DIY people feel they’re home or part of the community. It was filmed during a time before COVID, but some of those same issues still prevail today. As a small musician, you might see someone getting groped. Do you stop your performance and say, “Hey, don’t do that. Get out of my show”? So it’s like, when you see something, do something. But when you’re seeing 1000s of people, everyone looks like a dot. Maybe talk about “Is this venue over-packed? Maybe someone’s having an anxiety attack. Is everyone hydrated?
Keep your hands to yourself.” Because like I said, it’s the same issue of safety, but it’s executed differently. The documentary isn’t necessarily an instructional guide or awareness piece. But it’s an overview of tour experiences from different people’s perspectives and why inclusion, diversity, and safety are really important in maintaining that concept of home. How did the pandemic affect your life as an artist? It definitely changed my perspective on how I plan for things. I was more like, “Okay, well, since this is a roadblock, how am I going to pivot?” I ramped up my podcasting to connect with people that can potentially be tour connects. I was able to start doing yoga more so that I could take better care of myself. I wrote more because I thought to myself, “I don’t know how long this pandemic is going to last but I might as well write out and put out everything that I want.” Forget a strategy. I put out 13 releases during the quarantine.
Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about project-wise or about yourself that you want to make sure we include? I’m always open to collaboration, specifically with the Ampled community, because I literally have 700 more interviews to do [for my podcast Dreams Not Memes]. Whether you are or not from the US, feel free to hit me up for an interview. And I’m really glad to be a part of this community and to continue to create. I’m always down to tour or collaborate remotely.
20 SELF-CARE AND THE POWER OF COMMUNITY W/ A DAY WITHOUT LOVE
Cultivating byCommunityIntentionalWithsaliYahLanceKucera
CULTIVATING21 INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY WITH SALIYAH
PHOTO BY JJ BARRETT (@JJBARRETT_)
Lance: Do Ampled’s dynamics and values align with any groups you’ve interacted with before? What’s it been like coming on Tommy:board? I worked with the Austin Classical Guitar Society [ACGS] a lot even after graduating high school where my focus was classical guitar. I was in a
A few days before DJing for Ampled’s Season 3 launch party, Tommy Jammer sat down with me to discuss their creative life and their decision to join Ampled. Originally from Austin, Tommy started producing music and DJing under the moniker saliYah in 2019 before moving to Brooklyn in June 2021. I learned about Ampled in the “Music and Platform Co-ops” class and after the first session I immediately told Tommy about the platform. Coming to our discussion as collaborators and roommates, I asked about everything that’s led up to now, from their experience with Austin Classical Guitar Society to the catharsis of their recent EP No End and No Beginning. We talked about the process of joining Ampled and how the platform can advance their creative and social aspirations.
The whole process of releasing music added onto social media and the way performance is captured on it really makes me feel vulnerable. Because I am coming at my music through a lens of expressing my experience with mental illnesses as a black queer and trans person and my identity is central to my music, especially my last EP Sanctification, I’ve been thinking about how Ampled can allow more expressivity in this regard. Jamondria [Harris aka meroitic], who is also a featured artist in Season 3, has been bringing up in our meetings the ways that Ampled can help deal with the ableism in the DIY scene. For example, with me I have really bad anxiety and ADHD, and a laundry list of other things. I do really need help keeping track of tasks and holding myself and others accountable. I feel like we can keep each other accountable at Ampled.
Like I was saying earlier with social media: I’m not good at working it. Navigating those terrains does not compute in my brain. I’ve been trying to detach myself from constant monetization and aroundI’msafepeopletoreconnectofhappy.beallbutfuckingfrominofentrepreneurship,digitalthatpressurepursuingmusicfulltimeordertomakehellamoneyit.WhichwouldbegreatifIcould,Idon’thavetomonetizemyhobbies.ItcanjustsomethingthatmakesmeI’mtryingtogetoutthecapitalistmindsetandwithmyself.IlovesharemylifewithotherinawaythatIfeelandmakesmefeellikeshowingmylovetothoseme.
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AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION band with the director, Travis. So ACGS goes into juvenile detention centers, starts classical guitar programs for kids in there, and continues to work with them after they get out. I feel like that’s kind of comparable to working with co-ops: the intention of trying to invest in the lives of those around you, actively sharing, and just trying to improve the lives of others any way that you can. The virus interrupted things, but did that impact your decision to join Ampled? Prior to COVID I did not have a label or momentum behind my project as saliYah outside of my friend group. During COVID, that’s when I got signed to Growth In Decay and started reaching a bigger audience. I’ve never toured or consistently played shows because I am a lowkey very anxious person. Performing isn’t one of my favorite things, even though I do love DJing. I think performing and music is so vulnerable. I think that’s actually why I do like Ampled a lot, because I’m able to do those things but from the comfort of my own room. I am still getting to interact with people through posts and comments but in my little bubble. I’m making my Ampled page a safe haven. How do you approach different platforms as an artist?
CULTIVATING23 INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY WITH SALIYAH
Will Ampled impact your creative process at all?
I’ve had a lot of people say they’re interested in behind-the-scenes videos of production, after asking for suggestions on social media. Now that I’ve had my Ampled page, it’s been fun going back through old projects [and] getting inspiration again. I just started a new job, which is always a roadblock for music stuff. With Ampled, I hope that we can give each other the support we need to to endure and move through whatever work it is we gotta do to live. I’ve always wanted to cultivate an intentional and practicing community through my art and music, because that’s always what’s made sense in my brain, you know? Expressing myself through those outlets. And without the online social capital that seems to be the fuse on so many successful music projects, Ampled’s programming has been helpful. I feel like I’m meeting real people and not just online friends. Like you said, you started building up your network of people who you have affinities with to leverage your voices within the group, which I think is so important to an anti-capitalist work ethic. This is my first time feeling like I’m in a cohort with artists and workers. That’s something that I really want to continue, because it’s cool, honestly. Working in isolation, it’s easy to scream fraud at myself. And that’s not what’s important. Worthiness is not what I should be focusing on.
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After a decade running the electronic music platform and radio station, datafruits, Portland-based DJ and founder Tony Miller reflects on the station’s beginnings and its future on Ampled. Could you walk me through the history of datafruits? I started it around 2012 with my friends and I wanted to combine a few interests. I was really into UK pirate radio, but they weren’t really playing the kind of music I was listening to. So I wanted to use my web development skills to make a site. So it’s as built from scratch as possible and just kind of slowly grew. by Lauren Whyte
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datafruits on Community and Independence
DATAFRUITS25 ON COMMUNITY AND INDEPENDENCE
I actually lived in Japan [from] 2014 until about 2018 and continued doing it there and just incorporating whoever I met along the way to help do this. It’s open to anyone and really based on the internet because I keep moving around. What does being an independent radio station mean to you? I mean, I guess it’s just not accepting any kind of funding that doesn’t align with your values and not making any sacrifices in that way. I funded it by myself and then started up on Patreon, and eventually moved to Ampled.
So what led you to move datafruits to Ampled? I was getting into the idea of worker co-ops in 2016. And at first, I thought we should just structure our radio as a worker co-op. But I saw these projects getting started like Ampled and then I thought [that] maybe there’s something beneficial to joining up with as many people as possible. How do you anticipate being a part of a cooperative will change the future of datafruits?
Well, since [Ampled is] for music, that can expand our network and help people. I just want to help people. So if there are going to be any kind of cross-collaborations or anything like that, it seems way better than just being on Patreon. And I like being able to have some say in the direction of where Ampled goes.
Where do you see datafruits in the future?
I want this to be kind of run by everyone. All of the code for everything is open source and I’ve always tried to get contributors. But it’s just super hard to go from running the whole thing to having the community run it. Hopefully in regards to Ampled, if there is any way to split payments in the future, I see that as a good way to do that. Everyone gets compensated for their work. I’m in the Ampled Discord, so I can see how a co-op operates and I want to study that and incorporate that as much as I can.
Andrew Seely is a Nashvillebased independent artist making music as Morsifire because this is what he was meant to do. Music is Morsifire’s calling. Morsifire’s music is made up of his interests, his truth, and his honesty. Sometimes this means his music sheds light on aspects of himself that he might not even like, but by showing his true colors the audience gets the real Morsifire. Morsefire thinks of music as a higher power, something that is bigger than himself. The indie-electronic artist is someone that values connection and experience, because what is music without life experience? An example of this is the origin of the name, Morsifire. When Andrew was in his late teens he would smoke weed and play Mario Kart with his friends. They would blurt out random names to distract each other and that’s how the Fulfillment in Community
SLOWEYMARYBYPHOTO
Morsifire On Finding
26 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION
By Cooper Samuels
When Morsifire started doing shows, meeting new people, and making connections he realized that participants in the music business are “his tribe” and “his people,” more than a lot of the people he had grown up with. That sense of community has also been a part of Morsifire’s musical journey whether that’s through bonding through music, producing for people or even letting people use his home studio. He hopes to maybe one day teach music tech and music production to high-schoolers. Morsifire defines success for himself as “all the fulfillment that I get from just making stuff and working with really cool people.”
MORSIFIRE27 ON FINDING FULFILLMENT IN COMMUNITY
name Morsifire was born. Rooted from genuine connection and life experience. With all of us still trying to gain our footing in the pandemic, that sense of community may be hard to find. Morsifire loves the fact that he gains supplemental income from Ampled but that isn’t the reason why he joined at all. The community aspect of Ampled is what motivates Morsifire. Morsifire was chosen to be a part of Ampled’s Season 3 initiative. He says that it is inspiring to work with such “creative, smart, and passionate” people who are also “on a similar wavelength.”
Returning to the Stage with The Dune Flowers
I sat down (on Zoom of course) with Tyler Drager, the man behind The Dune Flowers, to catch up post-lockdown and talk about how he’s focusing on building community. Tyler and I come from the same Maryland basement show scene; we first met at one of the shows I hosted at The Waffle Iron. The Dune Flowers were always known as a band full of life with a great live show; their reputation preceded them and they carried a bright atmosphere and sizable fanbase with them. However, after moving to Nashville and D.C. during the pandemic and with the four-piece turning into just Tyler, I wondered what he was doing in lieu of the usual gigging to hold onto that same tight knit community. So, I asked him about how he’s been using Ampled and other social media to compensate for the lack of live shows.
PHOTO BY MARCUS LONDON
28 MORSIFIRE ON FINDING FULFILLMENT IN COMMUNITY
Cole: Do you see social media as an augment to building your presence as an artist or something you’re not dependent on in terms of your artists Tyler:toolkit?I’ve been trying to get back into social media and figure out Tik Tok, which is a
by Cole Crehan
RETURNING29 TO THE STAGE WITH DUNE FLOWERS
What do you see going on in music right now that excites you most?
whole different beast compared to the things I grew up with, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I’ve definitely been trying to use that, and not make it as much about music, but more about personality and things that I find funny. But I think in the future, I see a lot of these [social media sites] turning into ad sites. Say you’re a creator and you’re just following the money and not really doing what you want to do. Just completely becoming these brands without your own personality. That’s where I think places like Ampled can move away from because you’re not going to get bombarded by other content that the apps are wanting to push more than your album release video.
What do you see in the coming year for The Dune Flowers?
I was talking to my friend Blake yesterday about how analog gear is coming back. Not necessarily tape machines, but we’ve seen a lot of companies putting out two preamps for microphones that are affordable and sound great. Or a guitar app that has a bunch of builtin effects. Along with that, I honestly just like the shows I’ve been seeing. I played a show a couple weeks ago and I’ve been seeing some friends playing shows, and that is super exciting.
I have more singles I want to put out. I definitely want to do a couple shows. And then next year I’m hoping to record another album. I want to be able to make music but I also don’t want any of the stress of “Oh, we need to tour, we need to do this!” I want a stressfree year. I’m excited to keep playing music, keep the industry alive, and keep communities together. We were split up for so long so I’m just excited to be a part of it and see the arts grow.
Earth to Jupiter: The Future Is Now
Through the mist of a grey and hazy Brooklyn night I was able to make out a faded neon sign with the words “Jupiter Disco” dimly displayed. Just a minute before this I genuinely feared that I was lost, walking past empty roads lined with industrial yards alone on a Tuesday night, I began to think I had made some sort of 2012 Apple Maps meme mishap. But no, I had put the address in right and I was at the Ampled Season 3 party. I was told by a friend that Jupiter Disco—the bar where Ampled was hosting their Season 3 party—was reminiscent of Blade Runner, and this could not have been more apt. It’s this sort of 90s future aesthetic, with patrons clothed like they were in The Fifth Element and a drink menu displayed on aging monitors with a font straight out of Hackers. And what better environment than this for the first ever real life Ampled party. Something about a gritty futuristic vibe and a forward thinking music cooperative just seems to go together.
30 RETURNING TO THE STAGE WITH DUNE FLOWERS
by Aiden Saccocio
PHOTO BY AIDEN SACCOCIO
EARTH31 TO JUPITER: THE FUTURE IS NOW
The party felt like a meeting of minds from far and wide, who didn’t necessarily choose the spot, but were given the edge of the world as their meeting place. Not only were Ampled artists and workers there, but there were also folks from other up-and-coming co-ops like The Drivers Cooperative and lots of trickle-over from the NFT fest. The DJs were spinning vinyl, which I was surprised to see. I have only ever been to shows with CDJs. This may or may not have contributed to the fact that almost every song played was new to me. The DJ booth looked like something out of Mad Max, it was raised with wooden walls on all sides and only a slit where you could see the actual DJ. I had to weave my way through the crowd to the side of the stage to even see who was spinning. This sense of anonymity left me locked in on the sonic aesthetics of the show and less on the aspect of performance, which as a musician I appreciated. It also fostered a great vibe for mingling and networking, as you were not necessarily getting more from the show when facing the DJ booth. The space continued to get more and more packed throughout the night; one lovely patron who had clearly just stopped by for a drink at their favorite lowkey bar asked me why the bar was packed out on a Tuesday night. I looked around for someone involved in Ampled but did not recognize anyone near me, leaving me as a temporary spokesperson for the cooperative, which I must admit I enjoyed.
32 EARTH TO JUPITER: THE FUTURE IS NOW
saliYah: I honestly don’t remember who was DJing but they were really good and the place was packed. There were shrooms involved, to say the least. I was just dancing and had this wild experience of this sudden click of connection with everyone around me. The only way I could describe it is feeling simultaneously alone in the universe but also so connected to everyone around me and that we’re never really alone. I ran into somebody from Texas that had recently moved here as well, and then she basically regurgitated the exact thing that I was thinking. That kind of spurred the whole inspiration for the [No End & No Beginning] EP. Do you hope to inspire that same sense of connection as an artist? That’s my goal, to cultivate community through whatever medium. I’ve always felt very alone so art has always been a means of connecting with other people. The feedback that I’ve gotten from my work and my DJ sets is that people seem to connect with it on an emotional level, and that’s all I’m trying to do. Do any tracks on the playlist hold any personal or sentimental value to you? I know I put a lot of a SOPHIE in there, and SOPHIE has always been a big inspiration of mine. She really meant a lot to me. She passed on my birthday and it was the hardest day ever. The first track I played was a Stefan Ringer track, “Imagination,” and he really inspires me. He has the same mastering engineer that I do and he’s so talented it’s crazy. The second track I played by Bella Boo holds sentimental value to me. The second time I ever visited New York it was on the playlist I made that I would listen to while walking around the Lower East Side. It always reminds me of that special time that I had and my first memories of New York. Kornel Kovacs’ track I listened to a lot during quarantine when everyone was denying the fact that by Alyana Vera
Saliyah playlist & interview
Missed out on Ampled’s Season 3 Launch Party at Jupiter Disco?
Listen back to saliYah’s mix–their first time DJing in New York–and read more about the playlist below:
Alyana: You said that you saw God at Nowadays. Was that during a DJ set?
SALIYAH33 PLAYLIST everything was going to change forever. I would listen to that a lot and dance around my house like “we’re good, it’s totally fine!” And then there are a few older cuts like Kerri Chandler and BeAs Deep. My favorite one on there is the Cloudsteppers remix. I honestly don’t know how I found that, it’s been in my library for so long. But it’s one of those classic emotional bangers and I wish I was in the crowd when that played. My homie Pro Ghost is on there, we’re on the same label. My best friend Travis, or point.reyes, I threw his track on there. Those are most of the tracks that speak out to me and have a deeper connection. Pretty much all of them represent different points in my life, so it was honestly a very special night that I”m very grateful for.
Looking at the playlist again, if you had to give it a theme, what would it be? For me, it represents those emotions of pulling up to the club, they’re playing good music, all the homies are there and you’re just dancing for hours. So that giddiness of “I don’t want this to ever end.” It all ties back to friendship and connection. These are all songs that if I heard in the club, I’d be losing my mind and dragging everyone to the floor.
Your set included a track from LSD XOXO, who is pretty well-known for reclaiming techno as a Black artist. Is it important for you to platform these types of artists in your sets? Absolutely. A big part of my set is showcasing Black artists, and especially Black queer artists, who are doing that sort of reclamation that I’m trying to do in my own practice. Tygapaw and Russell Ellington Langston Butler, are doing a good job at that and really creating such a beautiful space. Those are all artists that I look up to, Robert Hood as well. It’s all different forms of Black techno, but it’s Black art at the root and that’s important to talk about. Techno and electronic music have become so whitewashed that people forget the roots of it. It’s frustrating but I’m grateful to be surrounded by all these really great Black artists who are reclaiming that space.
Joachim and Stuart in November as they prepared to release their single “Belong.”
Joachim: With “Belong,” it was a sense of togetherness. Typically we’ll come up with the song and then the visual ideas. I looked at Google Images and there were [images
By Julia Mark BUTCHERMATTHEWBYPHOTO
Modern Authenticity with WE ARE FURY
Julia: Your single “Belong” is about isolation and you’ve had other releases dealing with darkness and light. What kind of imagery is in your brain these days?
34 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION WE ARE FURY is the creation of South American-born Joachim Speidel and Canadian-born Stuart Brookes. Since 2016, the Vancouver-based dance/ electronic duo has amassed over 100 million streams. Even before the pandemic hit, WE ARE FURY were working remotely, cultivating community through Discord, NFTs, and thoughtful artist collaborations. WE ARE FURY continues to thrive in the modern music industry while maintaining their authenticity and ambition. I caught up with
I don’t think music NFTs have had their moment yet but we’re ready for when that happens. The [current] system is so messed up. Someone listens to an artist all month, and then that money for their subscription still goes to major labels, primarily. Or Spotify decides what goes viral, and then
We got on a call with our graphic designer going back and forth. And that’s how the whole “chain disintegrating” artwork came together. I’ve noticed as we get darker, it just feels more genuine. I imagine it’s a difficult balance between giving the fans what they want and making something that feels authentic. What is that balancing act like for you?
Joachim: We’re working on the biggest sample pack that we’ve ever made. Stuart: Yeah it’s at least 100 sounds. We have been going through every single one of our releases and bouncing out some of the drum samples and some cool one-shots that we have in the loops, and we’re putting together this big list of legacy samples. I love overdelivering. I want to make sure that people are getting insanely more than what they’re paying for. What’s your experience been like with Joachim:NFTs?
MODERN35 AUTHENTICITY WITH WE ARE FURY of] people holding hands and all this cute stuff. I was like, “How do we make it more industrial and weird-looking?”
Joachim: It’s a process that’s evolved a lot over time. When we first started off making music and finding out that we can sell music, that was sweet. Then I’m like, “Okay, I want to do this as a full-time job. I guess I need to make something that sells or I don’t get to eat.” And then, getting further into it, maturing our sound and taste, it’s like, okay maybe we need to focus more on the authenticity.” That’s really what we’re getting deeper into now, especially with writing our lyrics. We’re finding out what we have that we can do that no one else can do. The only way to do that is to be authentic. What else would you like to share with the Ampled community?
Joachim: Honestly, just taste. There’s this vocalist [Rachel Brassfield AKA BRASSIE] that we found on TikTok because I follow Grandson. He started a duet with one of her songs. We were sitting on this demo that needed vocals. The demo was like a male voice but I sent her a message, like “We found you on TikTok. Your music is great. We have this track…” And now it’s one of my favorite tracks we’ve done.
I think something that’s good for most artists for a first piece is doing this all-access thing. If you set a realistic floor price, then your fan who is purchasing [the NFT] is gonna get that value back in a couple of years. How do you decide who to collaborate with?
A lot of electronic artists will be like, “Hey, my fee is x. Here’s your top line. Here’s my agreement.” But for us, that conversation is more collaborative. Also, it will mean more to an undiscovered artist to be part of the project. They’ll probably go harder when it comes to creativity. You just know that that moment’s gonna be more impactful in that person’s career than if we were to pay a big vocalist. Stuart: It’s all in line with the authenticity thing, you know?
36 MODERN AUTHENTICITY WITH WE ARE FURY that payment comes in late. I got into web3 stuff because it just felt better. It was just like a better version of what we already have. It provides artists with liquidity, and it gives fans a way of saying, “I supported this person.”
Evan: Since 2000, your chip music label 8bitpeoples’ premise has been ‘... to bring together people interested in pushing the limits of old/disused technologies, such as early videogames and home computers.’ Does that still stand Jeremiah:today?:
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That’s still relevant for 8bitpeoples, but also within the world of chip music at large. People are always figuring out new tricks to get hardware to do things that it wasn’t originally intended to. I think people realize we can’t constantly be in a state of upgrade cycles, partly because of the associated environmental concerns. So repurposing technology and pushing it to its limits is still important to me and, hopefully, this will continue to attract more mainstream interest. What have your studies on ‘the aesthetics and informatics of destructive processes’ taught you? That direction came towards the end of when I was working solely with video game hardware and I started thinking ‘what’s still unexplored here?’ There was something about glitches, these unexpected events, that felt like a collaboration between the user and the hardware. As a solo artist,
PHOTO BY MARCUS LONDON
Glitching w/ Nullsleep
by Cole Crehan
38 GLITCHING W/ NULLSLEEP it’s usually just me and my gear: I tell it what I want it to do, and it does it. But with these older devices, there were things that would sometimes go wrong and you could lean into that. So I started intentionally seeking out glitches–looking for that collaboration between man and machine. Are you still exploring this aesthetic concept today? Something I’m interested in lately is taking different genres and smashing them together to see what comes out. That’s something that is [more] widespread in electronic music at this point; the boundaries between different genres are blurring. I do see that as a form of glitching, where you’re taking these different genres and combining them and seeing what happens. So that idea of incorporating glitches and corrupting data is still present in my work, but the way that it’s manifesting has evolved.
NULLSLEEPOFCOURTESYDRAWING
There was this discussion that always stuck with me from when I was studying at the Columbia Computer Music Center. It was during a course on algorithmic composition and there was this diagram of a spectrum: on one hand, it said, ‘total order’ and on the other hand it said, ‘total chaos.’ Humans are very good at recognizing patterns and figuring things out when they listen to them, so completely ordered music tends to be a bit boring because you immediately perceive the pattern. Completely random noise is also pretty boring because you’re listening to it but as soon as you realize there’s no pattern, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t need to pay attention to this. It’s just noise.” The most interesting stuff is where you have that combination of order and chaos. That informed my interest in glitches, accidents, and music as a way of capturing listener attention and subverting those expectations.
Something that I’ve noticed being talked about more is the contributions of Black, indigenous, people of color to the history of electronic music, as well as queer and trans artists. This is something that I was always aware of because of my deep interest in this music, but I now feel a responsibility to use my platform to help other people also become aware of it. Without Black people, you wouldn’t have any of this [music]. House and techno coming out of Chicago and Detroit, jungle coming out of the U.K., jungle also not really being possible without Jamaican sound system culture: A lot of the time, it’s not made explicit how we got to this point and all of the people that contributed to getting us here. A lot of what you see within EDM culture is pretty white, whereas, if you look back to early U.K. jungle parties you see the multicultural, multiracial makeup of those audiences. And that’s something I’d like to see come back into electronic music in a much stronger way. Where do you see your body of work fitting into that arc? Where are you trying to take electronic music? I’m a white cis heterosexual male, and I’m taking up space in this form of music. So part of my responsibility is to make sure that I’m recognizing where this came from [and] whose work I’m building on when I’m producing music. And then in terms of my direction, I’ve been on this current path [of genre-glitching] since 2018 when I did a residency at the University of Colorado Boulder Media Archaeology lab. It was about taking different pieces of obsolete hardware and then imagining the development of [electronic music] around this hardware that maybe wasn’t even from the right time period. We have access to all of history at our fingertips through the internet and this anachronistic ingestion of media can lead to an anachronistic production of media, which is in part why we’re seeing this blurring of genre boundaries. But a lot of where my direction is going now started during that residency program–these reimagined technological histories of electronic music and taking the key piece of hardware that was responsible for the sound of a genre, and replacing, combining, or using it in an unexpected way. What do you end up doing to that genre? Is this a way that we can arrive at new sounds? New genres? What does genre even mean anymore?
What’s your view of the historical arc of electronic music culture and history?
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Tell me more about your Rave Strategies tool. It takes discipline as an electronic music producer to learn the gear that you have and really employ it in your productions. Rave Strategies is a tool that I developed because I had acquired new gear and I wanted to make sure that I was challenging myself to put it
40 GLITCHING W/ NULLSLEEP all to work for me. You input all of the gear you have along with a list of genres, a range of tempos, different musical scales, and a mood. Each time you run it, it will generate a creative prompt: If you introduce this element of randomness you’re going to wind up generating these prompts that are asking you to use gear that you’re not super comfortable with yet. Specifying a tempo and genre yielded some challenging and funny results. I’ve had prompts for a 200 BPM vaporwave track or a 200 BPM ambient track, and you’re just like, ‘what is that, hardcore ambiance?’ But this is another path towards trying to create new genres and doing things that break you out of your typical paths of thinking. It’s been really useful for me [to create] a more disciplined approach to producing music. I have it set up so that I get an email every morning with a new creative prompt, and even if I don’t work on a piece of music, it makes me think about music every day, and that makes me think about new approaches to different genres. In the notes for your LosslessExperience EP, you thank the electronic pioneers “who started this thing that keeps me alive.” Could you talk more about this dedication and the meaning behind the phrase “PLUR in the face of mass extinction”? I’ve had points in my life where I felt like the only thing that I had to live for was music. It’s a form of language that can convey things that we don’t have words for. The way that you can connect with pieces of music sometimes is enough to make you feel reconnected to other people in the world and like life is worth living. I have been lucky enough to produce music and have other people interested enough to come and listen to what I do, and feel a connection that way with other people–there’ve been some dark times where I said, ‘okay, even if everything else is not what you want it to be, and everything feels wrong, there are opportunities for more of these feelings of connection in the future because of music.’ As far as ‘PLUR in the face of mass extinction,’ it’s almost more of a question. This concept of peace, love, unity, and respect that came out of the second Summer of Love: what does it mean at this moment in history when we can’t even come together to make the decisions necessary to save this planet that we all inhabit together? I used to make fun of candy ravers and PLUR kids when I was younger; I thought it was all very corny. But in your heart, who can argue against the concept? Like if you’re going to shit on any of those four tenets, you’re a dark person in a very real way. It’s just something that I wanted to put out there as a prompt or an antagonism. It’s almost like a glitch: it’s a statement to break people out of a certain way of thinking and get them to look at the world differently.
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Insane, in a very wholesome and unbelievable way. I picked these friends of mine that I’ve always looked up to that are incredible musicians, that I was always like, “If I could put together a band of my favorite people in Atlanta, it would be these guys.” It was really cool because we could only rehearse a couple of times. But we jumped in on Day One of the studio and it just clicked. We did ten days in a row. I wanted to keep it really open and just be like, “Hey this is the core of the songs but whatever happens, happens.” It was nice to kind of give up some of the control. Skateboard Videos
Ruben Alvarado, a photographer and musician from Atlanta, writes introspective folk songs under the name Withe. Now based in Brooklyn, his recent work is all about embracing change and maneuvering through it. When we spoke this past Fall, Ruben shared the origin behind his moniker Withe, the surprising influence of quantum physics on his songwriting, and revealed that he has a forthcoming album, “There is Less Sun”. You can listen to the first single now on Withe’s Ampled page.
These songs, to me, represent the idea of losing yourself. Whether it’s to depression or to a relationship–losing a sense of identity. Originally, the working title I had for the record was “Superposition.”
So that’s a funny thing...I used to have this weird habit of adding an E on the end of the word with. At some point, I was like, “That’s a cool artist name!” And then I remember looking into it, and technically the word refers to a twig that you use to bind things, like in basket-weaving. In the truest, corniest way that I could say this: music is the thing that binds me together. It’s a very fundamental thing for me and I just thought that was kind of appropriate. What was the recording process like for you?
I don’t think I’m using that anymore, but that’s this idea in quantum physics that something can exist in two places at once. So it was this idea of having versions of yourself. This is who I was and this is who I am now, and trying to reconcile the way that you change over time. What was the evolution of your name, “Withe?”
Withe on Identity, Change, and
Julia: Is there a particular feeling behind the album that you recorded this past Ruben:Summer?
By Julia Mark
42 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION
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Do you feel like there’s any overlap creatively between your photography and your music?
I’m still figuring that out, but I’d hope that someone might find solace in the music and lyrics. I feel like I mostly made this album just for the sake of making an album. I just needed to do it because I kept putting it off. I read something recently that resonated with me [about] not making songs to help people or save people. Just make the song. [It’s] not so much a message but I’ve always hoped that I can make music that inspires other people to make music. For me, one of my greatest goals–which sounds so silly–is to get a song in a skateboard video. Because that’s kind of how I discovered all the music that I listened to. If I can get a song in a video, and it inspires some kid somewhere to start playing guitar or making music of their own...that’s the one thing that I would like to come out of it. Hopefully, someone’s inspired, you know? And it just helps to put more art into the world.
WITHE43 ON IDENTITY, CHANGE, AND SKATEBOARD
To me [photography] always felt like a sort of reflex. I was going out and just taking pictures of stuff on the street and people and things. It was not something that I staged. Music has always been so fulfilling because you’re making something out of thin air, you know? It’s the difference between physically painting something versus taking a picture of something. When I get into a mode where I’m shooting photos–actively seeking things to shoot, or framing stuff–that feels like a very different zone than locking in on a song. I like to think they come from a similar place, but the way I operate when I do those things feels pretty different. Is there a message that you hope people take away from your songs?
PHOTO BY OLGA SIDILKOVSKAYA
During a rather tumultuous time to be alive, it can be hard to find one’s true center. Jamondria Harris, a thriving creative based in Portland, has their balanced zen on lock. Harris creates sonic art under the moniker meroitic, playing with the senses, shadow work, and numerology. Originating from a background of poetry and pentacostal singing, meroitic fell for the atonal, rhythmic, and often harmonic music properties from the Church. Along with this push and pull of dissonant sounds, they craft multi-dimensional and crossdisciplinary installations of different mediums, creating an insular creative quilt. Encouraged by the extravagant works of Tool and Pamela Z, meroitic has a certain way of crafting an otherworldly experience composed of shrieking operas, growling synths, and discombobulated guitars. Although there are conventional instruments folded into their various pieces, they use them in avant-garde ways. “I don’t want to play guitar. I like to use the guitar as an experimental instrument... to get specific tones and see how far you can get with
Surrendering to Dissonance with Meroitic by Bex Munin
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COURTESY OF MEROITIC
44 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION
SURRENDERING45 TO DISSONANCE WITH MEROITIC ART BY JAMONDRIA HARRIS
Although they got their creative start in poetry, they began to feel trapped in their work. They workshopped their creative process and began anew: they now start with a poem, assess the surrounding materials, and plan their next sensory experience. meroitic works with various different textiles and weaving techniques, planning out scenarios in which their creations can be used in the context of an art installation. Their work processes have an ebb and flow as a result of their relaxed and surrendering disposition. To indulge in meroitic’s work is an all encompassing experience that is truly inspiring and intriguing.
it.” Despite having their roots in tradition, they felt constricted by convention. By deconstructing the uniformity, they were able to find themselves: “I learned how to pick up on how sounds can resonate and not necessarily be in tune...balancing dissonance and different kinds of meroitictensions.”prides themselves on crafting a multi-layered significant soundscape, calling upon spiritual practices to guide their hand. They use specific frequencies on their synthisizers, working in multiples of 9 and meticulously accounting for each fractional and fundamental parts of the composition.Thoughtful of the instrumental minutia of their process, meroitic felt that they found their ideal Asfrequencies.anavidparticipant of Wing Chun practices—which is described as “cutting away shadow energy” and “radical tantric Buddhist work” by the artist—they are very aware of the importance of the ebb and flow of creativity. They utilize this mindset along with a surrendering and zen way of creation. As opposed to cutting out the shadow energy in various ways, meroitic uses their own music to vent and process their shadow work. They utilize their medium as a spiritual purge, spilling their innermost feelings into the recordings and out into your sensory system.
46 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION
ZELTSERDARIBYPHOTO
Knowing What To Take Seriously, with Sleep Habits By Arly Scott
Arly: How do you describe your sound and what’s it like making music in New Alan:Orleans? As far as my sound, I recently finished a record that was inspired a lot by a folkier, kind of country
Alan Howard, otherwise known as Sleep Habits, is an independent artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Alan has been releasing music since 2018, and their first EP Lay Down was released in 2020. They’re currently waiting to release the latest Sleep Habits record and have just been inducted into Ampled’s Season 3. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Alan to discuss making music and performing in 2021, the pros and cons of social media, and what it’s like to make art in a digital world.
KNOWING47 WHAT TO TAKE SERIOUSLY, WITH SLEEP HABITS
sound. I wouldn’t say my music sounds country at all but I was inspired by it while making it. Obviously, I’m inspired by people who are more current, but I’m doing my thing and they’re doing their thing. There are a lot of really talented people [in New Orleans] and it’s kind of nice that it’s small because you get to know everyone really quickly. But there are still people I haven’t met and that’s exciting to me. When did you join Ampled and why? I joined Ampled hours before the Season 3 deadline because I’m in a Discord group for Topshelf Records. The guy who runs the label put Ampled in the Discord and I was like, “oh sick I’ll check it out.”
I think Ampled is really cool and it hooks you immediately because the website actually looks good. I like that you can post pictures, text, video, and audio. Hopefully, I can use Ampled as a home base to share things and keep myself sane really. Using Ampled will help me be more intentional about the way I do things. It can be a place to gather a small community of people and meet through touring soon, it can be a supplemental thing for meeting people in person. How active do you like to be on social media, and where do you find that being positive or negative? How do you interact online? I think I like using social media to interact with other people. For my own stuff, I just like to share pictures. I tried posting a cover the other day, I try not to take it too seriously. I feel like to a certain degree, it’s something where we’re tricking ourselves into giving it this almighty importance, I want to think there are people who do the music thing without posting too much, just their show flyer.
What role does visual art play in your music?
I think album covers are important. I make silly little 3D art, and I thought in place of postcards, I would offer people when they join [Ampled] a piece of art for them with certain words or lyrics on it.
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PHOTO BY ARIANA DIXON
On your Ampled page you say that there is almost always a messy process behind every piece of art. Was that the case for Fixed Memory?
Notes on Process with Glenn
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Matt: For Fixed Memory, part of the reason it was so short in length is because [Pete the producer and I] were like “We need to get this out.” It’s been three years that we’ve been recording this and at that point it was about getting out what we have. Some of the newer songs didn’t fit and I have so many songs from the past 3 or 4 years, so they have their own atmosphere. [Pete] had a studio that he made in his house and a majority of it was made there, but also in a lot of Brooklyn apartments I’ve lived in. It was pieced together in that way. For this next one I’m hoping that two or three sessions at a recording studio, we can just do the whole thing. What did the recording process of Fixed Memory teach you? In terms of what to bring to a session, it would be making demos. I had written the songs solo and a lot of the time that Pete and I spent together was coming up with arrangements
On your Ampled page you mentioned bringing your supporters into the fold of your project; what shape do you imagine this collaboration taking? My hope is to include things like booklists or discussion questions. I think there is a capacity to have dialogue with supporters rather than just strictly go “Here’s my stuff.” Some people will just be happy with unreleased things or seeing the process, but every conversation is imprinted on an artist so conversations with people who are digesting the art is important. I saw on your Bandcamp page that you’ve done cover and tribute EPs. Do you have any tthing planned for your supporters in the coming months?
Do you think it has it’s own cohesive concept? In a perfect world I would have loved to work this into a better space and I had an idea of making a music video for the entire thing, like a ten minute video. It would have been a project on it’s own but alas I need to move onto the next album.
GLENN49 ECHO INTERVIEW and that just elongated the process a little bit. I really liked the way it came out, but I think for this next album I’ve made sure to have a lot of foundational parts already in my mind and put down in a demo format. What I was very proud about with Fixed Memory was the curation of the project in it’s entirety and I hope for any other projects coming up that kind of long term or macro image of the concept of what the album is will come sooner. For Fixed Memory I had all these songs and we recorded them and then I was like, “Okay, what’s the concept here listening to all of these and how can I piece them together?” For the next one I’d love to have the limits of the concept rather than try to paint that afterwards. Is the B-Sides EP all material that didn’t make Fixed Memory? The first song “Hello Grace” was something that could have been put on there but that was basically a demo, and it was right before the pandemic so there was no way we were going to record it. But I’m glad that it’s not on there because it doesn’t necessarily fit with the concept. The other four tracks were pieces that could have been on there but I felt like [Fixed Memory] had too many ethereal pieces that weren’t fully formed. But as an EP I feel like it has almost the same flow as the album, just in a tinier space.
When the first two EPs that [Nick Hakim] did came out, it was such a huge influence of sound and songwriting style, I was like “I have to learn these songs and play them.” The cover songs, that was during the pandemic a way for me to keep practicing. I made a menu and people could purchase cover songs. I learn covers pretty regularly so I already have some cover videos that will be
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I’ll have a lot of videos coming out. I’ve been upping my own ability to record video and audio. I recorded live videos for Fixed Memory that are just now getting together, so hopefully a lot of video content. The last few months I’ve released three different t-shirts and each shirt was designed by a different artist friend and that respsective artist friend chose a non-profit for half of the proceeds to go to. You can choose whichever one makes you feel good and they’ll be up forever.
a part of the Ampled page and I foresee more cover stuff. Doing a similar thing of commisioning some covers would be a good way to involve some supporters in the community. Do you have anything in the works?
Sebastien Carnot, who performs under the moniker DIE the Monk, describes his music as a therapeutic and self-reflective process. He said that his solo project’s debut album, Privacy, “was a chance for me to let go and focus on my internal voice.” Stylistically, DIE the Monk takes after popular experimental artists like JPEG Mafia and Xiu Xiu, as well as Carnot’s other band, the postpunk trio Pons. However, Carnot seems more focused on personal content than referencing other styles. So it makes sense that he plans to treat his Ampled page as a diary for the raw musical scraps of DIE the Monk. ‘Bracelet,’ the first album from DIE the Monk
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PHOTO BY BEN M. COLLINS
Sebastien: My debut album, Privacy, came out on May 10th, 2019 and was the first project I had ever released where I began slinking around as a shadow of myself. It was a chance for me to let go and focus on my
Character Work With Die the Monk
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Eli: Your debut release came out right before the pandemic. How were you originally planning to promote Privacy? How did your promotional strategy change as a result of the pandemic?
By Eli Zeger
“Fantastic Future” feels like DIE the Monk’s most optimistic track. What headspace were you in when you wrote it? Are you working on other tracks that have a similar mood?
52 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION internal voice. I wanted to be able to collect memories and scatter them throughout songs that share a certain sonic aesthetic. It has turned out to be my favorite type of therapy and has helped shape my true self and way of existing.
The instrumental for “Fantastic Future” was created back in December of 2019 amid a relationship that was going well at the time. When things turned on end, I decided to go back and write my true self into a song that was meant to be full of joy. The contrast
In your Ampled bio you describe DIE the Monk as a “character.” How much is the character based on yourself and how is he different? By looking at DIE the Monk as a character, what sort of creative/ experimental possibilities has this opened up for you? The character which I portray is a hyper-realized, exaggerated version of myself. The music has found its place in the part of my soul that could never tell a lie. It is for this reason that I learn a lot about myself through the music. It is always an incredible opportunity to open a door that allows me to consider my ideologies and present them exactly the way I want. I do not plan on succumbing to any. I saw that you’ve moved around a few times, from DC to Burlington to Brooklyn. What prompted each of these moves? How have their respective music scenes impacted your approach to making music? I am originally from London, England and born to an American mother and French father. We moved to DC when I turned nine years old for my father’s work and because my mother’s family lived there. After graduating high school, I left for Vermont to attend college and decided to transfer to The New School
soon after realizing I was wasting my time. In terms of the music, I am in the perfect headspace to feed off of New York’s chaotic energy. Although I have plenty of music to release from before I moved, the recent music I have made since entering the big city has been quite machine-like and precise with glimpses of robotic harshness and soaring melodies. What’s the stylistic overlap between DIE the Monk and Pons? How have both projects shaped each other? My bandmates and myself are definitely into a variety of music but lean into the post/ garage punk, experimental, and usually abrasive sound. I am playing with Pons on average over twice a week and have found that I enjoy the raw attitude and nature of the sound some of the bands we play with possess, both in their recordings and live. Pons has several electronic songs, all produced by Jack Parker, so we are most likely influencing each other subconsciously.
WORK WITH DIE THE MONK of emotions through the instrumental and lyrics tied with the title of the song was an interesting dynamic for me to explore both for the music and how I processed what I was going through.
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54 AMPLED SEASON THREE RADICAL COMPASSION a equitableofcommunitysupportivemusiciansorganizingtogetherforamorefuture.
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