Starting fall 2022, Quentin Kemna (senior) said he trekked three times weekly to Occidental’s Greek Bowl, the Remsen Bird Hillside Theater. At dusk under sorbet-smeared skies, he said he listened to albums in their entirety. Now others hike to join him at Album Club’s weekly rendezvous.
“When there’s a sunset going on and it’s a Friday, you’ll know Album Club is probably at the amphitheater listening to an album,” Kemna said.
For 19 Fridays and counting, Kemna said Album Club has curated a calming space for students who enjoy music to hang out and listen to a complete album, usually followed by an audience-generated queue. From Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” Car Seat Headrest’s “Teens Of Denial” and Jim Legxacy’s “black british music,” Kemna said Album Club exposes members to new artists, noises and stories.
E-board member Ace Andres (senior) said he helps Kemna choose albums by listening to all the recommendations made at previous meetings. Each week, Andres said he narrows the options down to three recommendations and allows club members to select their soon-to-be-heard album via a poll posted on Album Club’s Instagram account.
“My homework is to listen to all of the albums people recommended and determine if they can make the poll,” Andres said.
According to Andres, before spinning an album, Kemna contextualizes the evening’s selection: discussing the record’s cultural significance, production process and a brief biography of the musician. With decreasing attention spans and the appeal of virality skewing artists towards producing shorter songs, Kemna said he was surprised at how many people were open to learning about the cultural context of albums and enjoyed listening to the same artist for anywhere between 30 and 75 minutes.
Kemna said he believes it is precisely the subversion of mainstream media culture — a landscape that overshadows the importance of communal space created by music in illumination of a song or artist’s popularity — that attracts students to Album Club. Kemna said the 10 to 15 people who gather for Album Club’s musical meetings remind him of vinyl’s Golden Age.
“Album Club has to do with the return of what made albums big in the first place,” Kemna said.
According to Andres, although members come for music, they stay for the community.
“We asked how people would rate the meetings, and we got a 10 out of 10 every single time,” Andres said.
Hannah Lieberman (junior) — whose favorite Album Club album is Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” — first heard of Album Club from friends over the summer. Lieberman said she was originally unsure about the club, but after playing hacky sack and listening to music in the Greek Bowl, she found an outlet to re-center herself.
“More than halfway through my own college career, there are never enough reminders to slow down, take a few deep breaths, and look around me at the wonderful places and people to be found,” Lieberman said via email.
Lieberman said she found a beauty at her first Album Club meeting that summer night, and that beauty still lingers at fall meetings.
“Going back to watch the sunset and spin an album brings back some of that feeling of summer,” Lieberman said. “Whether you drag a friend or two with you, or go by yourself, I think that it is hard to listen to good music, staggered along the steps of the Greek Bowl looking out over the city from above, and not feel a sense of connection and gratitude.”
According to Kemna, music mediates his self-reflection and untangles the twisted complexities of life. Kemna said music breaches the boundaries of verbal communication — communicating “the inevitable.”
After a 10-year hiatus from playing instruments, Kemna said he picked up guitar and bass his senior year of high school. In the chords and rhythms of his instruments, Kemna said he found a penetrative language.
“Words are great, they help us get our point across, but they have such a natural limitation and they’re always kind of an abstraction of what we’re thinking or what we are really wanting to have happen,” Kemna said. “And sometimes music actually gets to that core. And it just hits you.”
According to Kemna, Album Club began as a personal endeavor. Kemna said it was his friends who encouraged him to expand his hobby into an official club, believing it would carve space for Occidental’s diverse and talented music scene. Through verbal and social media promotion, Kemna said he’s been able to establish a tight-knit community.
“I hadn’t had a community that I had chosen to be a part of in my youth, and I think this is the first time where I created something myself,” Kemna said.
According to Kemna, Album Club’s grassroots nature gives the group an underground flexibility. With nimble acclamation of new members and flexible agendas, Kemna said Album Club allows people to get what they need from meetings — whether that be a place to enjoy dinner, color, journal, gossip or simply listen.
Andres said that at meetings, there’s no pressure to talk.
“You just show up and listen, it’s low-maintenance,” Andres said. “We just try to create a good vibe.”
Graduating this spring, Kemna said he is looking for a new club leader before he leaves the Greek Bowl, a place he’s frequented weekly for the past three years.
“There are a lot of things in life that don’t exist yet, but that people want,” Kemna said. “There’s a lot of potential out there for you to put your energy out in the world and create something and make the world maybe a little bit of a better place. A little bit more habitable and a little bit more together.”
Contact Zoë Beauchamp at beauchamp@oxy.edu
