In this anybody-can-make-a-record era, it’s always refreshing when
artists do something different, and do it well. Take Trapped Within
Myself: The Village Library Interviews, by local musician Jeremy
Michael Cashman and his brother-in-law, Chicago’s Jason Fisk. It’s a
collection of song-poems—the music by Cashman and the words by
Fisk—about a made-up character, Walter Sloke.
The speaker meets Sloke at the library and is fascinated. Sloke
agrees to share his life story, but the focus is not so much on Sloke
himself, but on the very process of using some guy’s life as
inspiration. “I wanted his life story for my own,” the speaker admits
in “Song #1.”
What makes Trapped Within Myself work as a multimedia project
is a careful consideration of this process and the meaning behind it.
The whole artifice is transparently created through the music and book
itself: “I created you. Your story, your existence is my choice,” the
speaker tells Sloke in “Song #7,” and Cashman includes explanations of
the creation of each song and the album as a whole. Fisk’s speaker is
conducting “field recordings” of Sloke, and so Cashman decided to
approach the music similarly, recording his guitars and vocals without
rehearsals. Hence, the entire album feels carefully crafted,
thoughtful, poetic and absolutely refreshing in its originality.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
