J.Lynch The Tender Appropriation

‘the tender appropriation’ came about when Johny went to digitise an envelope containing cassettes of his late grandfather singing that had been sent to him by his uncle shortly before he too passed away. On hearing the tapes, Johny realised he had something more unusual than he thought. He found a documenting not only of concerts, but also home recordings of his grandfather’s repertoire of spirituals, and substantial footage of him speaking about them, and his views on their religious application and impact.

What follows is an attempt at a kind of collaboration. To appropriate his grandfather’s appropriation and try to make something else altogether, while also forming a kind of portrait of the man who provided the source material. Johny tries to level the hierarchies implicit in the tapes, affording hiss, warp and tiny moments of sound the same importance as the voice or text.

Things are pulled forcibly through modular synth, speech patterns used to create gates, tapes cut to pieces and rebuilt as loops as Johny tries to make something else, other compositions, divorced from their origins, but not entirely from their performer. We might find within something to do with appropriation, propriety, metaphysics, fervour, and sound. Or we might find something different, or nothing. There is text to accompany the music here, but the intention is to roll these themes around, and provide a story, rather than clarity.

Perhaps what this really is, is a material and emotional response to previously undisclosed discoveries of a departed relative, neither good, nor bad, but often strange or difficult to fathom. History, often leaves us with questions.

• https://j-lynch.bandcamp.com/