We're Able, by Joel Roston

We're Able

by Joel Roston

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Full Digital Discography

9

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of We're Able, Birthday Songs for Kevin, Zynthetic Zketches Vol. 2, Zynthetic Zketches Vol. 1, Day Owl, Domain Vol. 2, Domain Vol. 1, All the Wingless Angels, and 1 more. , and , .

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1.	Valence 1 00:33	lyrics	buy track
One
2.	Valence 2 00:30	lyrics	buy track
Two
3.	Valence 3 00:40	lyrics	buy track
Three
4.	Valence 4 00:15	lyrics	buy track
Four
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Five
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Six
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Seven
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Eight
9.	Valence 9 01:01	lyrics	buy track
Nine
10.	Valence 10 00:16	lyrics	buy track
Ten
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Eleven
12.	Valence 12 00:45	lyrics	buy track
Twelve
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Thirteen
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Fourteen
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Fifteen
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Sixteen
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Seventeen
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Eighteen
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Nineteen
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Twenty
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Twenty-one
22.	Valence 22 00:30	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-two
23.	Valence 23 00:18	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-three
24.	Valence 24 01:07	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-four
25.	Valence 25 00:19	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-five
26.	Valence 26 00:39	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-six
27.	Valence 27 00:35	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-seven
28.	Valence 28 00:41	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-eight
29.	Valence 29 00:52	lyrics	buy track
Twenty-nine
30.	Valence 30 00:17	lyrics	buy track
Thirty
31.	Valence 31 00:37	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-one
32.	Valence 32 00:14	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-two
33.	Valence 33 00:23	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-three
34.	Valence 34 00:14	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-four
35.	Valence 35 00:15	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-five
36.	Valence 36 00:25	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-six
37.	Valence 37 01:00	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-seven
38.	Valence 38 00:53	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-eight
39.	Valence 39 00:19	lyrics	buy track
Thirty-nine
40.	Valence 40 00:28	lyrics	buy track
Forty

about

Joel Roston’s "We’re Able (Forty Dialogic Valences)" is a suite of forty short pieces written for the solo classical guitar and performed on a stereo electric guitar.

Each piece on "We’re Able"—through varying strategies primarily related to part-structure, pitch organization, texture, and dynamics—is representative of two human beings attempting to collaborate/find common ground with one another through dialogue. To that end, each discrete, numbered valence in the suite is perhaps best understood or approached more as a conversation than as a piece of music. The content of each conversation is inconsequential; the focus, instead, is on the degree to which the participants are successful or not in empathizing with and understanding one another.

"We’re Able"’s conversations sharply came into focus over the past few years, when Roston—in an effort to more deeply understand how, why, and when society chooses to dehumanize certain individuals or groups—was speaking, at length, with ex-members of Peoples Temple, all of whom were relatives, family members, or close friends of those who lost their lives in the tragedy at Peoples Temple Agricultural Project/Jonestown, Guyana on November 18th, 1978.

Peoples Temple members occupy a very particular space in our society; they’re archetypally maligned, dehumanized, dismissed, and disregarded as impressionable, easily-influenced, mindless group-thinkers who’d rather “drink the punch” than think critically about themselves or the world.

Just like every other person on earth, however, Peoples Temple members are complex, conflicted, emotional beings attempting to find their place in the world. They’re also, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the easiest people to talk with about the epidemic of dehumanization that plagues our world.

Leveraging a formal education in classical guitar performance—along with a history as an instrumentalist which ranges from angular, whole-tone metal outfit, Big Bear, to MIT’s Balinese gamelan ensemble, Gamelan Galak Tika, to Tyondai Braxton’s Central Market ensemble—We’re Able represents a struggle with and love for the guitar as much as it represents a struggle with and love for humanity. To that point, in addition to studies in interpersonal collaboration, many of the album’s pieces can be taken as stand-alone studies in guitar technique.

A deep love of rigidly-structured, contemporary composition coupled with a lifetime obsession with pop music (which started with his mother’s rock n’ roll pop-quizzes at age four) conspire with one another to create Roston’s personal, musical language, which is nearly platonically expressed in the forty valences of this new work.

While unambiguously tonal, "We’re Able"’s conversations twist and turn themselves in ways that yearn for a simple diatonicism, but, ultimately, find themselves lost in a fragmented, harmonically ambiguous landscape.

The kinds of rare, collaborative, thoughtful dialogic valences present in conversations with ex-Peoples Temple members are not so easily identifiable in "We’re Able"’s compositions. As in real life, however, they do pop up from time to time at discrete moments in the suite.

credits

released March 1, 2024

Composed / Performed / Recorded by Joel Roston

Mixed / Mastered by Matthew Azevedo at Azevedo Audio

Album Artwork / Layout by Jordyn Bonds

©℗ Joel Roston | Dog Dog Dog Music BMI

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about

Joel Roston Boston, Massachusetts

Joel Roston is a composer living in Boston, MA.

www.joelroston.com

All licensing handled through Titlecard Music and Sound.

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