Based in Ithaca, New York, musician Jason Calhoun has long been crafting what we’ve previously described as “a steady steam of captivating ambient/drone records that consistently reject trends and expectations in favour of a certain purity of intention.” Recording under the moniker naps, he established his unique creations made from organ drone and tape collage, with albums like Checking Out Early, Bask, Better To Go and splits with the likes of Lung Cycles released on a whole host of cool labels like Patient Sounds and Lily Tapes & Discs.
Starting with 2019’s practice, Jason Calhoun began recording under his own name, a change that signalled a subtle and slow-dawning stylistic evolution while maintaining the dedication to texture, atmosphere and transient small details that made naps so good. “Calhoun makes music as patient and imperfect as the world around us,” we wrote of practice. “These are songs crafted from thick welcoming textures and a quiet cacophony of thuds and clicks, at once richly detailed and strangely spare, as if Calhoun is holding up a microphone to the hidden corners of the world, all dust motes and creaking beams and pale lemon sunlight.”
This month saw the release of notebook, a brand new album on Dear Life Records which, per the label, finds Calhoun “confronting doubt in his own abilities while affirming his unyielding faith in loved ones.” The songs were initially conceived during a stay at a Trappist monastery, and the quiet and self-reflective surroundings had an undeniable influence on the final work. The album is uncharacteristically direct, stripped of the shroud of field-recorded fuzz that is present on many previous releases, favouring instead a sense of purity and plain intention. Although not necessarily loud in volume, the songs are piercingly honest and ring clear with the vulnerability of opening oneself up to true feelings.
Jason was kind enough to answer some questions on notebook, so read on for insight into it’s creation, battling with self-doubt, and the beautiful cover art.
Hi Jason, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. How does it feel to have another album out in the world?
Thanks so much for taking the time to consider what I do! Every time release day comes it honestly always feels like a weight off of my shoulders. It’s hard for me to stop making something, and by the time an album is out I’m usually on to the next thing. I’m glad it’s out for people to hear and maybe I can think about it a little less haha.
Some sense of the record came during a visit to a Trappist monastery. How did the experience inform notebook’s relatively stark, almost ascetic sound?
The beginnings of these pieces were all written out by hand while I was at the monastery, without an instrument to play and hear how they sound. I would hum them to myself and rely on my ear to discern what I was writing. I let those sit for nearly a year before I came back to them; I didn’t feel like I could touch them, or maybe I wasn’t ready. From there other layers were added and more parts were written, but there was a sense of stillness that I wanted to leave; all the first drafts were written as monophonic lines. I didn’t want to take that feeling away. I wanted to leave a lot of space for quiet so I decided to leave out field recordings entirely, allowing the silence to sit and stay somewhere amongst the tones. I found while I was at the monastery that it was impossible to hide from yourself, and I wanted that to be reflected in what I had started there.
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I’m fascinated by the collection of sent and unsent text messages that form the album’s epigraph [e.g. “am i getting through to you? am i making sense? this is garbage”]. They act almost like archaeological fragments that give hints to its creation, illuminating the interplay between sincerity and self-doubt that underpins the music. Could you speak a little on the significance of these moods?
I think this might be the most insecure I’ve felt about a record. There doesn’t feel like there’s much space for me to hide. The emotional content of it feels pretty direct and potentially sappy, which is how I strive and fail to be (direct) and often am (sappy) as a person. It’s hard to feel that exposed and not feel insecure about what I am doing. Many of the texts are from myself and Michael Cormier, who runs Dear Life. He’s a very close friend so it felt natural to express my doubts to him even though he was also helping to release the record. His support of this record and past work has been astounding and I am immeasurably grateful. It was his idea to include them.
In complete opposition to that doubt is what Cormier describes as your “unyielding faith in loved ones.” Did you set out to make a record dedicated to those people closest to you, or did their love and support bubble to the surface when you confronted themes so honest and intimate?
I think part of this was just the gratitude I feel for the people that are close to me. While working on this record and feeling these songs out I was deeply feeling how much I love my friends. I felt that because I love them so much, I need to also trust that they’ll tell me the truth and not just tell me what I want to hear when it comes to sharing creatively with them. This can be hard for me to do, and is something I’ve tried really hard to work on for myself.
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There’s a thread of miscommunication running through the record, something again captured in the text messages in the liner notes. The cliché is that music communicates what can’t be put into words, but I think in this case the sense extends through the music too. Communicating the miscommunication, as it were. A sense of opacity?
Emotion can be hard to express! At least for me anyway. Sometimes I feel like I’m not being clear enough. Or that it’s not getting through or out of me. I think I was trying to express that part of it as well; the frustration and intensity of trying to be earnest in the midst of often crippling anxiety combined with the fact that there’s someone on the other side receiving it with their own ideas/viewpoints/insecurities. There’s a lot that has to be passed through before it reaches a person. Who knows what it’s like when it gets there.
I wanted to ask about the artwork. It’s an image that draws you in the more you view it. There’s so much going on in what is ostensibly plain image. The juxtaposition of the simplicity of the blue on white and the emerging detail of a magnified view. The incompleteness of the zoomed in image too, the invitation to guess at its larger form. Could you talk a little about how it became the artwork for the album?
When it came time to put the artwork together I knew I wanted Francis Lyons to do it. We’ve worked together musically quite a bit and he’s a close friend, and as such feels a part of these songs. I asked him to do the artwork and the first draft he showed me was a printed mock up of the tape with all the extra pages. I had no idea that he was going to go this far with the design and go above and beyond in the way that he did, and I was just blown away. That sense of thoughtfulness and care and daring really feels like a part of the music too, and so naturally it felt perfect. I haven’t asked him too many questions about where the text comes from, or even what the zoomed in image is from, and I’d rather not know. It feels like some kind of secret that he can have, that feels sacred. I trust it’s coming from a heartfelt place; he’s a close friend after all, and that’s enough.
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Notebook is out now via Dear Life Records and you can get it from the Jason Calhoun Bandcamp page.
Photo by Benjamin Torrey, artwork by Francis Lyons