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Silent Keeper, is a plaintive, ruminative number that explores the ubiquity and perversities of digital tracking. “This piece took inspiration from Natasha Shüll’s essay ‘Tracking,’” Elodia reveals. “She discusses how our culture has become increasingly preoccupied with supplying devices that monitor and catalog our every move – runs, time spent in bed, nutritional input, etc. – and what the implications of such an orientation toward living might be.” The song begins with a simple vamp in C# Phrygian, and slowly builds towards the ending refrain, where Dickson and Walentiny improvise around the lyric “Silent Keeper, Omniscient Seeker.” Elodia felt it was important for the album to end on a decidedly ambivalent, irresolute tone: “Once again, the question for me is: what experiential disposition do such tracking devices prioritize? Is the ‘center’ of life to be found in the indexing of every step, calorie, and to-do item? Perhaps more importantly, what types of experiences evade this type of easy quantification – and how do the affordances of digital devices lead us toward or away from those sorts of engagements?”
lyrics
How to account For the starts and stops, The turns and indecisions? A pulse that ticks Will keep the time But what about a larger conclusion? Here, in my palm, A possible solution? Small as a tail, Curled into a “C” It gently hugs my left wrist And crafted in a foreign place It’s now become a constant companion Here, in my palm, A tiny substitution Like a parent who knows better It follows me: Silent keeper, silent keeper of progress And step by step, it counts Where to begin To address the score, To clear up the confusion? With every step Now in the count Will I begin to trust resolutions? Here, in my palm, A fictitious precision Like a parent who knows better It follows me: Silent keeper, omniscient seeker Silent keeper, omniscient seeker of progress And step by step, it counts How to account For the starts and stops, The turns and indecisions? A pulse that ticks Will keep the time But what about a larger conclusion?
Chase Elodia is a composer and drummer based in Brooklyn, New York. His music takes cues from media theorists, singer-
songwriters, jazz composers, and poets to ask questions about how we relate to both ourselves and one another in our increasingly digitized, secularized cultural moment. His new album, Portrait Imperfect, will be released on Biophilia Records in May 2022.
This is the type of record best appreciated by full immersion - it kind of unfolds out of itself slowly and builds up on itself organically. It’s a thing of beauty. Cosmographer