Even though I’ve talked to you in my room, we’ve only chatted. The waves gets all tangled between your phone and mine, or your computer and mine, or we glitch and I can’t hear you anymore. Everything’s a bit behind, trailing off into echoes and delays that bounce off the windows, the doors, which are closed because we’re together and no one else is allowed to hear. The walls are thin, they do, but this is the way it is to be with you. It’s brief and drawn out in some reaching way. It used to be sad, this distance. Now it’s okay.
I’m writing this on my bed, computer placed on lap. As the artists write:
Chat was recorded on July 5 in Pilsen, Chicago on Ulla’s bed after a long week spent dancing with friends, staying up all night typing in chatrooms, and hate-watching Fox news. The results channel that experience into four lop-sided creations that feel satisfyingly burned out and immersive, like the murmur of zonked chat between close friends.
Not long ago I sat on a friend’s windowsill in Pilsen while she organized clothes and belongings on her bed. Cars and cries and laughter and other sounds from far off carried on the wind hit me in the back. I don’t know how to capture the sound of her room, its experiential surround. Many candles, just bought, burned down on pane of glass. I changed into a new outfit and my old one gathered dust on the ground. I think I know what they are saying. When chatting in this room, I felt like I was whispering, but not in secret. It’s befitting.
What they’ve captured is the feeling of an afternoon, a bunched sheet, cups of cold water or warm beer or hot tea or iced coffee gathered on the floor. I may have got the descriptors all wrong but it’s music like the brief stay of a visitor, around for so little time and never too long and upending everything on their way in a welcome daze. Routines all array. Saying goodbye as if never. A hello as if ever.
The Chat LP was released earlier this month on West Mineral Ltd.
More about: Pontiac Streator, Ulla Straus
