Thanks for the great words and inspiration. Really enjoyed your soundscape elements as well, and the re-recorded reading is so evocative and interesting. You always help stretch my creativity Jo!

Bravo Maestros !!! A wonderful nest ya'll created for this superb  Canto!!

Very cool and surreal track.  Nice atmosphere on this collab.

Nice spoken word over some wonderful dark synth mood music!

@user-936947521 You commentary, Frans, means a lot to both of us. Thank you so much!

Delicate with maximum sonic appeal...this creates a vivid scene inside me...a tainted scene from the past...re-visitng a most cherished memory from long long ago!

Interesting material...I had to look up the phaistos disc.

some instruments, including synth and the pulsating synth bed, mix: tea are sea @tea_are_sea
other instruments, narration, mix: sonic structures and silent stretches
method: some back and forth, with stonerjazz and re-evolution café orchestra sometimes listening in and edging on
narration: the thirteen canto poem finds its way into sound, a canto at a time
image: copyright jo richter, using a detail of my photo of a magazine depiction of the phaistos disc as one element among others

info: there is one more version of this canto to emerge from other collab partners. LOOK FORWARD!

poem / copyright jo richter

How long he stayed, he could not tell.
He worked ferociously, sounding all
existence that had touched upon him into
being: the smell of meadows, the curl of
ripples, the calm that centers in a storm;
the timbre of voices, the straight lines of buildings,
the aloofness of announcers on the radio.
His desk was cluttered, his mind strove clear.

When he did not write, he‘d read up on
the origins of his ancient art: Vergil and Dante,
Marlow and Shakespeare, Homer and Joyce,
Ovidus, Cervantes, Rabelais and Wieland.
He felt the linguistic seeds, blown from foreign
stems, grow filaments deep in his native soil, he
saw them ripen, flower profusely, yielding
their beauty to ever-changing mentalities.

And as his insight widened and he gained
perspective, the rows of encyclopedias
and dictionaries that lined his shelves
slimmed down, as he gave up consulting
English for French and German, these for
Latin and Greek, those for Persian and Sanskrit,
until he only referred to Indo-European roots.
His desk turned clear, his mind became uncluttered.

Eventually, he also slept and dreamt
whenever the veil sank upon him.
Guarded by the spire‘s safe walls, he would
awaken slowly, remembering outlandish
lore, scribbling notes and poems of bizarre
truthfulness and penning recollections of his
archetypal ties. Some of his realistic verse de-
rived from fragments of prolonged poetic trance.

His muse meanwhile taught him to cook, the
art of mixing individual ingredients to bring about
a taste all of its own that nourishes both mind and
physicality. The painters tend to fixate on surface
and colour, she said, the musicians on timing
the process, whereas the poets never get anything
done, enchanted by words like ‚ginger‘ or ‚yeast‘.
All of their dishes taste awful.

canto iv

Departure Canto iv with Tea Are Sea

POETRY IS VITAL

This threshold space exists for those who feel like listening to some of my quite professional poetry embedded in rather amateurishly recorded but judiciously arranged sound, a modicum of purely acoustic work notwithstanding.  Fortunately, some other artists have also transformed the symbolic expression of my words into the tangible beauty of real songs and soundscapes - just listen to Sympoetic Ultrasounds: https://soundcloud.com/sonic-textures/sets/sympoetic-ultrasounds !

SOUND, SPACE AND TIME

Tend your listening senses gently. Even though my general approach welcomes and embraces lo-fi concepts like the precision of spontaneously occuring imprecisions, headphones worth their membranes are recommended - unless you like your sounds flat, mangled, battered and helpless. You don't, do you? Be kind to these soundscapes.

STRUCTURING IMPULSE

Due to the nature of "poetry soundscapes", your listening expectations regarding traditionally structured "songs", sonically purified "raw wildlife soundscapes", keyboard-laden "ambient recordings" or voice-centered "readings" might not be met. You will find some of those in my list of /likes/. "Noise" is a recurring structural element like any other. This is what this sounds like - within its own rights, limitations, tangents and interconnections. Sonic structures. Silent stretches. Poetry emerges from the gaps between the ruts, seeps in from the undergrowth, sweeps down.

CARVING, CHISELLING, KNEADING, MORPHING

A quick glance into my toolshed rests on Zoom recorders, Samplitude software and a dizzying array of diverse sonic machinery. After all, sound is one way my poems know to materialize - insolently shapeshifting, indelibly greening into the cultural real.

LARGE AND SMALL GIFTS

-----------------------------
Small Gifts

the less to remember, the more to listen
gifts from the ice age reverberate
a simple story, a forest, a coastline
entangled in silence, one starts to relate
---------------------------------------------

In case you have read up to this point, you might be a sonic creator yourself. May I ask you for a helping ear? Above, there is a tiny poem of mine that I do not understand how to translate into sound. If you do - please act on it. It is a matter of common decency, of course, to keep the title (Small Gifts) and to credit the lyrics to me (jo richter). And please do notify me of your version via a soundcloud message. One bewilderingly beautiful version crafted by mono-lux has already gone public, as well as an amazing version by cthonicist.  You'll find both in my playlist Sympoetic Ultrasounds. This is just a small gift, not a challenge - life already has more than enough of those on offer, doesn't it? Treat it this way.

POETRY IS VITAL
sound, space and time
structuring impulse
carving, chiselling, kneading, morphing
large and small gifts
poetry is vital

GENERAL POLICY regarding the use of LIKES, REPOSTS and FOLLOWS:
I like what I like and want to hear again.
I only repost what I've had a hand in creating.
I follow when I see directions or arrivals I like, not when followed (though I might peek in to get an idea of what your sounds are about). I have set myself a limit of accounts I follow not to be all too overwhelmed. Not following does therefore not mean I do not appreciate what you contribute to the enjoyments of soundcloud.
Do not expect other behaviour from me.
(jo richter)

Comments

No Mates Ensemble

Nadia Selvaggi

REKHA

Well

sonic structures and silent stretches

Shade Structure

~Mark F

STONERJAZZ

Tea R. Sea