Flip Phone Flânerie

William Biagtan Lamkin – Flip Phone Flânerie

  1. Kay cathodic
  2. Resistance of Memory
  3. LATE movements 2 and 3

William Biagtan Lamkin (b. 1998, Louisville, KY) is a composer currently studying at the University of Louisville, pursuing a Bachelor of Music in composition with Dr. Steve Rouse. William draws inspiration from all manners of jazz, classical, indie rock and electronic music and writes for both acoustic and electronic instruments. As well as being a composer, William is also a violist and keyboardist for his indie rock band Quality Cable. He has enjoyed multiple public premieres in Louisville, New York, and Knoxville. William attended the Nief-Norf Summer Festival as a Composer Fellow in June 2018, and is currently studying at the Music Academy of Krakow as part of an exchange program.

Flip Phone Flânerie is a record obsessed with the rapid evolution of digital technology, and the memories associated with those revolutionary devices that became as obsolete as quickly as they became ubiquitous. Flip Phone Flânerie plays off these memories, imagining a world before social media and microtransactions while still remaining distinctly digital.

Kay Cathodic is a short piece for Twitter video player and performer. The piece is both an homage and parody of late 90’s digital culture, emulating the spirit of early Playstation rhythm games and the sampling aesthetics of the shibuya-kei music movement in Japan. This piece takes advantage of a glitch in Twitter’s video player, which causes extreme stuttering when scrubbing through a video. Digital media is fragile and this piece, which will only function as long as the glitch exists, is just one more example of that.

Resistance of Memory was originally composed as a foray into early audio manipulation techniques, such as the reversing, filtering, and panning of various field recordings (done completely in Pro Tools). Many of these techniques required my manipulation of time, which led to the theme of this piece: memory versus time. Time distorts all memories, obscuring details, rearranging order, and eventually erasing what was there in the first place. Keep in mind this relationship as you listen to this piece.

What’s the oldest memory you can recall? Is it clear? Is it distant? Do you even know what it’s about?
LATE. For the moments long in the night when everything seems to be asleep except for you, time stops working the same way. You’re alone, but you’re free – no obligations to the world except to exist, the only limit being how long you can stay awake. The darkness shrinks down the horizon just to as far as you need it to be. The haze of exhaustion sets in (and you let it), giving everything a distorted, dream-like glow. Whether wandering in thoughts or in space, in the past or in the present, this tiny, lonely dimension gives you the chance to be you. But maybe you should go to sleep anyway. It is getting pretty LATE.
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