May GUNK

may shows // a party...(!) // and lots of illinoise

All Things Grow

by Mamie Heldman

Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 album lllinois grounded a lot of my coming of age. Moments I now find pivotal, like listening start to finish with dad in the truck when we didn’t yet know how to listen to each other. In college I drove to Chattanooga to catch his tour with my dear friend David, what became our last hours spent together before his fatal accident, when death first felt like a personal attack on me and my community. Later, I came back to his songs again and again, weighing my fundamentalist Christian conditioning against my evolving spirituality and queerness. 

I remember when I heard “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” for the first time. Fifteen, sitting cross legged on my bed with Katie drinking Ruby Red juice. The same spring I discovered Flickr, early M.I.A., and all of M. Night Shyamalan in suburban Tennessee— a place I outgrew before deciding I wanted to. Alice drinking from the bottle, fingers stuck to the windows of the shrinking house. While I couldn’t fully understand Sufjan’s articulation of the shadows, I could make out the shapes, feel the way they moved over the whole room, the nuance causing me to burst into tears. 

Preserving the concept album in its entirety, director and choreographer Justin Peck and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury have alchemized Illinois into a stunning visual adaptation. Integrating what it already offers sonically, Illinoise is a profound meditation on love, loss, shame and grief as we know them to be: inevitably contradictory, secretly sacred, and collectively felt.

The stage is arranged carefully with the three vocalists (Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear) on pedestal-like rafters, instrumentalists behind them, overlooking the cast of dancers below, who represent a group of friends gathering together in the woods. Each performs their own vignette as if sharing stories around a fire one after another until Henry (Ricky Ubeda) feels safe enough to do the same, something akin to an uninterrupted dream. 

I heard Drury speak at the Armory about what it means to guide a narrative without the addition of dialogue. It makes me think about my relationship to limitation in my own life and art making. Afterward, my friend Hanna and I shared some of the personal associations we made, and I turned soft for how true they felt to us both. How might we let gesture, pause and proximity form from what has already been planted?

All things grow.

---

May design by our staff designer Abigail Paulson. a forever GUNK classic. get your hands on this classic issue because things are about to ༄༄majorly change…..! if you want to design a future issue of GUNK, email us!

you can reliably find GUNK at: honeymoon coffee shop (ridgewood) topos (ridgewood) normas (ridgewood) milk&pull (ridgewood), little roy (bed stuy), playground zine box (bed stuy) prima (clinton hill) the lot zine box (greenpoint). if you can’t find GUNK…we need your help with distro in your neighborhood! email us for a stack ;)

---

✰May Issue Launch Happy Hour✰

May 10th we have our first ever GUNK monthly launch party/happy hour hosted at Baby’s All Right from 6-10pm. Expect free entry into the front bar to hang/chill/dance/vibe w us. 8-10pm we will be joined by our friend Pacha DJ. Simultaneously in the back room, you can snag a ticket to see Camp Saint Helene’s album release show ft. Skullcrusher. Basically….we can’t wait to meet some of y’all and hang and dance. Kind of the dream way to snag ur physical copy?? ♡

---

GUNK playlist has got a fresh update both in songs and cover art (thank u Casey Jong). We have a bunch of new songs from some great April releases… a la driving in ur car alone on a hot spring night.

---

ˋ°•*⁀➷ GUNK CLASSIFIEDSˋ°•*⁀➷

is your band (or solo act) looking to connect with other bands or performers to put together a bill for an upcoming show? send GUNK a little intro to your music (no links sorry) including an email address for a reply and we’ll publish the listings! 

—> thegunkyard@gmail.com **if you’d rather your email address not listed let us know and we can get you in touch with interested parties**

NEW LISTINGS:

Welcome to Brainrot (www.brainrotradio.com). We are a fully remote, 501(c)3 nonprofit internet radio station. We broadcast live Monday thru Friday, hosted by DJs on the east coast from 5pm - 8pm and 11-2am on both coasts. We are predominantly centered in Brooklyn and LA, however all of us broadcast from our own computers in our own homes, and we have DJs based in 8 cities and counting around the country. 

Brainrot is our attempt to reconcile radio with the 21st century. Taking advantage of the opportunity that the internet offers for a more flexible and decentralized approach to radio and broadcasting, Brainrot is a station that sits in the balance between commercial, public, and college radio, taking the best parts from each. These include:

- Competent and engaging DJing
- Thoughtful programming
- DJ flexibility

Most importantly, Brainrot is a station that people can always tune into and know that they are listening to a live broadcast. We don’t advertise 24 hour programming and then play old show recordings. We advertise programming from 5-8pm, in both PST and EST, that listeners can tune into and know that there is a real person on the other end. Brainrot is a radio station you would want to hear. It’s not radio that disregards the listener, and it’s not radio you think the listener would want to hear. It’s not an algorithm, it’s not a recording, it’s not tiring, and it’s not trying to sell you anything. It’s all the good parts and none of the bad. 

We are always looking for more people to get involved! Since we started in September we have grown to now include 25 full-time shows during our Rush Hour and Late Night programming blocks, and we have recently begun a live session initiative and opened slots to feature college DJs as well. If you’re interested in having a show, being a fill-in DJ, getting involved with the live sessions, or helping out in any other way, head over to brainrotradio.com/apply to learn more and fill out an application, and give us a follow @brainrot.radio to keep up to date!

Thanks so much, and as always, keep it locked.

---

Thank u for ur support of GUNK for these past 10 (wow) issues. Next month we have even more exciting announcements coming your way… but in the meantime… get to the gig <3

Talk soon, your editors,

Hannah & Ceci