5028159024512

Penny Rimbaud's How?

Crass Agenda

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Format: CD

Cat No: BDV2451

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Release Date:  21 March 2005

Label:  Babel

Packaging Type:  Jewel Case

No of Units:  1

Barcode:  5028159024512

Genres:  Jazz  Poetry  

  • Description

    The intoxicating combination of jazz and spoken word as part of the American beatnik counter-cultural movement of the 1950s is here resonantly reanimated for the 21st century. Penny Rimbaud from the Crass Agenda (ex-collective), a loose collective of musicians, performance artists and poets formed in 2003 by the leaders of the seminal anarcho-punk outfit Crass that split in 1984, has written HOW?, giving a twenty-first century voice to mystical beat poet Allen Ginsberg's most politically epic poem written in 1955 'Howl'. "I saw the best minds of my generation gagged by the opiate of capital; fallen angels busting for a budgetary fix, established Christs nailed to cash or crucifix," declaims Rimbaud against a spontaneous underscore of saxes, basses, trumpet and drums." On this live recording at the late lamented Vortex Jazz Club in Stoke Newington in November last year as part of the London Jazz Festival, some key figures including vocalist Christine Tobin, provide the musical setting to Rimbaud's provocative readings. This was an expressively spontaneous performance typical of Crass Agenda's regular, highly successful gigs at the Vortex with a loose network of jazz musicians, dancers, poets and film-makers since the beginning of 2003. Written in four parts, 'HOW?' significantly opens with Christine Tobin's haunting a capella rendition of the depression era folk song 'Brother Can You Spare a Dime' also covered by Christine on her Babel album 'Deep Song' from 2000. From then on the recording is a raw, electrified landscape of free jazz responding only to the candid word power inherent in Rimbaud's eloquent poetical fervour.

  • Tracklisting

      Disc 1

      Side 1

      • 1. Brother
      • 2. Can You Spare A Dime?
      • 3. How. Part One
      • 4. How. Part Two
      • 5. How. Part Three
      • 6. How. Part Four
      • . Outro