Review
Mouth Pieces is a superb compilation of acoustic oral soundworks by Paul Dutton. Dutton’s meticulous renderings of these works are cleanly recorded and offer an engaging crosssection of his repertoire. Dutton’s live soundworks are frequendy presented either solo or in the company of other artists and groups including individuals such as Holland’s Jaap Blonk, or groups such as Toronto’s superlative free improv band CCMC, or, the legendary The Four Horsemen poetry perfonnance group (1970-88). Dutton works partly in the tradition of early Dadaists or more recently established pioneers such as Bob Cobbing, and partly in the traditions of Jazz, Blues or Doo Wop, but, he goes beyond all of these precedents to develop his own performative style. This CD, sub-titled Solo Soundsinging traverses the conventional borders of music and poetry to anive at a new auditory frontier. Dunon’s piece Hiding approximately 6 minutes long and printed in colour on the CD itself, is a true masterwork. If you get the opportunity be sure to see Dunon perform this or his other works live. In the meantime, this CD offers a true artistry through jazz changeups, phonetic and resonant phonemics, tongue-pops, mouth percussions, forced-air effects, overtone and pitch modulations, all the more remarkable when you realize that this is all done by human voice only, and without electronic processing of any kind! Paul Dutton soars to sublime heights in this extraordinary soundworks collection.