Listening parties are nothing new because, in a way, there’s always something new when a group of people get together to experience a new piece of music in a communal setting. The mere act of gathering in a space fuels new conversations and new insights about something an artist has labored over for months — sometimes years.
The latter is true of Aymen Saleh’s latest project, which started in the Washington D.C. basement of Bartees Strange back in 2021. Three years later, those sounds are coming together as Holy Pinto’s upcoming album. What sets apart the listening party being held for that album this Wednesday, Aug. 28, is its distance from the release date.
Most events like this happen very close to the day that the general public can get their hands on it. Saleh went a different route, setting up his listening party well in advance of the album’s release. How far? He doesn’t know, actually.
The decision to plunge into the great unknown is where 88Nine’s Dori Zori and Saleh started their recent Q&A about the free listening party happening this week at Vivarium.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Instead of performing live the day your album drops, you’re doing something different. Why did you decide on holding an album listening party first before you have a release date for the record?
I’m following my gut here! It’s an idea I’ve had that has been totally unwavering, though now that it’s announced, I’m definitely in “I hope this is a good idea” territory.
I think when you finish a song, you usually want to play it to a friend and say, “Hey, look at what I did! Then the itch is scratched, and you can move on to the next thing. This album came together as a whole after years of writing, arranging and fusing together eclectic sounds. So it feels like I want to do a bigger, “Hey, look what I did!” And that involves having to showcase a larger body of work than is just a casual share.
The in-person element makes it a more tangible experience than just trickling it out drip by single drip into a vast ocean. I’m starting to draw the comparison that I feel like a cinematographer who just finished a movie that took them years, and they want to showcase it at a private screening.
The truth is that putting out a record doesn’t feel like the easy, carefree, uninhibited joyous liberation of creative work you might expect, especially in this hyper-digital age. The reality is it’s a lot of work on the non-music side — email pitches, online promotion and content creation. It’s a slow roll-out of singles, which inherently tear apart the fabric of a carefully stitched together album. You start to lose the connection when you’ve heard a song for a thousandth time in the context of trying to “sell” it.
Right now is the most purely impassioned and real that this thing will ever feel, and there’s nothing more tangible than being able to share it in a pure way with people in an actual interpersonal setting. When it’s released, it will fall as a droplet of water into a vast ocean. This feels like the chance to play it to all my friends, fans and people who, over the last few years, have asked, “When is your next show?!”
The reason I want to do the actual album as a listening event rather than a release show performance is because the thing that absolutely consumed my time and energy was self-recording the majority of it and all the ambition around the specific sounds/arrangements in each song.
For example, I decided I wanted to do one of the songs in a cathedral on their organ and church bells, and ultimately throw a narrative voiceover of a friend talking over it. That took bloody ages — getting permission to use a cathedral, driving there, recording it and editing 30 minutes of a friend talking into a 20-second clip. These kinds of moments just can’t be captured by live performance. The songs, by comparison, came easier than the actual recording, so it almost feels like “the album” is in “the recording” as much as “the songs.”
Listening parties for new records bring like-minded music lovers together to be in the same space having that shared experience. Have you been to album listening parties in the past? What will make this one unique?
I’m absolutely set on creating a communal hangout feel. So, either side of the actual listening event, it’ll basically be a social gathering. We’ve got doors opening early and closing late, and the actual listening event is a modest portion in the middle. You can think of it as “listening party sandwich,” where the bread is just kicking it together at the venue.
I wanted to make sure the event is free to help it lean that way, too. It’s important to mention that Pabst Theater Group were extremely generous in enabling that for me. I’m super passionate to play people the thing that I’ve spent years making. But I’d ultimately love it to feel more like I’m hosting a party rather than being the bloke sitting with a guitar in the corner of the room annoying people with a Coldplay cover.
This new album will be your first full length since you've called Milwaukee home. How has this city and your experiences here influenced the sound and story of this coming record?
I risk giving away a bit too much here, but a substantial portion of the album involves recordings of real conversations I’ve had out in the city with people. The topics of discussion are very universal and, of course, as the songwriter I’m leading the narrative. But it is richly interspersed with the genuine personal stories of Milwaukee natives.
I wrote and recorded the vast majority of it in the apartment I lived in above a bar on Brady Street, too. The experience of creating it will always be inextricably linked to that. There’s a particularly funny musing on Midwest bar culture that I recorded a bartender friend telling me that made the cut. That’s something to look forward to.
What is that thing about Milwaukee that most reminds you of where you grew up? What are the top three places you take out of town friends on their first trip to our city?
It’s quite chill here and easy to meet people. There’s perhaps an unhealthy amount of drinking here, but I think “having a beer together” being the foundation of our social relations is a pretty nice place to start.
I’ve been lucky to have had a bunch of friends visit this year. We usually walk over to Brady Street for a couple of bars — Pete’s Pub and Roman Coin — then hit Lakefront Brewery to tick the “beer and cheese curd” box, and then I’ll steer things the way of the Highbury Pub the following morning.
What did your childhood smell like?
I spent my childhood in the countryside — so I’d say … cow shit?
