Q///Q - Vanguard Youth

Rain is drizzling on the windshield, sunlight has been replaced with headlights, wipers cleaning and resetting the glass canvas for another paining of prismatic stipples. The tape deck plays loud, so noisy that between tracks sometimes sounds like part of the music. Vanguard Youth has been the companion on this drive. Creating an atmosphere of broody thoughts, distracting from the reality of driving in the rain. These moments have little to do with the context of the music, merely fusing sounds and space. Picking up the cassette case to read the song titles initiates the connection. Q///Q is creating sounds with history in mind....

The title and the first track, Vanguard Youth provides homage to the gay rights youth organization called Vanguard in San Fransisco circa 1965 through 1967. Q///Q starting off  with deteriorated pop sounds, aural drifts through decades past. The second selection, Beth Elliot Remained, falls into a dreamlike trance, synthesizers in casual cadence. Beth Elliot was the youngest ever officer for the San Fransisco chapter Daughters of Bilitis in 1971-72. Casa Susanna fades in with a groove and beat, voices like hypnotic descriptions of past lives. This was a retreat in Jewett, New York for cross-dressing men run by Susanna Valenti around 1960. More industrial beats for Reed Erickson and probably very fitting. Reed was a successful humanitarian who founded the Erickson Educational Foundation in 1964. He donated much of his wealth through the organization for the study of transsexualism. Mysterious tones and voices for Dewey’s in Philadelphia, the place a sit in was engaged for protesting the rights for LGBT in 1965. One week later the Janus Society staged a second sit in. Hirschfeld In Nice, a deconstructed soulful gem adding thought to Magnus Hirschfeld. He was a turn of the century German physician and sexologist who founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897. This Berlin group was the first LBGT rights organization in recorded history.... These connections are the ones that clearly stood out, there are many more. Already, this is the most historical research done to describe a composition. Listening to Q///Q and reading about the struggles and triumphs of so many lives, Vanguard Youth plays like a perfectly composed soundtrack. Thank you German Army and all who contributed.

Q///Q goes pretty deep on this composition. With a track commemorating Magnus Hirschfeld, it is very fitting the German based label Strategic Tape Reserve has released this cassette. This is a very limited edition of only forty physical copies. Out for only three weeks now, five copies remain. Don't wait, this is a beautiful composition for many reasons.

Links

Strategic Tape Reserve link - bandcamp - twitter