Fiction of the Physical
Ellen Zweig
Fiction of the Physical
Boomkat Product Review:
Singular US poet, installation and performance artist Ellen Zweig collects her early experiments on a fathoms-deep anthology, released for the first time on any format, and marrying her idiosyncratic vocal technique with fourth world ambience, decelerated gamelan and light-headed polyrhythms. Essential if yr into Robert Ashley, Felicia Atkinson, Michele Mercure, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson.
A respected artist, educator and filmmaker, Zweig started her career as an experimental poet in New York City's Downtown scene, finding innovative ways to fuse her words with emerging experimental sounds that were bubbling up from the NYC fringe. Over time Zweig developed a technique she called "the human loop”, tangentially similar to the cassette phasing method that Steve Reich famously employed and which subsequently prompted Brian Eno to propose Ambient music. Zweig attempted to recreate the same effect using multiple performers who would repeat an identical phrase as it recorded to tape so that the voices would play on top of each other, creating their own new rhythms as the words and syllables blurred into each other - a bit like Mary Jane Leach's own experiments with voice mimicking and overlaying instruments, albeit with very different results.
On 1978 opener 'Sensitive Bones' her collaborator David Weinstein paints a lilting minimalist backdrop with detuned FM bells and gamelan sounds, standing a few paces back to allow Zweig's voice to take a central role. "Your bones resonate around you like / a scarf" she recites as her voice phases outside of itself. 'The Act of Watching' is even more knotty, inspired by Zweig's study of African polyrhythms and interlocking melodies that she applies to her writing and delivery. Weinstein matches her disorienting, synthesised words with ornate kalimba phrases and gliding synths that chime with Jon Hassell's contemporaneous productions, but Zweig's words ground everything in a peculiarly cybernetic reality that sits more comfortably alongside Felicia Atkinson's spoken word material.
'Network of Letters' is another early piece that centres around two voices that dodge in-and-out of each other over drifting Steve Roach-like pads. But it's the final track 'If Archimedes' that's most surprising, a more recent composition that tells the terrifying story of Edith Warner, a woman who lived near the laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. Alongside Joan La Barbara and Nathaniel Tarn, Zweig overlaps narratives and vocal tics, while she and David Dunn use visual artist Tony Price's percussive sculptures to hammer out clattering sonics in the distance over woozy synth drones.
It's fascinating, visionary material that reminds us how malleable and expressive spoken word can be, especially when there's such a microscopic attention to detail in the production around it. Huge recommendation.
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Boomkat Product Review:
Singular US poet, installation and performance artist Ellen Zweig collects her early experiments on a fathoms-deep anthology, released for the first time on any format, and marrying her idiosyncratic vocal technique with fourth world ambience, decelerated gamelan and light-headed polyrhythms. Essential if yr into Robert Ashley, Felicia Atkinson, Michele Mercure, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson.
A respected artist, educator and filmmaker, Zweig started her career as an experimental poet in New York City's Downtown scene, finding innovative ways to fuse her words with emerging experimental sounds that were bubbling up from the NYC fringe. Over time Zweig developed a technique she called "the human loop”, tangentially similar to the cassette phasing method that Steve Reich famously employed and which subsequently prompted Brian Eno to propose Ambient music. Zweig attempted to recreate the same effect using multiple performers who would repeat an identical phrase as it recorded to tape so that the voices would play on top of each other, creating their own new rhythms as the words and syllables blurred into each other - a bit like Mary Jane Leach's own experiments with voice mimicking and overlaying instruments, albeit with very different results.
On 1978 opener 'Sensitive Bones' her collaborator David Weinstein paints a lilting minimalist backdrop with detuned FM bells and gamelan sounds, standing a few paces back to allow Zweig's voice to take a central role. "Your bones resonate around you like / a scarf" she recites as her voice phases outside of itself. 'The Act of Watching' is even more knotty, inspired by Zweig's study of African polyrhythms and interlocking melodies that she applies to her writing and delivery. Weinstein matches her disorienting, synthesised words with ornate kalimba phrases and gliding synths that chime with Jon Hassell's contemporaneous productions, but Zweig's words ground everything in a peculiarly cybernetic reality that sits more comfortably alongside Felicia Atkinson's spoken word material.
'Network of Letters' is another early piece that centres around two voices that dodge in-and-out of each other over drifting Steve Roach-like pads. But it's the final track 'If Archimedes' that's most surprising, a more recent composition that tells the terrifying story of Edith Warner, a woman who lived near the laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. Alongside Joan La Barbara and Nathaniel Tarn, Zweig overlaps narratives and vocal tics, while she and David Dunn use visual artist Tony Price's percussive sculptures to hammer out clattering sonics in the distance over woozy synth drones.
It's fascinating, visionary material that reminds us how malleable and expressive spoken word can be, especially when there's such a microscopic attention to detail in the production around it. Huge recommendation.
Boomkat Product Review:
Singular US poet, installation and performance artist Ellen Zweig collects her early experiments on a fathoms-deep anthology, released for the first time on any format, and marrying her idiosyncratic vocal technique with fourth world ambience, decelerated gamelan and light-headed polyrhythms. Essential if yr into Robert Ashley, Felicia Atkinson, Michele Mercure, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson.
A respected artist, educator and filmmaker, Zweig started her career as an experimental poet in New York City's Downtown scene, finding innovative ways to fuse her words with emerging experimental sounds that were bubbling up from the NYC fringe. Over time Zweig developed a technique she called "the human loop”, tangentially similar to the cassette phasing method that Steve Reich famously employed and which subsequently prompted Brian Eno to propose Ambient music. Zweig attempted to recreate the same effect using multiple performers who would repeat an identical phrase as it recorded to tape so that the voices would play on top of each other, creating their own new rhythms as the words and syllables blurred into each other - a bit like Mary Jane Leach's own experiments with voice mimicking and overlaying instruments, albeit with very different results.
On 1978 opener 'Sensitive Bones' her collaborator David Weinstein paints a lilting minimalist backdrop with detuned FM bells and gamelan sounds, standing a few paces back to allow Zweig's voice to take a central role. "Your bones resonate around you like / a scarf" she recites as her voice phases outside of itself. 'The Act of Watching' is even more knotty, inspired by Zweig's study of African polyrhythms and interlocking melodies that she applies to her writing and delivery. Weinstein matches her disorienting, synthesised words with ornate kalimba phrases and gliding synths that chime with Jon Hassell's contemporaneous productions, but Zweig's words ground everything in a peculiarly cybernetic reality that sits more comfortably alongside Felicia Atkinson's spoken word material.
'Network of Letters' is another early piece that centres around two voices that dodge in-and-out of each other over drifting Steve Roach-like pads. But it's the final track 'If Archimedes' that's most surprising, a more recent composition that tells the terrifying story of Edith Warner, a woman who lived near the laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. Alongside Joan La Barbara and Nathaniel Tarn, Zweig overlaps narratives and vocal tics, while she and David Dunn use visual artist Tony Price's percussive sculptures to hammer out clattering sonics in the distance over woozy synth drones.
It's fascinating, visionary material that reminds us how malleable and expressive spoken word can be, especially when there's such a microscopic attention to detail in the production around it. Huge recommendation.
Boomkat Product Review:
Singular US poet, installation and performance artist Ellen Zweig collects her early experiments on a fathoms-deep anthology, released for the first time on any format, and marrying her idiosyncratic vocal technique with fourth world ambience, decelerated gamelan and light-headed polyrhythms. Essential if yr into Robert Ashley, Felicia Atkinson, Michele Mercure, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson.
A respected artist, educator and filmmaker, Zweig started her career as an experimental poet in New York City's Downtown scene, finding innovative ways to fuse her words with emerging experimental sounds that were bubbling up from the NYC fringe. Over time Zweig developed a technique she called "the human loop”, tangentially similar to the cassette phasing method that Steve Reich famously employed and which subsequently prompted Brian Eno to propose Ambient music. Zweig attempted to recreate the same effect using multiple performers who would repeat an identical phrase as it recorded to tape so that the voices would play on top of each other, creating their own new rhythms as the words and syllables blurred into each other - a bit like Mary Jane Leach's own experiments with voice mimicking and overlaying instruments, albeit with very different results.
On 1978 opener 'Sensitive Bones' her collaborator David Weinstein paints a lilting minimalist backdrop with detuned FM bells and gamelan sounds, standing a few paces back to allow Zweig's voice to take a central role. "Your bones resonate around you like / a scarf" she recites as her voice phases outside of itself. 'The Act of Watching' is even more knotty, inspired by Zweig's study of African polyrhythms and interlocking melodies that she applies to her writing and delivery. Weinstein matches her disorienting, synthesised words with ornate kalimba phrases and gliding synths that chime with Jon Hassell's contemporaneous productions, but Zweig's words ground everything in a peculiarly cybernetic reality that sits more comfortably alongside Felicia Atkinson's spoken word material.
'Network of Letters' is another early piece that centres around two voices that dodge in-and-out of each other over drifting Steve Roach-like pads. But it's the final track 'If Archimedes' that's most surprising, a more recent composition that tells the terrifying story of Edith Warner, a woman who lived near the laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. Alongside Joan La Barbara and Nathaniel Tarn, Zweig overlaps narratives and vocal tics, while she and David Dunn use visual artist Tony Price's percussive sculptures to hammer out clattering sonics in the distance over woozy synth drones.
It's fascinating, visionary material that reminds us how malleable and expressive spoken word can be, especially when there's such a microscopic attention to detail in the production around it. Huge recommendation.
Mastered by Alyn Sclosa photography by Alice Prussin, produced by David Weinstein and Dylan Henner
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Boomkat Product Review:
Singular US poet, installation and performance artist Ellen Zweig collects her early experiments on a fathoms-deep anthology, released for the first time on any format, and marrying her idiosyncratic vocal technique with fourth world ambience, decelerated gamelan and light-headed polyrhythms. Essential if yr into Robert Ashley, Felicia Atkinson, Michele Mercure, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson.
A respected artist, educator and filmmaker, Zweig started her career as an experimental poet in New York City's Downtown scene, finding innovative ways to fuse her words with emerging experimental sounds that were bubbling up from the NYC fringe. Over time Zweig developed a technique she called "the human loop”, tangentially similar to the cassette phasing method that Steve Reich famously employed and which subsequently prompted Brian Eno to propose Ambient music. Zweig attempted to recreate the same effect using multiple performers who would repeat an identical phrase as it recorded to tape so that the voices would play on top of each other, creating their own new rhythms as the words and syllables blurred into each other - a bit like Mary Jane Leach's own experiments with voice mimicking and overlaying instruments, albeit with very different results.
On 1978 opener 'Sensitive Bones' her collaborator David Weinstein paints a lilting minimalist backdrop with detuned FM bells and gamelan sounds, standing a few paces back to allow Zweig's voice to take a central role. "Your bones resonate around you like / a scarf" she recites as her voice phases outside of itself. 'The Act of Watching' is even more knotty, inspired by Zweig's study of African polyrhythms and interlocking melodies that she applies to her writing and delivery. Weinstein matches her disorienting, synthesised words with ornate kalimba phrases and gliding synths that chime with Jon Hassell's contemporaneous productions, but Zweig's words ground everything in a peculiarly cybernetic reality that sits more comfortably alongside Felicia Atkinson's spoken word material.
'Network of Letters' is another early piece that centres around two voices that dodge in-and-out of each other over drifting Steve Roach-like pads. But it's the final track 'If Archimedes' that's most surprising, a more recent composition that tells the terrifying story of Edith Warner, a woman who lived near the laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. Alongside Joan La Barbara and Nathaniel Tarn, Zweig overlaps narratives and vocal tics, while she and David Dunn use visual artist Tony Price's percussive sculptures to hammer out clattering sonics in the distance over woozy synth drones.
It's fascinating, visionary material that reminds us how malleable and expressive spoken word can be, especially when there's such a microscopic attention to detail in the production around it. Huge recommendation.
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