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ARTIST
TITLE
Leaves of Grass
FORMAT
12"

LABEL
CATALOG #
MORR 142EP MORR 142EP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
2/19/2016

Leaves of Grass is a collaboration between Tarwater, alva noto, and Iggy Pop. Each track features Iggy Pop's readings of American poet Walt Whitman's poetry with music by Tarwater and alva noto. The EP takes its title from Whitman's best-known poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. Carsten Nicolai aka alva noto is a renowned artist and electronic producer. He is well known for his diverse electronic work released through Mille Plateaux and raster-noton, which he cofounded. His first recordings had a huge impact on what came to be known as glitch music in the late '90s, which was also when Tarwater (Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram) began their pioneering work. The duo pushed the boundaries between electronic music, new wave, and indie culture with their idiosyncratic music, which most found hard to describe without using the prefix "post-." In 1967, Iggy Pop cofounded The Stooges, whose massive influence on music since is often summarized with the term "proto-punk." Here, Iggy Pop lends his distinctive voice to seven poems by Walt Whitman, while Tarwater and alva noto create a vibrant and ever-pulsating score, sometimes calm, sometimes plodding and monolithic. Describing Whitman's significance, Iggy Pop reflects, "You know, I think he had something like Elvis. Like Elvis ahead of his time, one of the first manic American populists. You know you're looking at pictures of him, and he was obviously someone who was very much involved with his own physical appearance. His poetry is always about motion and rushing ahead, and crazy love and blood pushing through the body. He would have been the perfect gangster rapper. Whitman says, even the most beautiful face is not as beautiful as the body. And to say that in the middle of the 19th century is outrageous. It's a slap in the face. Look at the popular, well-educated poets of the time, those sensitive noblemen. But Whitman writes: 'Fuck ass.'" Embossed sleeve with full-tone print.