final sound poetry release 2009 - small
As mentioned previously small is now available for free. Although it's not quite what I intended you can download the three tracks - exha, cli and dro - from my last fm artist page.
At 23 minutes small is one of the year's shorter releases. The techniques used were simple, a conscious return to the place where I started simply looping and layering sounds throughout the piece. In all of these though it's a single sound repeated. Part of the reason for this return to building up tracks in this way was spending so much time lately listening to Henri Chopin.
Please be aware that the third track dro is also relatively noisy compared to the other two.
See the 'cover' for December's release below.
I'll be back around December 29. Until then have a good holiday.
Comments
After several listenings it's interesting to note your introduction of fresh irregularities around the last third of "cli" and "exha". The changes are subtle but effectively keep the poems from inducing torpor without damaging the state produced by what has gone before. Employing the technique without being obvious (took a few exposures on my part before noticing) must require skill and an intuitive sense of timing. Nicely done.
"dro" is a joy for its build-up to sheer, sustained envelopment.
The influence of H. Chopin is particularly pronounced in "exha" without seeming derivative. That total somatic respiration is great stuff and I don't think I've experienced such pronounced use of the nasal cavities in my limited exposure to other works.
Which is to say: don't think for a second that I know what I'm talking about here. I'm really new to sound poetry. I've simply been trying to give myself a "crash course" in it since finding myself swept-up by it recently. I have a long way to go before I should be offering opinions like the above. Any suggestions and sources (not already mentioned on your blog) would be mightily appreciated.
Cheers,
Brian
I'll reply to you both in full when I'm back home from work this evening. But for the moment, briefly -
Mike, I was intending to contact you in the New Year, you were one of the people I had in mind to ask to submit work for sonic obnoxion machine records. I'll get you some more details soon.
Brian, Mike's main blog visoundtextpoem [http://visoundtextpoem.blogspot.com/] and his soundpo podcast K=O=L=L=A=P=S [http://soundpo.podomatic.com/] are good resources if you haven't checked them out yet.
In terms of archive of originating figures like FT Marinetti, Kurt Schwitters or Hugo Ball I think there's very little if anything remaining.
You're probably already aware of Bob Cobbing. cris cheek was one of the younger poets around Cobbing. In Canada bpNichol also did some sound poetry with a couple of others under the name Four Horsemen.
More recently Christian Bok incorporates sound poetry into his practice - often very fast and/or beatbox based. Geof Huth has the odd piece - often sung. Jaap Blonk may be the highest profile practitioner currently working - although I'm personally not always convinced by the interactions with visuals he sometimes does.
Another poet well worth investigating is Jorg Piringer.
The Wikipedia page like a lot of sound poetry resource on the web is largely historically biased and features a lot of people who are essentially page poets, visual artists, or in some cases musicians/sound artists who manipulate spoken or recorded text/vocalisations as part of their practice.
The better of their links are this historical overview [http://www.ubu.com/papers/mccaffery.html] - though be aware it's more than 30 years old so it misses probably the majority of practitioners working today and more recent developments in sound recording, manipulation and dissemination - and this link to sound poetry archives at Buffalo
[http://epc.buffalo.edu/sound/soundpoetry.html] - although the caveats about the historical bias and preponderence of people who would not call themselves sound poets apply here too.
I'll have a dig around and send you more information later. I'm really only at the beginning myself. I first discovered sound poetry only in early 2008, and didn't make my first attempt at recording until March 08.
Matt
One thing I'd be interested in learning is how you personally differentiate sound poetry from sound art and music. There's surely cross-over but in the purest sense how would you define it?
Brian