Amazingly well-timed compendium of See/Hear 1 & 2, both released exactly 49 years ago this month (well, going on 50 actually, in September 1968; this one's been in the works for a few months, mainly due to the insanely effort-oriented reproduction of all of the printed ephemera present in the inner pocket of "The First See + Hear" - all recreated here in perfect 5/12 scale in the form of ten separate inserts grouped into four "folios") &, other than Bill Bissett & Th Mandan Massacre's canonic "Awake In Th Red Desert" comprise the entire discography of the label / series.
Covering a who's who of the Canadian Sound Poetry & Avant-Garde figures including Bp Nichol, Jim Brown, Wayne Carr, Ross Barrett, Al Neil, Lionel Kearns, and the Australian Composer Bruce Clarke, the first half here collects a scattershot array of early work from everyone involved, dovetailed a fashion similar to "Iowa Ear Music" into a continuous mode. The second covers "Oh See Can You Say", credited solely to Brown but heavily featuring Carr & Barrett, essentially continuing in the same trajectory. It's not too far off from "Indeterminacy" in that Brown's stream-of-consciousness Sound/Poetry narratives are often interjected by Carr's abstract & frankly dynamite Psychedelic synthesizer work. Ross Barrett's solo track weaves chill sitar zones through the matrix, but it's mostly in & of the voice/electronic amalgam, with a few choice zaps straight from the cortex of the acid-damaged late 60s milieu.
SEE/HEAR is a RECORD MAGAZINE, a quarterly publication of recordings of contemporary sound arts. Contemporary sound arts are usually discussed in terms of certain categories such as electronic music, experimental acoustic music, sound poetry, projective verse, chance music, improvised forms and so on, however what should probably be recognized is that sound arts are continually evolving and to create categories only restricts the way in which we think about sound. Mixed media, combinations of sound and visual arts, or combinations of different modes of sound art, are easily seen as results of our electric environment, and are as valid as the already accepted sound forms. Comes with insert about the recordings. From the insert: A1 for Lennon and Mccartney. A4 was commissioned for the Adelaide 1968 Arts Festival by the Melbourne ISCM, fragments of poetry were chosen at random from the unpublished works of the late Ann Pickburn. A5 is a 30-minute dramatic cantata written for a Masters composition recital and performed at the University of British Columbia in the spring 1968. B4 made September 1968.
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Creel Pone, 2018
