ihatemusic

i thought it would be a nice idea to add lists of important/remarkable sound poetry artists/records to the forum.
who are your favourites and why?

I am frantically recovering from my computer woes... but while i wait for some crap to install, I'll throw out a few names. One of the reasons i started working with computer music (way back when), was because I was really interested in speech and sound-text stuff. Some of my first "etudes" were sound-text things made on a Sun 3160 mainframe using Linear Predictive Coding (LPC).

I used to like some of the wittier numbers by folks from the Fylkingen group (Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Sten Hanson & co.) Then there are the Charles Dodge pieces, and of course, people like Henri Chopin and what i call Amerkanian's "Neural Fatigue" pieces, e.g. works like churchcar (which gets old fast imo). Of course I am a big Robert Ashley fan. And if you want to get historical there is the Hugo Ball piece and the Kurt Schwitters Ursonate.


Fümms bö wä tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwiiee.


k

Emil "RRRon Lessard" Beaulieau:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N-Yf9L9 ... re=related

Rinnzekete bee bee nnz krr müü?

thanks! yes, i'm aware of most of the names you've mentioned. i have trouble to translate my thoughts about why i like certain records into english, so i'll pass that point.
i'm myself a huge fan of henri chopin and try to get everything of him i can find into my hands. i would recommend you the francois dufrene box on alga marghen, if you don't know it already, which is in a similar vein. pricey item, but worth every cent, imo

i always think of getting deeper into robert ashley's ouevre, but somehow i don't really know where to start. i know and love his wolfman and automatic writing and in sara, mencken... is on my list. strong music for sure, but on the other hand, records like his string quartet didn't do much to me. maybe you'd like to recommend something else from him?

subject aside, to me it's interesting to read, that you've started computer music because of sound poetry. would you care to elaborate what exactly pushed you to work with this kind of compositional elements? i'm just asking because i still try to figure out/formulate my obsession with the manipulation or transformation of the human speech to myself...

the furious pig record on rough trade

i'm also wondering if ami yoshida sees herself as a sound poet(ess) in a historical context...

another robert ashley worth tracking is "private parts". i've been through a couple of his more recent operas and while i wouldn't call them bad they certainly don't fit on the same plane.

how about graham lambkin/shadow ring? from early on the band included spoken text in their pieces, but by their last album (i'm some songs) lots of vocal treatment and tape manipulation was integrated as well. and then 'poem' and 'draining the vats', graham's first two solo outings, are pretty much all vocalizations and treatments there. 'salmon run' and 'the breadwinner' expand the sound palette out the other side, but the sound poetry aspects are still quite present.

and i assume you are familiar with bob cobbing? i have really only heard his contributions to albums from other artists (including lol coxhill and david toop) but he does have some of his own recordings out there. and ri be xibalba is working on a cobbing related lp possibly quite soon: http://www.ribexibalba.com/oqebal003.html

m

drip wrote:i'm also wondering if ami yoshida sees herself as a sound poet(ess) in a historical context...

her inspirations/influences tend to be non-musical (when I asked her in 2002, she told me her main two influences were the russian director alexander sokurov and the children's book author/illustrator dick bruna), and I don't think she feels deeply connected to much older music, so I'd say no.

mudd wrote:another robert ashley worth tracking is "private parts". i've been through a couple of his more recent operas and while i wouldn't call them bad they certainly don't fit on the same plane.

thanks, this one i don't know. i think it came up with the breadwinner release, as a huge influence on lambkin, if i'm not wrong. i might give it a try, when i have the chance...

mudd wrote: how about graham lambkin/shadow ring? from early on the band included spoken text in their pieces, but by their last album (i'm some songs) lots of vocal treatment and tape manipulation was integrated as well. and then 'poem' and 'draining the vats', graham's first two solo outings, are pretty much all vocalizations and treatments there. 'salmon run' and 'the breadwinner' expand the sound palette out the other side, but the sound poetry aspects are still quite present.

good call. i'm a big fan of the shadow ring. i do know lambkins solo recordings, but they sadly seem to be oop. maybe they'll see the light one day again as a re-release

mudd wrote: and i assume you are familiar with bob cobbing? i have really only heard his contributions to albums from other artists (including lol coxhill and david toop) but he does have some of his own recordings out there. and ri be xibalba is working on a cobbing related lp possibly quite soon: http://www.ribexibalba.com/oqebal003.html

m

yes, i'm familiar with bob cobbing, there are some great pieces from him on ubuweb
http://www.ubu.com/sound/cobbing.html
really worth a listen...

i've been actually looking for some solo records of him, but really couldn't find anything. could you tell me, which recordings you mean?

jon abbey wrote: her inspirations/influences tend to be non-musical (when I asked her in 2002, she told me her main two influences were the russian director alexander sokurov and the children's book author/illustrator dick bruna), and I don't think she feels deeply connected to much older music, so I'd say no.

thank you, that's interesting to know. this adds a whole new perspective to her work. did she tell you more about how she became influenced by these artists, or how she transports her impressions/thoughts into her own work? i would be genuinely interested to know more about that (and i can't imagine, i'm the only one)

drip wrote:

jon abbey wrote: her inspirations/influences tend to be non-musical (when I asked her in 2002, she told me her main two influences were the russian director alexander sokurov and the children's book author/illustrator dick bruna), and I don't think she feels deeply connected to much older music, so I'd say no.

thank you, that's interesting to know. this adds a whole new perspective to her work. did she tell you more about how she became influenced by these artists, or how she transports her impressions/thoughts into her own work? i would be genuinely interested to know more about that (and i can't imagine, i'm the only one)

Ami barely speaks any English, and despite having known her for seven years or so now, I haven't directly conversed with her almost at all. I have been trying to get my wife Yuko Zama to write a piece on her for my erstwords site, since I think Yuko has a deeper understanding of Ami and her work than possibly anyone else, but I haven't been able to get Yuko to do that, at least not so far.

drip wrote:yes, i'm familiar with bob cobbing, there are some great pieces from him on ubuweb
http://www.ubu.com/sound/cobbing.html
really worth a listen...

i've been actually looking for some solo records of him, but really couldn't find anything. could you tell me, which recordings you mean?

i'll have to get back to you on that, what i'm aware of is through a friend who's better versed in sound poetry than i. she's out of town, i'll ask her about it when she's around again.

m

More poetry than pure sound, but...


Andrew Choate, LANGQUAGE MAKES PLASTIC OF THE BODY

I'm guessing (though not purely) that on first audition most will find this just sort of antic and / or a warped stripe of observational humor... but that would be, I think, mistaking the genuine charm of many of these pieces for mere affect. IMO, the author does have a deep but not excessively reverent understanding of the the avant-garde "tradition" of linguistic, discursive, sense-in-nonsense play.

I've been really loving Pierre-Andre Arcand. There's a 3-CD set on OHM editions.

And I don't see mention of Sten Hanson, though the OP likely knows his work through Chopin, at the very least.

rainey wrote: And I don't see mention of Sten Hanson, though the OP likely knows his work through Chopin, at the very least.

kp* mentioned Hanson in his post. As he mentions, Hanson's pieces, like Åke Hodell's, I think belong to a different but related field of text-sound composition, since they rely on the meaning of words as well as on the sound produced. These were often polemical and political. Possibly this is what kp* was getting at in saying that they can occasionally get old quickly. But whatever their differences in emphases, both camps seemed to take on the avant-garde idea that it was self-evident that language was abused by those in power, that poetry was suffering as a result, and therefore that a principal motivation in their work should be to somehow resist this. The text-sound people often confronted propaganda and language head on where sound poetry favoured an anti-semantic approach. Chopin's emphasis is very much on the poetry of sound, and even where he takes words ("rouge" or "philosophie") as a starting point the effect is more like the sound produced just happens to be a word also.

As you (drip) say, the box set of LPs by the Lettrist François Dufrêne looks and sounds impressive (from the little I've heard), and it looks like a good companion to the Chopin Revue OU set--but unfortunately it's extremely expensive.

As he mentions, Hanson's pieces, like Åke Hodell's, I think belong to a different but related field of text-sound composition, since they rely on the meaning of words as well as on the sound produced. These were often polemical and political. Possibly this is what kp* was getting at in saying that they can occasionally get old quickly

I'm not sure this applies to the bulk of Hanson's work, though my familiarity with it is limited to his collaborations with Chopin and one LP (Text-Sound Compositions: http://www.discogs.com/release/253796), none of which seem overtly concerned with the meaning of the words (Fnarp(e)? OIPS?).

a raft of canadians, starting w/ b.p nichol both solo & with the four horsemen.

there's a piece by them in ron mann's film "poetry in motion"... at the end, there's this long shot of them all smiling and savoring the afterglow of a good performance, which has always stuck w/ me as just a perfect moment...

bbob

rainey wrote: I'm not sure this applies to the bulk of Hanson's work, though my familiarity with it is limited to his collaborations with Chopin and one LP (Text-Sound Compositions: http://www.discogs.com/release/253796), none of which seem overtly concerned with the meaning of the words (Fnarp(e)? OIPS?).

Well, two of those pieces are concerned with text and feature not only single words but phrases. "Dance Figure" is based on a quotation from Ezra Pound. The dancing sound of the line is in Hanson's estimation "very congruent to its semantic content." "How Are You" consists of a repetition of that phrase in various permutations, "How are you / you are how / how you are," drawing it closer to Brion Gysin's cut-up and permutation pieces. About the other pieces he has commented that "In the trilogy a transition from more literary means of expression--fnarp(e)--to purely musical means--OUHM--is apparent."

In much of his other music from that period, I would say the most widely anthologised ones, there are similar concerns that place the emphasis on text and on writing: on poems and mesostics, on language permutations ("That Jackson [Mac Low] is my Favourite Poet"), on texts being read ("Coucher et Souffler"), on political speeches ("Che"), on etymology ("For Fylax With Love"), on the naming of things ("Bestiary"), and so on. I don't mean to say that a gulf separated text-sound and sound poetry (and as you say they often worked together), just that there are differences in emphasis. His fundamental idea about his text-sound work is that it's "an intermedium between literature and music," something far removed from Chopin, Dufrene, Gil J. Wolman and others, who had all revived Dada's disintegrating process (and Artaud's primal one) and had dispensed with literature, words and letters.

I'm not really sure what the exact definition of sound poetry is. Would this term include Cage's fragmented reading of Thoreau or what Tilbury does on Phrenesie?

Bob Cobbing was mentioned, so is Paul Dutton or Jaap Blonk or Maggie Nichols included the term?

Recordings of Bob Cobbing in CD are, in my experience, very rare (though he did thousands of performances, he didn't record very much). There is this book:

Verbi, Visi, Voco: Selected Poems, 1942-2001 (Wien: Edition Selene, 2003)

...which includes a CD with a quite comprehensive sample of his work. Most of it comes from the 10" record "The green computer" (w. Hugh Metcalfe), and another LP which I think corresponds to the groub ABANA.