Verbosonies and Phonographies
Dutch artist and language designer Herman Damen has his singular verbosonies and tape collages collected on this breathtakingly odd anthology - one for fans of François Dufrêne, for sure.
Damen is best known for exploring "kinetic language" and the spacial aspects of language, proposing his work as "Semiotic Theatre" by swerving from the expected path of poetry, moving away from literature and towards taste, collage, design or location. And if that sounds confusing, it'll make far more sense when you listen to the music itself - we promise. 'Verbosonies and Phonographies' sweeps up material from Damen's 1966-'73 run, presenting his verbsonies - tracks that assemble vocalized morphomic elements in different ways - on the first side, and his audio collages and installation works on the flip.
The earliest piece is 'Automaton-Pouim', that overlays a robotic chant with saturated chatter - short and sweet, it's a perfect introduction to the more substantial 'Voices'. Made between '66 and '70, 'Voices' is a mesh of different overlapping wordless sounds generated from different parts of the mouth. A track like this gets to the root of Damen's process - it's sound poetry, but approached from an obtuse angle, turning whistles and belches into percussive ticks and musical interludes that spring to life just because they're presented this way. And Damen plays different languages off each other on 'Monologue-Machine', letting words run into each other until they're almost nonsensical.
The artist's tape manipulation skills are shown off on 'Reveil du chaos', a track he made for an experimental film that overlays huffing, panting and clicking sounds that cracks under the ferric pressure. But the real draw here is 'Psychocybernetic Performance', a more narrative driven experiment that Damen created at Stockholm's EMS for the sixth Text-Sound Festival at Fylkingen way back in 1973.
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Limited edition of 220 copies, includes inserts.
Dutch artist and language designer Herman Damen has his singular verbosonies and tape collages collected on this breathtakingly odd anthology - one for fans of François Dufrêne, for sure.
Damen is best known for exploring "kinetic language" and the spacial aspects of language, proposing his work as "Semiotic Theatre" by swerving from the expected path of poetry, moving away from literature and towards taste, collage, design or location. And if that sounds confusing, it'll make far more sense when you listen to the music itself - we promise. 'Verbosonies and Phonographies' sweeps up material from Damen's 1966-'73 run, presenting his verbsonies - tracks that assemble vocalized morphomic elements in different ways - on the first side, and his audio collages and installation works on the flip.
The earliest piece is 'Automaton-Pouim', that overlays a robotic chant with saturated chatter - short and sweet, it's a perfect introduction to the more substantial 'Voices'. Made between '66 and '70, 'Voices' is a mesh of different overlapping wordless sounds generated from different parts of the mouth. A track like this gets to the root of Damen's process - it's sound poetry, but approached from an obtuse angle, turning whistles and belches into percussive ticks and musical interludes that spring to life just because they're presented this way. And Damen plays different languages off each other on 'Monologue-Machine', letting words run into each other until they're almost nonsensical.
The artist's tape manipulation skills are shown off on 'Reveil du chaos', a track he made for an experimental film that overlays huffing, panting and clicking sounds that cracks under the ferric pressure. But the real draw here is 'Psychocybernetic Performance', a more narrative driven experiment that Damen created at Stockholm's EMS for the sixth Text-Sound Festival at Fylkingen way back in 1973.