Jack, Unmastered by Tebe Tebe Tebe

Always keep your fingers on the volume dial. And now, listen, look, who comes falling out of the blue! Jack, from Grace, now has to stick the landing. A soft sound, not much of a silhouette has entered the picture. But Jack has to stick, so therefore I will repeat the title until it is a name, that comes naturally and Jack will finally appear, will then enter as a fully-fletched invocation.

Jack is an album of tracks that are still around, tracks that are sticky, tracks that have stained and then overstayed their welcome. They're actually infinitely long, not really involved with time at all, being still only digitally defined.

Jack is, a disclaimer, unfinished, unpolished, unmastered, Jack's a white flag.

Jack is a play with words, and plays with words are first and foremost a reaching out for someone to help reaching beyond the solely wordly. It's, basically, looking for an excuse to shut up.

It’s this, but then it’s also this and this. It’s a lot of things. It’s a scattering. It’s scat singing in the sense of it being a place-holder, while the place is actually always only held for the thing holding the place.

Jack is someone who will ask Do you know what I mean? after having just scatted all over the bar, and Jack will ask again and again, but without ever producing the sounds of the words formulating the question. Maybe there’s a faint dynm? from time to time, and a laugh after.

Jack is quiet music in the sense, that it is actually never left to sound, but kept as a playlist, only some playheads jumping between titles from time to time. This produces two gestures: a scattering, like of leaflets being dropped, of fluff escaping a coat’s pockets, of things not possible to be contained; and then a second gesture, a request for you or whoever to fill in the blanks, the silence; requesting you to produce the resonance, that’s cut off, or worse, to reconstruct the sound that was missed, or even worse, willingly withheld, of which you now only hear or have heard, for a second or few, its reverberation. This second gesture depends upon a trick which has made you think there were a sound without its resounding. Making the reverb, first and foremost, suggest something pure. And this is where Jack fails, in the long run, because Jack is, of course, also filthy, filthier than expected.

Jack is someone who expects an all-knowing audience. A club of initiates. But that Jack is in no way a founding member or leader of said club, but someone entering from outside, someone having rehearsed their entrance without ever actually playing it out, it being ridiculous to rehearse, being a natural.

Jack is of small movements, or big movements halted, to make an appeal to incompleteness, since that’s the only thing resonating in a club of initiates. So when Jack is passed the aux, you won’t hear much more than a loud pop and a second pop, plugging in and out. And we, the initiates, of course know, we have to know, since we have founded the club. We’re fluent in whatever enters, fluent in understanding pops and pops and the silence and all the significance entering with or through it, threatening us. Jack is also a threat!

To jack somebody, to jack apart, to jack in, to jack something up, to jack up, to jack-knife something, to jack up a price, to know jack shit about something, to jack it all in, to hijack, to jack off. I looked that up, forgot the meaning of some. But I note, that not all of these activities make you jacked, and some make you a jack-ass.

Jack is also a plug. There’s the big jack and the Mini-Jack. And there are also Mono-Jacks and a Stereo-Jacks, balanced and unbalanced Jacks.

You probably all know a Jack. A famous, a fictional or non-fictional Jack, or even a friend.

Jack is also small flags flown at the bow, the front, of a ship, so called naval jacks, only flown when not under way, when at home, at anchor.

There’s a jack of all and for all traits. Jack is seemingly – sometimes when at home, at anchor, Jack thinks so jackself – that Jack is seemingly all-encompassing. And that is where all Jacks fail, because all Jacks, first and foremost, jack off, indefinitely.

There are many Jacks. Or Jack is many things. I would like to fold the plural Jacks into a singular Jack, a representative body. Therefore, Jack has to be quite a big guy. In a cartoon, Jack wouldn’t fit into a single panel, you’d see a shoe in one, hands and wrists in the next. Cartoon-Jack is spread or scattered across a strip or several strips, but somehow, we are still able to figure that we’re dealing with a singular Jack, the same Jack in each frame, each panel, cut off by the gutter, always in the foreground but quiet and unassuming.

What does this do to the background of each panel? Jack is a way of looking at things, a point of view. Now Jack comprises all, Jack is a plug, a Jack in the wind – a flag flown at the front of a vessel, Jack is action, Jack is ass, Jack is tracks and sticky. There’s no compromise in Jack, Jack is pure residue. Jack is also a bird, a coward, a fruit, a mother, a dad, a son, a holy one and its daughter. In German you’d say Jack is Dickicht, groovy branches (…)