2012 by Max Rollins
The second installment in an archival trilogy of my earliest music.
In 2012 the world was supposed to end.
2012 was filled with extreme highs and lows for me, too many to go into here but anyone who was involved in my life during that time can probably name a few. It was a thrilling and horrifying year, full survival-mode. When assembling this archive I was surprised by how many of my favorite early tracks were made in the same year.
Dark, left-field, psychedelic, hip-hop derived beats. I made all the drums on Massive and I mostly sampled from my iTunes - sometimes songs I was listening to a lot, but not always. As with my previous productions I made an effort to obscure lyrics, melodies, and key themes when sampling out of respect for the original artist's work. This was also an effort to honestly express my own emotions though samples, by disassembling emotional registers and reassembling them from a granular level.
2012 was my spring sophomore and fall junior year at Vassar College. In the spring I was taken in by friends of friends who became very dear to me, I experienced more happiness and freedom while living with them in Chabad and on Fulton ave than I had previously thought possible. I also played my first live set (shout out Sarah Lawrence College) and had many experiences that were both formative and devastating.
The next fall I studied abroad in Copenhagen. I studied design, film, art history, fashion semiotics and architecture. I visited Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Prague, and London. It was cold and beautiful and expensive. I went to clubs, museums, raves, and exhibitions. I met many people from different parts of the world and the US. It was grounding and inspiring and at times a deeply isolating experience.
I grew as a person and artist while studying and traveling but I also came to appreciate America and the nuanced idiosyncrasy that defines the art and culture that we create and that the world admires. I also saw the paradox that all good American art and culture is created under conditions of oppression and most is a form of radical dissent against America. This radical dissent is then re-branded as "Americana" by later generations of empire in an attempt to claim responsibility for the resilience and innovation of oppressed Americans despite continuing to enforce the same violent and oppressive conditions that radical artists speak out against in the first place. I began to see the danger of polite, easily-digestible work and vowed to nurture an indigestible essence. I gained a lot of technique and context from traveling but I also came a new understanding of myself and the importance of embracing the inherent Blackness and American-ness of my work.
The cover and additional images are collages I made during quarantine from photos I took in 2012 (and possibly a couple taken by friends on my camera).
More of my music from 2012 can be found at the beginning of my Bandcamp discography, it was the first year I shared music on the internet.
Tracklist
| 1. | Trapezoid | 3:57 |
| 2. | Tamarack Larch (what a drag) | 2:46 |
| 3. | Dare | 1:51 |
| 4. | Double Dare (the opposite of Monday) | 2:47 |
| 5. | How can it be | 3:01 |
| 6. | Rhinoceros (over weeks, maybe years) | 7:53 |
| 7. | The Greenhouse | 3:44 |
| 8. | Sun Dial | 4:30 |
| 9. | Blinds | 4:04 |
| 10. | Lighthouse | 2:07 |
| 11. | Rabbits Foot (they are shrouded) | 4:04 |
| 12. | So, this is life... | 2:11 |
| 13. | Leather Gloves (because you are what you eat) | 3:23 |
| 14. | The Signal | 8:00 |
