blurb for a friend's debut single

I remember meeting Henry Ptacek and Sam Eckland1 in 2021 near the end of that first pandemic winter when their band at the time practiced twice a week in the basement of our rental unit—unfortunately with an air vent going directly from the basement, up three floors, and into my bedroom, but that’s neither here nor there. And around the time I also met Akiwele Burayidi and Abigail Arkley. And it’s been wonderful watching them grow into who they are—how strange of these past four years to have felt so long. It’s easy to pull up a picture from back then but it’s harder to remember who we were. But enough about then—who are they now?

Hard to verify now, maybe. But give them a year or two. Their new “supergroup”, Baby, is the real deal. As is Henry. Besides the onomatopoeia of his last name sounding something like a snare drum (Ptacek), he performed his senior recital for jazz drumming at a local jazz spot in Madison and, three years later, that performance still somehow ranks among my top five all-time concert experiences—and what a thing to say about someone’s senior recital! It was a wonderful, to say the least. I especially loved his rendition of Monk’s Dream and have yet to see anyone else drum quite like that.

Anyways, Henry asked me to write some liner notes for their first single, something to appear on their bandcamp page and the instagram caption and here, I guess. Give the song a listen. Give the blurb below a read. Let me know what you think and all that.

And if you live in Chicago, come through Empty Bottle on Monday. They’re playing a free show (no excuse!). Might see you there.

underneath the faucet of the digital heat, garbling words, tryna speak simple thru machines: there’s a feeling (a feeling!) for hurt and another for yearning and all these hundred marbles are chasing gravity down into the murk below these backlit channels where feelings might go to dissolve into a billion bits and pieces and ones and zeroes and pitches and tones and codes and blow to be reassembled in someone else’s phone.

a song has no body but it does have a soul. and while every song is its own ship of theseus—broken down, transmitted, reanimated—no song will ever allow itself to be held in our hands. music is not water. it is more ethereal than the rain; exists in vibration, in movements; companions to the rhythms of the soul. this ethereality is also, counterintuitively, what makes music real, makes songs perfect vessels for digital release.

but the heart is a slow-moving creature. moves slower than these digital fortresses in the sky where an .mp3 might remain perched in all its ethereality, ready to be plucked from the digital tree, but the gap between what is immediately accessible and what is found over the course of days, months, and years in our hearts creates a strange sort of friction. like we swallowed sandpaper, it hurts some inner part of us. but art opens a door to suss out a vibe, helps us sort out our losses.

here a preset drum track begins and live instrumentation rides the rails of tempo to find itself in suspended animation between the laptop’s automated drum track, the autotuned vocals, and the mere fact of recorded audio. the human performers remain at its center, of course, but floating in the chest cavity of noise they hand over the ghost of the song to then float forever in the digital. but this is how all recorded music works in the 2020s. and ofc baby is aware of this.

what emerges is… what? the post-punk to hyperpop’s moment? cyberpop? idk but this kind of song feels of its time. there’s something new in its folded up sounds nudging the question: are you are hearing the voice or the autotune? a song or a recording? the questions continue but answers find a balance somewhere in the haze.

-gbe

And here’s the bandcamp link, if you’re so inclined: