electrocd

Review

Frans de Waard, Vital, no. 860, December 10, 2012

If you add up the timing of all nine pieces, you may wonder why it is on three CDs and not two? Perhaps because we have three pieces on each CD? Music by poet Fortner Anderson has been reviewed before (Vital Weekly 521, 560, 812), and about the last one I noted that I perhaps rather read the book and hear some music along, and maybe Anderson took notice of that, and he mailed nine of his poetry pieces to nine composers/musicians with the request to put music to it, or simply use the voice, such as Christian Calon does, who uses a simple process to manipulate the voice but it’s still audible and understandable, which can not be said of Christian Kesten, who only uses the sounds before and after the words, and glues them together. But most of them don’t do much with the voice and use it as is, but build around it a soundscape. Alessandro Bosetti for instance does a nice piece along the lines of Gregory Whitehead, which include singing and guitars, or the orchestral work of John Berndt. Much of the music add drama to the spoken word and make it, and I know this is all highly subjective, into music by itself, rather than poetry and a bit of music. Now, this is something I like obviously very much. This is more like a fine radio play material, I should think. There is enough variation in here to make a fascinating release, although I keep thinking: why not all together on two CDs, in stead of three?

… a fascinating release…