“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness; starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix...”

Notorious beat poet Allen Ginsberg wrote and first performed his epic poem Howl 70 years ago. Its debut performance, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, is said to have heralded the birth of the Beat Generation, the literary subculture that also included cult writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Kerouac wrote that the event was “the night of the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance”, and Ginsberg was immediately asked to publish Howl by City Lights Books. 

Howl — whose title was given to Ginsberg by Kerouac — was reportedly written after a terrifying peyote vision, and discussed the exploits of a colourful cast of outcasts, explicitly talking openly about drug use and homosexuality in parts. It’s been written that Howl was Ginsberg coming to terms with his own sexuality, and also his mother’s schizophrenia. 

After publication, copies of Howl & Other Poems were seized by customs officials, claiming that the parts of Howl relating to homosexuality were obscene, and the City Lights bookstore manager and book publisher were arrested. At the subsequent obscenity trail, literary experts testified to Howl’s artistic merit and the judge ultimately ruled that Howl was of “redeeming social importance”, and threw the case out. Along with the obscenity trial that William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch also overcame the following year, the publication of Howl helped redefine the constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment, and ultimately helped liberalise publishing in the United States as a whole.  

Renude19 initially turned Howl into an electronic album using Ginsberg’s original voice, before re-recording all the words with Ashley Slater of Freak Power fame. The lolloping, rich textured rhymes lend themselves well to electro riddims, the evocative prose sitting on top of the interwoven music with stark relevance. The album project has received the stamp of approval from the Allen Ginsberg Project, the foundation that oversees the poet’s legacy, and this first ‘Waking Nightmares’ EP serves as an album teaser.

EP opener ‘Waking Nightmares’ takes in Howl’s first stanzas, beginning with the infamous quote above before 80s-sounding future-retro synths turn it into an electropop paean. ‘Visionary Angels’ moves through vivid stream-of-consciousness descriptions of Americana ephemera and alternative geography to a disco beat, while the more banging third track ‘Rockland’ name-checks Carl Solomon, who the epic Howl poem was written for, and is called after the psychiatric hospital where Ginsberg met Solomon. “The ecstasy is holy,” Ginsberg exclaims, perhaps predicting the drug that would fuel the acid house revolution three decades later. (It was Ginsberg who actually coined the term ‘flower power’ in the late 1960s.)

After his notoriety spread after the Howl obscenity trial, Ginsberg appeared on stage with a number of musicians including Bob Dylan, The Clash and Patti Smith, and recorded with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass. Ginsberg passed away from liver cancer in 1997, but his legacy lives on. 

Howl, then, is an important historical classic with considerable artistic merit. Indeed, at a time when librarians in the US and UK are being pressurised by evangelicals to take LGBTQ+ titles off shelves, it feels more relevant than ever. This timely Howl update by Renude19 recontextualises the seminal Beat Generation poem for a modern audience, amplifying the raw emotional power of his words and introducing him to a whole new generation. 

The ‘Waking Nightmares’ EP (from Reimagining Allen Ginsberg's Howl) is out via Irvine Welsh’s Out Yer Box Records.



Visionary Angels

Renude19 - Visionary Angels

I’m With You in Rockland

Renude19 - I’m With You in Rockland

Waking Nightmare

Renude19 - Waking Nightmare

I.
We feast on foreign art with pride,
Transform, not mimic what we find.
Against colonial powers we stand,
Creating culture from our land.
II.
"Tupi or not" our question rings,
Take what serves, discard dead things.
Not imports from across the sea,
But hybrid forms that set us free.
III.
Against oppression's rigid might,
For joy and freedom's pure delight.
Digest the world with fierce intent,
A new creation, heaven-sent.

Antropofagico manifesto reduce 3:4

First Light
Steel and glass exhale silver breath
as sunlight pierces night's retreat.
Shadows shrink beneath growing warmth,
concrete canyons slowly heat.
Windows flash like scattered jewels
while pigeons rustle on ledges high.
Traffic hums a morning prayer
as stars surrender to the sky.
Nature claims what humans built—
gold fingers trace each rigid line.
Dawn makes equals of all things,
when light and shadow intertwine.

First Light

In the Static
The poeta é um fingidor,
Lost among synthesized waves,
Whispering truths behind closed doors,
Nesse comboio que o coração paves.
Words drift through mono static,
Palavras dancing with machine dreams,
The recording harsh and erratic,
No silêncio que rasga e queima.
Fingindo sentimentos that never were,
Yet truth emerges from distortion's hum,
O coração batendo against the blur,
Where English and português become one.

In the Static

"Muffled"
Verse:
Words stuck inside like thoughts in quicksand, sinking deeper the more I struggle to speak.
Chorus:
Mmm-muffled sounds, sticky sweet, trapped behind teeth that refuse to part.
Bridge:
Someday these sounds will burst forth clear as crystal, but today they remain just beyond reach.

Muffled

Perfection's extinction marked the inflection where raw roots' concoction erupted in raucous reduction, recording reflection through chaotic connection.

Perfection’s extinction

Aqui está um poema de 4 versos e 2 estrofes sobre poesia concreta:
Palavras dançam soltas no espaço,
Forma e sentido em fusão visual.
Letras que saltam, quebram o abraço,
A página é tela do jogo verbal.

Meta Poesia Concreta

Palavras ao vento, um fim

Palavras sintetizadas desarmonizadas descoladas no amago o som do mini sax é tao estar

O som do mini sax

Doídos Doidos

The Spirit of the place by Fleur Adcock

Witch burning  (a musical adaptation of Sylvia Plath's poem)

Glory and Danger of AI

esprit, mind, ruh [ mente espirito sente] spirit, mind, ruh

Esprit, spirit, mente

Ode à Desconstrução e Trace Flags
No labirinto do código, flags revelam caminhos ocultos,
Desconstruindo estruturas, bit por bit, camada por camada.
O que parecia sólido se fragmenta em possibilidades.
Traços digitais marcam rotas pela lógica desmontada,
Sinalizando desvios onde rigidez se transforma em fluidez.
Na desconstrução, encontramos verdades antes invisíveis.

Trace flags

甘い檸檬1stコンセプトアルバム「秘密の数式-Requiem-」より「存在のパラドックス」。
フルアルバムは甘い檸檬Bandcampにてリリース中

存在のパラドックス

co·he·sion

Out Yer Box is the sister label to Jack Said What, launched to cater for non-4/4 material, whether it be ambient, trip-hop, breakbeat, guitar-driven, dubstep or whatever.
Out Yer Box tracks may not be in your rekordbox to play on the nightclub dancefloor, but the music is still high quality in its varying shades and hues.

A psychotic episode or disorder will result in the presence of one or more of the following five categories: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought, disorganized behavior, negative symptoms.

Psychotic surge explores the realm of the anti-musical. The grey area between music, with rhythm and structure, and the chaotic, repetitive yet unpredictable composition of the psychotic surge event.

J'erre, tu erres, il erre... dans les limbes de la musicalité...

- HIGH QUALITY HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED -

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HQ MUSIC - 32 / 192000
NO "LOUDNESS" = MORE DYNAMIC SOUND 
Il y a même la "virgule flottante" :)
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FRENCH "MUSIC DESIGNER"
performed by 
The Shimmering Meadow Symphony Orchestra (S.M.S.O.)
virtual musicians under my command
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Crédit photo : Ryan McGUIRE

New tracks tagged #Poem