This forum closely examines sonic and visual objects related to An Unknown Infinite, a studio LP released in 2020 by Queens-based emcee amani and producer King Vision Ultra. Alongside members of the multidisciplinary hip-hop crew PTP with which the duo is affiliated, participants in this workshop will explore the album and its supplementary “world document” compiled by the producer, An Unknown Infinite Archive. This 50-page, 5x5” booklet compiles lyric transcriptions, performance credits, and photographic stills of the litany of creative voices involved with the record and thus forms what the producer deems an archive of materials mapping the world by which the sound is contextualized. After considering some potential historical precedents to this multimodal creative practice – for instance, blend tape culture in nineties New York hip-hop, Arthur Jafa’s audiovisual essays, and Romare Bearden’s collages – the workshop will turn to its central question: what theories of form and assembly account for a blended, holistic understanding of the modes of aesthetic expression taking place in and around the sounds of the album? 

 

Upon RSVP, view-only copies of the mp3s for the album and PDF of the booklet will be made available to participants, accompanied by a docket of guiding questions for exploration. Participants are encouraged to spend time digging through this ‘archive’ of materials and come prepared with interventions about sonic and visual structure, themes, and resonances they note in the materials based on their own disciplinary perspectives.

 

J. P. Cupps is a PhD candidate in music theory and Lynne Cooper Harvey fellow in American Culture Studies. Their research centers on race, regionalism, and recording process in musical subcultures across the US, spanning interregional scenes for electronic and dance music, as well as styles within broad umbrellas of post-punk and hardcore. This workshop’s materials are drawn from a working section of their dissertation, tentatively titled An Unknown Infinite: Musical Practices and Discourses of Undergroundness in Contemporary Hip-Hop. In this project, J. P. collaborates with and analyzes alongside members of the Queens-based hip-hop crew PTP to consider how these artists express, historicize, and revise the larger imaginary of the hip-hop tradition within the flexible boundaries of the contemporary New York DIY music scene.