PodLizard
After about 25 seconds into Dysfluent Waters, i hit preorder. Jerome's ability to communicate his story and struggle makes the message relatable to me, but not just relatable, understandable and the chance to view the world through a new perspective is not only a Blessing but is the whole reason i listen to music in the 1st place. It is very rare that music expands my mind anymore, but this definatly is mind expanding, i would even say soul expanding to listen to.
Favorite track: Dysfluent Waters.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$11.99USD or more
Bundle: 'The Clearing' Book + 2xLP (Standard Black Vinyl)
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
'The Clearing' is also available in book form, published by Wendy's Subway. It is the eighth title in the Document Series, an interdisciplinary publishing initiative that highlights work by time-based artists in printed form.
// Softcover, 128 pages, 10 x 13 inches
// Edition of 1,000
// Designed by Rissa Hochberger
Includes unlimited streaming of The Clearing
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
Bundle: 'The Clearing' Book + 2xLP (Limited Edition Clear Vinyl)
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
'The Clearing' is also available in book form, published by Wendy's Subway. It is the eighth title in the Document Series, an interdisciplinary publishing initiative that highlights work by time-based artists in printed form.
// Softcover, 128 pages, 10 x 13 inches
// Edition of 1,000
// Designed by Rissa Hochberger
Includes unlimited streaming of The Clearing
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
Limited Edition Clear Vinyl 2xLP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Clear Vinyl inside a standard gloss-coated jacket and printed inner sleeve featuring credits, lyrics, and exclusive footnotes by JJJJJerome Ellis.
Album Image by JJJJJerome Ellis and Rissa Hochberger.
Design and Layout by Rissa Hochberger.
Limited to 100 copies worldwide.
'The Clearing' is co-produced by NNA Tapes and the Poetry Project.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Clearing
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
Standard Black Vinyl 2xLP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Black Vinyl inside a standard gloss-coated jacket and printed inner sleeve featuring credits, lyrics, and exclusive footnotes by JJJJJerome Ellis.
Album Image by JJJJJerome Ellis and Rissa Hochberger.
Design and Layout by Rissa Hochberger.
'The Clearing' is co-produced by NNA Tapes and the Poetry Project.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Clearing
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
With The Clearing, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer JJJJJerome Ellis establishes a new metaphor that frames speech dysfluency—stuttering in particular—as a space for possibility rather than a pathology. First introduced in his 2020 essay “The clearing: Music, dysfluency, Blackness and time” in The Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Ellis presents “The Clearing” as a concept that challenges us to reimagine dysfluency in speech and question how speech and articulation impact how we exist in the social realm. Ellis speaks with a block stutter, which manifests as intervals of silence in his speech. He calls these intervals “clearings.” In the opening section of the essay, Ellis argues that stuttering—much like music—challenges and “breaks up” time as we know it: “My thesis is that Blackness, dysfluency and music are forces that open time. Opening brings possibilities: temporal refusal, temporal escape, temporal dissent.” Ellis goes on to suggest that disabled speakers and certain types of people, especially Black folks, are subjected to related forms of temporal regulation and oppression that seek to pathologize and criminalize: “Temporal subjection enacted against Black people occurs in many spheres. Brittney Cooper examines several in her work: Black women’s reproductive health; legal and extralegal murders of Black people; racially skewed correlations between zip code and life expectancy; and the conceptualization of history itself.”
What do speech and articulation say about us and our humanity? Who has the power to shape the rules of speech and decide what forms of articulation are considered “standard,” “traditional,” and “acceptable”? Why do these same rulemakers have the power to regulate us?
Recorded in various bedrooms over the course of several months and setting the text of Ellis’s essay to music, The Clearing is a haunting and expansive series of reflections on the questions of speech, articulation, and the power behind both. The album opens with “Loops of Retreat,” a stunning piece that utilizes atmospheric tones with Hip Hop drums and deep bass, connecting those sounds with references ranging from Bernie Mac to W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. Expanding on Harriet Jacobs’s idea of the “loophole of retreat,” Ellis positions Black music and speech as disruptors of “conventional” time and as tools to map out new means of communication and activity.
Harriet Jacobs reminds us that Black loops in Black music (including but not limited to rap and house) are always Black loop(hole)s of retreat; that Black music, like Black escape, is a never-ending activity and never an achievement. And when the Black stutterer loops a syllable (m-m-m-m-m-mother), this too is a Black loop, Black music, Black activity.
The Clearing is a conceptual and musical tour de force that combines Jazz with the narratives of enslaved Africans, and experimental electronics with historical accounts of Black rebellion. The album centers speech but uses it as a starting point to not only depathologize dysfluent speech but to build new tools to critique anti-Blackness, linear time, culture, and power in our society.
Ellis says of the project: “I hope this album offers the listener some of what my stutter offers me: an opportunity to imagine new ways of being in time.”
The Clearing is co-produced by Northern Spy/NNA Tapes and the Poetry Project. The album will be released in tandem with a book published by Wendy's Subway, the eighth title in the Document Series, an interdisciplinary publishing initiative that highlights work by time-based artists in printed form.
credits
released November 5, 2021
All compositions written, produced, and performed by JJJJJerome Ellis (tenor saxophone, flute, hammered dulcimer, piano, synthesizers, drum and bass programming, electronics, and vocals).
Recorded by JJJJJerome Ellis April 2020 - April 2021 in various bedrooms in Westport, Connecticut; Brooklyn, New York; Ucross, Wyoming; Denver, Colorado; and Lenexa, Kansas.
Mixed by JJJJJerome Ellis and David Rogers-Berry.
Mastered by David Rogers-Berry.
Additional production on "Dysfluent Waters" by David Rogers-Berry.
Album Image by JJJJJerome Ellis and Rissa Hochberger.
Design and Layout by Rissa Hochberger.
Lyrics and vocals by Kelvin Ellis on “Brush Fire Smoke.”
Text and vocals by Milta Vega-Cardona on “Stepney” and “Milta.”
"I am so grateful to: Abed Aladien, Adam Downey, Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves, Ashley Hoffman, Brendan Basham, Caitlin Pasko, Caleb Mulkerin, Casey Llewellyn, Claudia Rankine, Cody DeFalco, Corinne Butta, Courtney Stephens, Dan Schapiro, Daniel Martin, David Rogers-Berry, Dylan Rosenlieb, Emma Alpern, Erica Hunt, Evan Welsh, Gelsey Bell, Howard Fishman, James Harrison Monaco, Jerron Herman, Jessica Almasy, Jim Reynolds, John Ellis, Joshua St. Pierre, Kelvin Ellis, Kristin Dombek, Kyle Dacuyan, Maria Stuart, Montez Press Radio, m. nourbeSe philip, nicHi douglas, Pauline Ellis, Rachel Valinsky, Rissa Hochberger, Saidiya Hartman, Sebastian Zinn, Susan Boynton, Teresa Baker, Tyler Crum, Xavier Danto. To those I have forgotten to thank, forgive me."
JJJJJerome Ellis is an animal, artist, and proud stutterer from Tidewater, VA. Through music, literature, performance, and video he researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time.
Angel,
I heard your interview with Jason Woodbury on Aquarium Drunkard's "Transmissions" podcast today. It was truly remarkable and touched my heart. I bought this album immediately afterward and am so grateful to you for this nourishing music in these strange, trying days. I hope I can time my next trip to Chicago to be able to see you perform live. Thank you! Michael Feltes
A collection of tracks from the singer and multi-disciplinary artist's 111 collaboration series, featuring KMRU, Laraaji, and others. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 25, 2024