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LP
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WWSLP 079LP
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Wewantsounds presents this reissue of Brion Gysin's cult avant-funk album produced by Ramuntcho Matta in the early '80s. The hugely influential Gysin who, with his friend William Burroughs, was revered by the likes of David Bowie, Brian Jones, Laurie Anderson, and Genesis P-Orridge, is accompanied here by Matta -- on his return from a two-year spell in New York -- and French post punk stalwarts Yann Le Ker (from the group Modern Guy) and Frederic Cousseau (from Suicide Romeo) plus special guests including Don Cherry, Elli Medeiros, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Caroline Loeb, and Senegalese drummer Prosper Niang (Xalam). This is the first time the album is reissued on vinyl, newly remastered from the original tapes, augmented with bonus tracks and a two-page color insert featuring new liner notes by Gysin scholar Jason Weiss.
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Book
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9781734681772
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"The first collection of the Beat mentor's long-influential permutation poems -- one of the earliest examples of computer-generated literature. Written between 1958 and 1982, Brion Gysin's permutation poems begin with short phrases or sentences whose constituent words are exhaustively rearranged over the course of the text. At first, Gysin wrote these poems manually, although later, in collaboration with programmer Ian Sommerville, he would write permutation poems with the assistance of a computer, making them a very early instance of computer-generated literature. Some of these works were published in books, while others exist only as audio recordings. Many derive from a 1960 BBC radio commission, The Permutated Poems of Brion Gysin, in which readings of the texts were recorded, cut up, modulated and overlapped. For the first time, this collection brings together all published and -- where transcribable -- unpublished versions of each poem, as well as Cut-Ups Self-Explained, a short text by Gysin that contextualizes the work. The poems are organized in chronological order by first publication or first recording, with further versions of each poem grouped together in chronological order immediately after the initial version. This organization brings distinctions between versions into relief, allowing readers to explore the playful systematicity that undergirds this remarkable body of work. Brion Gysin (1916-86) was a multidisciplinary artist, author and poet. Born in Taplow, England, he studied painting at the Sorbonne in Paris and immigrated to New York in 1939. In the 1950s he lived in Tangier, where he first met William S. Burroughs. Gysin collaborated often; after returning to Paris, he developed the cut-up method with Burroughs, and with engineer Ian Sommerville he created the Dreamachine, a kinetic light sculpture. Gysin would become a mentor for generations of artists, musicians and writers, including David Bowie, John Giorno, Keith Haring, Brian Jones and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, among others."
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CD
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SR 247CD
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In Autumn 1982, in Brixton, London, Brion Gysin, the eternal accomplice of William Burroughs, renewed the methods of performance by reciting texts, hastily brought together with this performance, accompanied by Slits-member, Tessa, Steve of Rip, Rig and Panic, Gile of Penguin Café Orchestra, and Ramuntcho Matta on guitar. Ramuntcho, in the style of Brion, called this session "White Funk." Most of the texts were written upon meeting Burroughs, at the time of the invention of the cut-up. The influence that Brion Gysin has had on contemporary music may never be taken fully into account, particularly when he introduced Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones to the shepherd's music of Joujouka. Those times were still audacious: the music was created during the sound-checks! Musically, the choice of traditional instruments expresses the desire to be free of machines (because, as Burroughs says, "We ourselves are machines."). This recording is evidence of the extraordinary creativity and spontaneity of the musical and artistic scene at that time, and it refuses to age a bit. Beyond the nostalgia inspired by the invocation of that bygone cultural scene, this is a renewed wake-up call for a kind of creativity that is terribly difficult to find today.
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