AMITURE Releases Debut Album 'The Beach'

Amiture - a.k.a NYC-based musician and filmmaker Jack Whitescarver - releases his debut album The Beach today via Dots Per Inch Music with early support from NPR, them., SPIN, and inclusions on Spotify playlists Fresh Finds and Fresh Finds: Indie. To celebrate the release, he is sharing a Hayley Garrigus-directed video for "Operator." The track takes the aesthetic of worship from dance music and crafts a fully-realized, fast-tempoed track that portrays Amiture in his best light - thoughtful and clear but without aspiration to spectacle. Watch the video.

Jack says of the track, "Operator is about the question of agency in human connection. Sometimes, everything around me can feel like a dream. This can lead to the sense that there is some force above us - controlling and watching us. Sometimes this comforts us, sometimes this terrifies us. "Operator" is about confronting what our actions mean if they are in fact constantly mediated by something outside. I think this is a very emotional question and I wanted to express that with my version of an operatic voice alongside an otherwise simple electronic rhythmic structure."

Director Hayley Garrigus says of the video, "When Jack approached me with his song Operator, I wanted to make the first image that came to mind and that just happened to be Jack digging through a tunnel of dirt. Even though I had no idea how we were to execute it, I told Jack that we should dive in and three weeks later it all came together. I didn't want to overthink it and using a couple parameters given by Jack, I was able to freely play. Because ultimately, that's the beauty of Jack and his work - a deep sense of play and freedom."

Amiture's debut album The Beach and focus track "Operator" follow lead single "Touch," a goth/electro song with a new sound made of familiar elements, "Slide In," an eruptive, sleek track that finds Amiture marrying the boom & sizzle of 808-inspired beat production with compressed, guttural vocals, and most recently "Thief," a showcase of his romantic, pop-driven approach to loss and love. them. noted, "Thief" is tinged with apocalypse from the very first opening line...Syncopated drum machine beats that sound like they were pulled from the title sequence of an '80s thriller, distant industrial clangs, and omnipresent arpeggios are all part of this VHS nightmare landscape, setting the scene for Whitescarver's longing and loneliness. "You are a liar and I am a thief," he sings in the brooding style of the New Romantics, his dramatic delivery cutting through the minimal cold-wave production. Mysterious and abstract, "Thief" is a glimpse into Amiture's bleak world on fire." Ears To Feed said, "Whitescarver's croon brims with pain and passion while sleek instrumentals paint images of illicit happenings beneath neon club lights like a scene straight out of 80's film 9 ½ Weeks." The Beach is an album in the most ambitious sense. From the discotheque grandeur of "Say It Back," to the thickly ambient "Last Exit," each song is as much a pillar to a whole as it is a standalone moment of narrative, rhythm, and appeal.

Having grown up in the American South, Amiture's story begins in the heavy, humid air of Virginia and finds itself now in the vaporized bodily aether of the New York dance floor. This perspective is conveyed in his music with a certain darkness, narrative patience, and indeterminacy. Images of love, loss, and desire puncture the danceable rhythms and lend an emotional consistency that carries the listener through his debut record, The Beach.

Amiture is pleased in conjuring a sonic world that can appear veiled-and even playfully illegible. His character is that of a narrator condemned to give form to a series of events that may bear no meaning in their association, but all of which are packed tight with emotion, interest, and memory. He keeps his own dignity by taunting the listener, but only a little bit. The Beach pursues this meandering expressivity with grace.

In his prior musical work, Amiture used his given name, Jack Whitescarver. Under this name, he spent about two years touring the music that would become The Beach along with his older catalog of sparse, experimental, and sometimes humorous music. The songs that make up Amiture's debut took their form in front of live audiences that placed what-would-become-Amiture's music in the worlds of acts like Pelada, Kedr Livanskiy, and Minimal Violence.

Listening to the music & lyrics of The Beach is like using a fading flashlight to illuminate a cave-where one is unsure of whether they are on their way out or if they are just getting deeper. This journey, however, is reprised and explored with club beats, pop melodies, and a production fidelity that couples creative ambition and spatial darkness in ways not unlike the baroque pop masterpieces of late 1960s Scott Walker. The Beach can be a pop album or it can be a broody meditation-this choice is up to the listener.

The music of Amiture also has a filmic quality to it, one that adds a VHS sheen to the diaristic aura of this body of songs. The tracks "Touch," "The Beach," and "Let's Talk" display this characteristic best. On "The Beach," Amiture sings, "And I'm staring out that window out at the sea-There I see the rare reflection of you and me-The dog is racing down from the other side of the hill." It is in the simultaneity of feeling and image that Amiture's music feels born of a cinematic instinct-nothing is explained but everything is on display.

Amiture's sound exists in the vast in-betweens of Kate Bush and Suicide, or Throbbing Gristle and Prince. It nods to contemporary club, dance, & sound music while paying homage to melody and lyricism. The Beach, however, is not an attempt at staking a flag in some unknown sonic universe, either. The textures, lyrics, and imagery are indeed referential, but they aim to be so in such a way that deepens the listener's aesthetic & emotional understanding of said references. This is an album that unearths the roots systems of meaning of seemingly familiar plant life-but these revealed limbs may leave more questions than they give answers. The Beach is a reminder that even universal feelings can appear more alien than familiar under close inspection.

Listen here:

Photo Credit: Leor Miller

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