Moods 62: Amber Gillen
Amber Gillen (IT / WCBN) meditates on craft, American music history, and the roots of funk right before Samhain.
For her debut mix, Amber Gillen (immersive installation artist and visual artistic director for Interdimensional Transmissions) takes us on a journey through time—and ultimately ourselves. It’s also Samhain: the end of October where the boundary between the past, present, and future feels thin and energy flows thick. It reminds us of Keith Moxey’s suggestion that time might not “run at the same speed and density” in all places. Either way (or any way), it’s the right time to have Gillen take us through her sonic past across ambient, rock, and funk.
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Where did you grow up? Was it a single place or many places? How did this influence the songs you listened to?
I grew up in Southwestern Michigan, my family coming from South Bend Indiana, originally from farm country in Poland. Somehow all my great grand parents came at the beginning of the 20th century from the same small town. I can’t say I was exposed to much more than commercial radio as a kid. I thought I was rebelling by listening to the Oldies station, and that was more fun for me than commercial radio in the early 90’s. I remember getting some Canadian radio on the waves, especially late at night. The radio show called Brave New Waves was definitely a highlight for me, but I never really thought to seek out any of the music I heard on the radio. After I started driving, I found the “cool” music store in South Bend. I bought a Pixies CD solely based on its cover, luckily I chose well. I would say I’m definitely not a DJ type—I don’t collect music or seek it out. However, I know what I like when I hear it. There’s a wide variety of music genres that I enjoy.
Can you pick one song in the mix and explain where you first listened to it?
I was privileged enough to witness the song “Eskink” as it was created in the basement of my house on Winewood on Ann Arbor’s west side by my husband Brendan Gillen (BMG) and Sal Principato. I had met Sal from the legendary New York post-punk band Liquid Liquid at the 2003 Memorial Day weekend festival—it had been known as DEMF, and that was the first year it was called Movement. He was excited to come to Ann Arbor and work on music with Brendan. There was an epic jam session in our basement involving many amazing people—even Erika has a great synth line in this song too! Listening to Sal ad lib lyrics in real time was cooler than cool. I love this EP, especially the A-side “Credit Card,” which has such a pertinent message even though it was written 20 years ago.
Who “introduced” you to these songs? Was it a person, a radio station, a CD, or something else?
Probably uniquely for me, compared to other people, one person did introduce me to all these songs. I compiled these songs as a tribute to my husband of 19 years at the end of this month. I started dating Brendan at age 19 and he has pretty much been solely responsible for my music education. Most of the early ambient tracks are songs we had on repeat many times circa 1999-2002. He had great speakers (compared to what I was used to!) and a nice 5-disk CD changer.
Brendan lived with Carlos Souffront when we first started dating, and I would watch Carlos load all 5 slots and skip through music like a mad genius, then take out all the discs and replace them with new ones lightning fast. He would cruise through giant stacks of CDs at an incredible pace. Over the years, it has been a true honor for me to listen as Brendan also did his deep dives into different artists and bands. When we first moved to Detroit, Brendan was studying the whole history of recorded American music so he could synthesize how we got here. Hearing the roots of jazz and rock and funk and watching him tie together this history and then explain to me what he learned is an experience that has been elucidating, to say the least. People think that the roots of funk can be found in the 50s, for example, but now I know it starts decades before that.
Since we all currently have amazing access to so much music online, he and I take musical journeys for hours at a time, just cruising through ideas. I marvel at his memory of names and titles and his perception and understanding of vast amounts of different music. Music is such a powerful tool for expression, and I know I am fortunate to have him as my tour guide through musical history. We’ve been together for over 25 years now, and we are still finding new musical adventures waiting for us.
Where and when did you first hear techno? What drew you to it? Who did it sound like it was for?
I definitely heard dance music on the radio in the early 90’s. My sibs and I used to like this show called “Open House Party” which played commercial dance music in a mixed format between commercials. We would rock out to that show! I’m guessing there wasn’t much actual techno being played on that show. I have an older sister that was a DJ and eventually the GM of WCBN, so I bet I heard techno from her first. I remember a cassette of Paperclip People that she had which I would listen over and over.
She and Erika took me to a rave circa 1995, and I remember being excited for it but not really understanding what was going on. On my own I found other parties in Chicago and Indiana, but I remember seeking out the people more than the music. You didn’t have to know people at these events, you just had to be friendly and into dancing. I think techno is for open minded people that are searching for something outside of the “normal” around them. Especially in America, it’s still not the main stream of music experience here, even though it’s grown leaps and bounds since the early 90’s. The people I see at our events are seeking something else. They come in peace and seem to me like they are ready to go on a journey. They want to be seduced and surprised, and they bring a spirit of adventure. We are lucky to have a healthy community of anarchy, too, especially in the Detroit scene.
You’ve got the microphone. What do you want to say to the techno community?
My mix starts out in a deep meditation, a conscious reaching out to the source of creating, trying to commune with the original source. This is something I try to do with my regular practice of Iyengar yoga and I find this type of music can clear my head from whatever is going on with me. It can be anxiety, sadness, anger, or even jumbled mental turmoil that I regularly experience from a long-term brain injury. First, Xenakis takes 1,000 pieces of tape of charcoal burning and rearranges those shards. We reach through eternity with Eliane Radigue and La Monte Young, Cluster, and Can. But some thoughts were coming in as I set out to perform the mix that change my trajectory.
First, I contemplate the sudden loss of someone, from suicide or death by misadventure, in the form of Dennis Wilson, the drummer and only surfer from The Beach Boys. Then the Isley Brothers combine CSN&Y’s “Ohio” with Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” for a total anthem and a moment that really resonates with what’s going on in the world right now. We’re still touching on ancient powers with Dr. John as the Night Tripper, his bad trip voudou form. Then we cruise over to the Bahamas with Exuma who did the early disco anthem “Obeah Man.” With all these thoughts and tragedy, what sounds like a simple love song in the angelic voice of Aaron Neville reveals itself as truly maniacal in “Over You,” a strange amalgamation of beauty and violence.
Siouxsie brings back the terror in “Helter Skelter,” which is tied into another late 60s tragedy. Kim Deal, best known for the Breeders, temporarily formed The Amps and obliterates our minds which also comments on how we usually process tragedy and loss. Then we overdose on TV with the founder of Mute records in his short stint as The Normal. Drexciya reminds us that we are definitely living on the edge, and the members of Cluster return teaming up with the only man kicked out of Roxy Music for upstaging Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, where the hypnotic jam “Broken Head” reminds us that this head “stole the world that others plundered.” Once we’ve spent enough time thinking about the material world, I end the mix by reaching back to eternity using Alan Parsons Project’s “Mammagamma,” a jam that returns us to our inner groove and gets us back on our feet.
Tracklist
Xenakis - Concret ph
AMBient Tracks - White Headed Black “ducks”, Berlin
Eliane Radigue - Adnos I
AMBient Tracks - It Makes Itself
La Monte Young - Music For A Well Tuned Piano
Cluster - Nabitte
Can - Aumgn
Dennis Wilson - Friday Night
Isley Brothers - Ohio / Machine Gun
Dr. John - Black Widow Spider
Exuma - We Got To Go
Elvis Presley - Blue Moon (Take 9/M)
Aaron Neville - Over You
The Meters - Hand Clapping Song
The Pretenders - Mystery Achievement
BMG & Sal P - ESkink
Siouxsie And The Banshees - Halter Skelter (John Peel Session)
The Amps - Empty Glasses
The Normal - T.V.O.D.
Drexciya - Living on the Edge
Eno Moebius Roedelius - Broken Head
Alan Parsons Project - Mammagamma (Instrumental)
Artwork
We’ve paired Gillen’s mix with a piece from Berlin-based, Sulaymaniyah-born Hiwa K. Hiwa, while originally a realist painter, now crafts sculptures, videos, and sounds that “aim [not] for an accurate depiction of a reality that could be, but reinvent and transform the reality at hand.” Work such as Blind as the Mother Tongue unspool the debris of capitalism to better see how social structures like borders and time zones are reinforced. “The work I do is very much about reminding how many fingerprints we have onto each other,” Hiwa mentions, “[and] how much we are embedded into each other.”
For more on Hiwa, we recommend reading about his exhibition at the New Museum in 2018.
For keep up to date on Amber Gillen’s work, head to her Instagram.
luv,
The Moods Team :)