Wow & Flutter 004 | sweets
Steven Hammer (patchbaydoor) on repulsion, desire, and memory.
Dr. Steven Hammer is disgusted and it might be that you are too— and it might look a lot like desire. The Philadelphia and Fargo based musician is used to sitting on a fine line and then losing the notion that there ever was a line. Hammer makes noise, and sometimes crafts what he thinks might be ambient music (he’s not sure), while questioning his own memories— and maybe yours.
W&F: Hi Steven, where are you writing from? I know you split time between Fargo and Philadelphia. Talk about a duality.
S: Hi from Fargo! It’s quiet and easy and polite here. I do split time between here and Philly, and spend a lot of time in the in-between. It’s a long story as they usually are, but you’re right in that there is a real duality between those spaces, as well as a duality between stillness and movement. I think I like having both experiences though, knowing different ways of being in the world. Summer is a slow time for me, which is good for resting, spending time with loved ones, and finishing sound projects that have been stuck on “pending” status. I’ve recently released a few oddities (for me) that I’m proud of, including a kind of electromagnetic beat tape called Home Care that is special to me, and have a few other things I hope to finish before movement happens again and it’s harder to find the energy to finish projects.
W&F: sweets was released two years ago on Folded Note— how did you connect with the Philadelphia label? What makes you a fit for one another?
S: That’s a really special memory, actually, a special time to think back on. During the pandemic I started making music again to, I think, just kind of find a place for all of the change and uncertainty and loneliness, you know? And though I was putting music out on social media as a way to develop a consistent practice and as a way to connect with a community, I suffered from impostor syndrome when I thought of submitting demos. I knew of Folded Note by way of my dear friend Jae (aka Samule Edmund) and eventually they reached out and we started talking about a release. I started putting sweets together and then it was out. I felt really proud and grateful.
I had some questions as to where my music fit—my taste in instruments and process gets me hanging out in ambient crowds a lot, but I still don’t know if all of my stuff is ambient? I’ve gratefully (mostly) stopped worrying about all of that, I don’t think anyone really cares about genre conventions anyway, other than people who are forced to write artist bios or explain their work to the public. But: I do remember listening to slackcavity’s good grief! record on Folded Note, and it really made me feel welcome there.
It’s a really special record and departed enough from what I imagined “ambient” to be in my head to make me feel like I’d fit in there. They were also so kind and supportive and encouraging. Really solid and kind people.
W&F: I know you are a professor of communication often exploring themes of dirt and disgust— again with that duality— here you are tackling what is sweet. Something tells me this continues with the same themes of disgust, rather than a polarized spectrum, a full circle?
S: Yeah, my academic work is mostly thinking through concepts of noise, dirt, repulsion, and the kind of social implications on bodies, dis/ability, and experimental composition. My favorite music oscillates between these feelings of desire/repulsion, comfort/unease too. And so yeah, I think it is one big circle of experience and context, the same people or things that are sweet can turn sour and even painful and then sweet again through memory or fantasy. Mary Douglas, who wrote a lot about dirt and taboo, talks about dirt (and by extension, noise) being “matter out of place,” which to me means that things outside of ourselves are emotionally fluid and change over time and space and context. I like thinking and talking and writing about these things, what we desire and what disgusts us, and how fine of a line there sometimes is in between.
I think in putting sweets together, I was trying to do some of this work, unpacking different kinds of love in my life, trying to make sense of being geographically uncertain, losing some relationships and trying to reconnect with others. Wondering if I should trust my memories, if I should trust other people. On the other hand, this is all reflection and after the fact. A lot of the music was also just exploring sounds and patching inputs to outputs and figuring out what kind of music I wanted to make at the time. When I recorded the tracks (all were done live/one take because I don’t enjoy multitrack composition), I typically didn’t have any real lyrical content, just ideas like we often do when songwriting, mumbling phrases to form melodies. I guess I just kind of don’t develop many songs beyond that. But sometimes I go back and write lyrics that are close enough, or that kind of match in a “bad lip reading” kind of way. And then meaning is born after the fact. Maybe.
W&F: I'm going to ask. What is "lossy time"?
It’s mostly about wondering if I trust my memories of lost love—the title is a pretty transparent play on lossy file formatting. I think maybe our own memories sometimes get formatted in unreliable ways. Maybe we remember heavy emotional things from our past as either better or worse than they were. I sure do.
W&F: Pulling from your liner notes, what are you missing that you shouldn't?
S: So around this time, I’d moved my home base across the country again for a few reasons, but most revolved around caretaking. I have a child with very high medical need, and my father had recently become both single and diagnosed with cancer. I was really in the thick of intense care and love, that felt really substantive and heavy and special. Some of the stuff on sweets gets into this. Other stuff on the record gets into the ways I was sort of detoxing from or re-orienting toward romantic love at the time. This is where some of the thematic stuff draws on crave-able but ultimately empty and even harmful stuff: jawbreakers and syrup and bleached cherries. So I don’t know, without paying you hourly as my therapist I’ll just say that it’s easy to miss unhealthy relationships by mis-remembering them. You know, lossy-time.
W&F: Your work is reliant on small responsive machines from Meng Qi, Lorre-Mill, and Ciat Lonbarde. Those instruments always feel personal, how did you gain these preferences?
S: I actually resisted these kinds of instruments for a long time for some reason, but at one point I decided to get out of eurorack and trust instrument designers more than myself (my eurorack was in constant flux and I probably spent more time on ModularGrid than making sounds…). I think that in relinquishing control, I was able to kind of let go of intention and just make things. It started with cocoquantus, which is kind of my forever instrument. It listens, it talks back, it makes some decisions for me, it keeps me honest. Other instruments do similar things: Meng Qi’s Wing Pinger will never leave my studio, for instance, because it doesn’t give sweetness without some attention and time and care. But when I find that sweetness, it’s really something that feels like a discovery, a moment that will pass despite my desire to capture it. I love that I’ll never find those moments again. “Lossy Time” is a good example—it was some really weird patch between Plumbutter and Wing Pinger that I’ll never find again, and I love it more because of that.
W&F: What is your favorite track from sweets?
S: “lossy time”. I also really like “warmwater”, but for different reasons. Lossy is really honest and in-the-moment and uncertain. “warmwater” was a bit more contrived, and I think I could reconstruct it pretty easily. But I like how it sounds more than most tracks on the release. I like War too, because it is a friend love song. I think we should have more friend love songs in the world.
W&F: Let's say you and I are at the shore this summer— what's in your day bag? Candy? Music? Books?
S: Crosswords, a big bag of dried mangoes, running shoes. Thee Oh Sees. A little notebook. Bahn mi.
W&F: Anything up and coming you'd like to tell us about? Thanks for chatting, Steven.
S: I mentioned Home Care already, which I released under my real name , it’s on Bandcamp and all of the streaming things. I’m excited about a few things right now—a few field recording-based projects that I’m getting close to finishing and releasing. Last year I did a lot of traveling across North America, Europe, and East Asia doing some recordings of subways and trains, so I’m releasing a massive sound library as well as some more musical pieces based on those sounds and moments I was able to experience. I’m sure there will be cassettes involved at some point.
And a couple of collaborative seeds that I hope keep growing.
And thank you back—you’re a really excellent member of this community both as an artist and as a person who connects people. That means something.
Go get a tape:
sweets | Folded Note Records (we recommend the deluxe bundle because the Folded Note shirts are very soft)
Released February 25, 2022
sweets was recorded live, mixed, and mastered by Steven R. Hammer / patchbaydoor
cover photograph by Noah Levey
layout by BrianHamilton