The fifth release for the library is a paired zine/chapbook of poems and linocuts by Ryan Waldron (Talugung) with a short mini-album of voice I recorded on my cassette and microcassette handhelds. The audio contains five longer form pieces I had included in my original collection for the book, but due to the format and the spacing and density of the work we both chose to keep the pages tidier and more structural in look and feel.
I call these folk poems as I was thinking about earlier (and earliest) civilizations and how they communicated with themselves and the natural surroundings, as ideas and mysteries and specialties get carved up into more abstracted, but personal meanings and takes.
Getting lost inside your movements and surroundings, calling it something, putting meaning on the words but allowing them to float away with the tides and change over time as well. Allow the sand and the dirt and the winds to kick it up and move it someplace else, for further deciphering and code-breaking. Taking out the idea of rivalry and thinking about connectedness through the same motion and workload, the same approach to getting up and tackling what that day will need, how the weather shapes that, how the sun follows everything, how the ideas of new things will always innately sit inside us all along the way too, and how everything we’re facing is similar despite our eras-ago geographies.
The audio is the second half of the civilization riff, thinking about how we got from all those years ago to now, how we face similar natural and spiritual mysteries and how things get more and more complicated and complex as years pass. If we still think in a subtle old-way way where is the end of our wonder and where is the beginning of our lethal cynicism?
I know I didn’t come close to putting any of this to feel with this short zine Ryan illustrated. His linocuts are really something else, so take a strong hold of them and let them carry the whole piece.
Ryan has been one of my fave artists forever, since we met many years ago.
This collaboration has been long in the making, long talked about, long thought about, finally put to action. It’s simplicity and lightness seems perfect for the amount of detail that shadows it.
I’ve added a PDF to the audio that is free to grab on the bandcamp, so that download contains all of the works. Here is the chapbook-stand-alone, that doesn’t contain the other audio poems where I mess about with voice and stereo technique: PDF link.
We only did a very small amount, to give away, so only 20 copies of the physical zine/chapbook are out there, and sadly they’ve been spoken for. We’ve put everything up digitally though, so we hope you can enjoy that. Give it a quick read and/or listen, we appreciate the eyes and ears.
Thanks!
Kev
Power Moves Label 