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§1.- The Word Underneath 
It consists of collaborations with Buffalo resident
poets Michael Basinski, Robert Creeley, Rosemary
Kothe, Mark Peters and Anna Reckin. The
varied styles and formats of poems chosen led to
different pieces, each with its own musical identity.
The Word Underneath
- Please click on the titles to listen to the
pieces by Lake Affect and the on the
poets names to listen to their own voices
reading the poems.
Real Player G2 is needed in
order to listen to these files.
- City of Webs (Poem: Michael Basinski)
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- The Rhythm (Poem:
Robert Creeley)
- Rosa / List of Flowers
(Poem: Anna
Reckin)
- Purple Poison
(Poem: Rosemary Kothe)
- Bucket, bucket (Poem:
Mark Peters)
All music by Lake Affect.
Three of the pieces feature the actual poet’s
voices. Thus, Robert Creeley reads for us each strophe of
his poem while we interject screamed lament-like vocal
and instrumental patterns, both in evolving motivic loops
whose circular structure matches with the cyclic metaphor
of life that Creeley proposes. Michael Basinski’s
reading wanders around the page of his poem in a
virtuosic cluster of sung vowels and speeches while Lake
Affect engages in its own musical recreation of that
reading style. Anna Reckin creates a colorful rhythm of
consonant phonemes with her reading, and Lake Affect
enhances her performance by playing instruments with
similar acoustic qualities and singing the naked
consonant-rhythmic patterns.
The other two pieces partake from other essential
elements of the poems. Purple poison elaborates a sparse
web of hanging sounds based on a set of pitches. And,
bucket, bucket keeps the playful spirit in which its
author conceived the poem while working in a
children’s summer camp. By replacing the
increasingly recurrent word bucket with a special sound
assigned to each of the players, the piece turns slowly
into one single repetitious and pervading sound.
Last modified: September 8th, 2001.© Lake Affect
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