7 minute read
Signal to Noise
Signal to Noise
CHANCE DIBBEN’S SELVEDGE FREEZES MOMENTS AS BITCRUSHED MEMORIES
Advertisement
By Belle Yennie
Artist Chance Dibben creates music similar to smelling a candle. Like scents, varying sounds have the ability to evoke certain memories or feelings. Dibben’s music can transport you to a certain place and time. For me, I reflected on last winter when my car refused to work.
While listening to “Portable Jump Starter” the twinkling sounds reminded me of the sight of snow, which calmed me when everything seemed to be going wrong. I knew when listening to the song that finding the jump starter provided a sense of relief amidst a dreary cold. I understood that feeling despite the guidance of a single song lyric.
Dibben doesn’t use words or instruments to create these emotions. It’s just noise, and these ambient, distorted feelings are crafted during work breaks on an iPhone.
Known as Selvedge, Dibben is a selftaught music producer. He uses Garageband, Koala, and other apps to craft his music. The skeletons of his songs and EPs are sometimes imagined during a 9-5 job. Creating music is a practice of incorporating art into Dibben’s life, even if it’s drafting during a lunch break and polishing the rest late at night.
“I would be playing with tracks or audio tools on my phone, [making] some ideas or a little sketch that I would then flesh out when I got home,” says Dibben.
To explain the creation of the Selvedge name, the term is often associated with jeans. Though a literal selvedge prevents the ending seam of denim from splitting, Dibben sees the stitch as a place to combine fabrics together or rather connect ambient noise into his music. Inspired by this term and his techniques for creation, Dibben adopted the name Selvedge for weaving warped melodies into songs.
“I had this collection of poetry that I was working on. I was stitching together these lines that didn’t necessarily connect or didn’t originate as one unit,” says Dibben. “When I needed a name, that’s what stood out to me. It applied to what I was doing at that time, especially because I was taking these blocks and piecing them together.”
With varying apps and a synthesizer, Dibben creates an audible way to hear snow, hummingbirds, and other aspects of nature without actually including their sound. He wants others to feel through the noise and drafts the emotions for others to embody. Dibben focuses on conveying experiences, some of which include the calm Kansan during tornado season and frustrated locals during snowy winters.
“A lot of my work is very much influenced by weather, and not just weather in general. [It’s] specific sky colors, specific things you get when clouds over are of a certain height and are loaded or not loaded with rain, and the way the light filters through,” says Dibben.
Though Dibben doesn’t have a music background, he’s created poetry and short fiction. He plans his songs by writing and creating the space and environment he wants the listener to be in. He draws on narratives and storytelling for crafting the albums. However, the songs are still up for individual interpretation, unique to others’ experiences.
“In that sense, it almost becomes an abstract painting, too,” says Dibben. “The meaning is whatever you make from it. [However], what I’m making is grounded in certain conditions and specific mindsets.”
Dibben thinks of himself as the target audience of the music apps he uses. There’s an accessible way for anyone to make art— and do it well—even when managing a work-life balance. Experimenting is all that’s needed to get started. Be disciplined, but don’t get in your own way of making a first bad draft.
“You don’t need to have formal training. You just have to know what you like and what you don’t. You have to play in the space a little bit,” says Dibben. “There are so many origin stories in music, where it’s people who didn’t know any better, just charging forward. And I take a lot of inspiration from that.”
Dibben’s most recent album, CAPACITY, brings back memories of summer thunderstorms. Eerie whirs mimic tornado sirens, but as the album progresses, the sound turns into a serene hum. For Dibben and some other Midwesterners, storms haven’t bothered us, and his music shows how we’re often in awe of them.
“It was reflecting on the weather of a specific time because the [previous] record was very much about a hard winter. This one was the opposite,” says Dibben. “Let me show you the sky before the storm. Let me show you the sky during the storm.”
Experimental artist Anthony Pandolfino collaborated with Dibben to create Mutiny, Hunger Stones, and Warm Enough despite never meeting in person. The two communicated through lengthy and frequent emails, trying to describe how to warp noise into music through trial and error. Pandolfino says Hunger Stones is inspired by European landmarks and how humanity is under nature’s power.
“If the river was low enough to where you can see [the stones], you knew there was going to be a drought, and it was not going to be a good year or season. He was really fascinated by that,” says Pandolfino. “It’s like telling future humans, there’s the struggle coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Pandolfino admires Dibben, and out of everyone he’s collaborated with, Pandolfino says they’re on the same wavelength. Sharing ideas has always been easy when the two hear music similarly. Though Pandolfino’s new label Engraven is fantasy-inspired, the two are able to understand one another’s noisy creations.
“‘I Hate Winter But I Love a Good Snow’, I think that’s kind of like the perfect encapsulation…” says Pandolfino. “It might suck, it might be brutal, but it’s like, it’s beautiful too. And it is what the life experience is.”
Artist and Selvedge fan Michael Carlson is also in the experimental realm creating music under the name remst8. Carlson and Dibben were set to perform in a show, but the concert was unfortunately canceled. After hearing about Selvedge through the canceled event, Carlson’s appreciation continued online by keeping up with Dibben’s life and music on social media. He admires Dibben’s commentary on other experimental artists and sharing others’ work.
“He’s got a full life, but he’s still regularly putting out his art. And that’s just amazing. I’m quite jealous of that,” says Carlson. “He listens to what other people are doing, and he will very vociferously share his appreciation like, ‘Hey, this is a great album; you should listen to this.’”
Similar to Dibben, Carlson doesn’t have a background in music but still enjoys studying sound. He adds or removes layers of noise as needed to create his music and observes the patterns and techniques of other artists. Inspiration stems from supporting others in the experimental music community. Carlson is a consistent enthusiast of Dibben’s work, and Dibben gifted him a fan certificate to express his appreciation. Dibben also says he’s discovered more experimental music artists thanks to Carlson’s shares.
“In many ways, it feels like we’re weirdos and misfits, and so we should support each other as best we can. Anyone who is making art, no matter where they are in their journey, if it sounds interesting to me, I want to support it. I want to help other people find it,” says Carlson.
In addition to music, Dibben is keeping up with other artistic mediums. At Replay Lounge, Dibben co-hosts a monthly poetry series with Melissa Fite Johnson. The series features an open-mic opportunity with selected readers. Dibben also filmed music videos for several songs on CAPACITY, including “MOVING WITH THE WINDOW” and “SHOWN.” Regardless of whatever ambient music track or artistic project he’s creating, part of experimentation in art is enjoying the process and peculiar things we create. Otherwise, as Dibben says: What are we doing?
“I take what I do very seriously, but I also don’t take it that seriously. It’s supposed to be fun. Don’t worry about anything else. Just chase the thing,” says Dibben. “I love my life, but [art] is a way of putting a little extra sugar on everything.”
