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AmethYst

by yaz lancaster

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    "AmethYst" limited edition CD in a digipak casing featuring cover artwork by Jordyn Jackson. *Mockup design image by Tina Solo, final design subject to change.

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1.
Why am I Why are we
2.
3.
4.
There is no distance between me and the sidewalk, for I am the sidewalk. The first time I went out for the purpose of being with people in over a year was to protest in Richmond. My parents and I drove an hour north to Monroe Park. Every time I enter a vehicle with my father I am afraid of us getting pulled over by the police. I learned about Palestine when I was 19. When I was younger, I heard a lot about Israel. I grew up in Long Island, New York and went to a constellation of bar and bat mitzvahs when I was a teen. I know people from childhood who went on birthright and mission trips to Israel right after high school. They never said a word about Palestine in all those years. There is no distance between me and the sidewalk, for I am the sidewalk. This was my mother's first protest. She said "it's funny that this is my first time protesting and it's not even for us." And I told her "but it is for us." "It is for us," she echoed. We hear all the time in America that when Black people, black women, black trans women are free; we're all free. Palestine is the largest open-air prison in the world, and America holds the largest percentage of the world's prison population. Our struggles are and have always been connected. We have to insist on the intersectionality of movements. "This is for us, she echoed." We were handed signs and small flags and pamphlets. Palestinian elders stood next to and took photos with Hasidic Jews in front of us. My mother learned the chants and phrases quickly in between speeches about Gaza and the evictions and the history of the struggle. "This is for us." I think a lot of people are afraid of Palestine because in a way we are taught that everything is a black box that requires expert study in order to understand. Afraid because they go decades of their lives without ever hearing about it or only being fed propaganda. I don't think that's true anymore, with the case of Palestine; Palestinians are a displaced, policed, and disenfranchised people and I don't think it needs to be any more complicated than that. On the ride home, my parents talked the entire way. They talked about Palestine, they talked about abolition, about the police, about their parents. They talked about guns and crime and the difference between what is legal and what is right. They learned about Palestine many years older than I had, but came to nearly all the same conclusions in a similarly short period of time. Freedom is never an endpoint, we'll always recognize new oppressions and struggles. We all have a rich history of struggle; and International solidarity is how we win. There is no distance between me and the sidewalk, for I am the sidewalk. There is no distance between me and the sidewalk, for I am the sidewalk.
5.
I can still be who I want We still have time to be who we want I still have time to be who I want
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

about

This collection of collaborations presents meditation on time as a process to be beheld, whether the time be the early hours of the morning as a party wanes or the time before we can be together again. Begun in 2019 with Keaton Garrett’s “come as you are”, the full-length audiovisual album of commissions and collaborations unfolded. In addition to self-composed interludes, “AmethYst” features pieces by Amanda Berlind, Gramm Drennen, Keaton Garrett, BAKUDI SCREAM, Andrew Noseworthy, and Phonodelica, with a bonus track by Leilehua Lanzilotti.

“Y” opens Yaz Lancaster’s debut record, greeting us with glittering swells, a pensive repeated melody, and a voicemail from Lancaster’s mother. “Just calling to check up on you” she says. Phonodelica’s “Monroe Park” (which simultaneously exists in a Palestinian sound installation) features pensive piano alongside Lancaster’s spoken recollection of attending a protest for Palestinian liberation with their parents. It’s partly in hearing both their voices so close together that we consider the ways this project takes pleasure and finds tenderness in the ephemeral and distances both physical & temporal.

The second half of the record leans into the electronic with BAKUDI SCREAM’s glitchy lumbering and warp-speed travel towards grasping for the self; choppy oscillating of “Round Trips”; and vaporwave-influenced “wind_down_2.” Six tracks are accompanied by videos by Amanda Berlind, Tanea Hynes, Jasiel Lampkin, Yaz Lancaster, Theo Woodward, and Dan Tapper. The intro & interludes, “Y”, “X” and “XY” feature Connie Li, Dorothy Carlos, Seb Zel, and Meara O’Reilly who contribute violin, electric cello, production, and voice respectively. The placement of these dreamy vignettes act as bookends and central sound-posts that group the tracks together.

The ease with which Lancaster moves between playing violin, singing, and speaking only further lends to the expansiveness of the worlds created, the selves portrayed. It follows that Lancaster’s interest in and use of electronics and audio processing, a further expansion of the sounds available to them as a skilled multi-instrumentalist, accompanies a curiosity about using technology to expand their bodily capabilities relating to gender & being.

Yaz is a Black transdisciplinary artist who works across the mediums of sound, written text, and visual art. Their practices center the inextricability of the personal and political with work which “reckons with specific influences ranging from politics of liberation and identity to natural phenomena and poetics.”

– Connie Li

credits

released April 7, 2023

Track Credits
1. Yaz Lancaster: Y (2021)
Yaz Lancaster, voice + production
Dorothy Carlos, electric cello
Connie Li, violin

2. Amanda Berlind: Lavender Tooth (2020)
Yaz Lancaster, violin + voice
Amanda Berlind, visuals

3. Gramm Drennen: of neither water nor land (2020)
Yaz Lancaster, violin
Tanea Hynes, video

4. Phonodelica: Monroe Park (2021)
Yaz Lancaster, violin + spoken word
Phonodelica, piano
Nick Norton, additional vocal mixing
Jasiel Lampkin, video
Monroe Park was commissioned with support from Legacy: A Black Queer Production Collective

5. Yaz Lancaster: X (2022)
Yaz Lancaster, voice
Seb Zel, production

6. Keaton Garrett: come as you are (2019)
Yaz Lancaster, violin + voice + production + video

7. BAKUDI SCREAM: GHOST IN THE MACHINE (2020)
Yaz Lancaster, violin
Theo Woodward, video

8. Andrew Noseworthy: Round Trips (2020)
Yaz Lancaster, violin
Dan Tapper, video

9. Yaz Lancaster: wind_down_2 (2020)
Yaz Lancaster, violin + video
wind_down_2 was commissioned with support from Bass Players for Black Composers

10. Yaz Lancaster: XY (2022)
Yaz Lancaster, violin
Meara O’Reilly, voice*
*Demo of Hocket I from “Hockets for Two Voices” appears courtesy of Meara O'Reilly

11. Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti: ko’u inoa (2017)
Yaz Lancaster, violin + voice

*Video commissions for "of neither water nor land," "GHOST IN THE MACHINE," and "Round Trips" partially funded by Ken Ferry

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PPR | 038

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yaz lancaster New York, New York

black transdiscplinary artist ꩜ they/them ☆ lenapehoking

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