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CARRIE OLIVIA ADAMS/JOSEPH CLAYTON MILLS/DEANNA
VARAGONA «HUNTRESS» |
US ($10 + $6
shipping and handling): OUT OF PRINT
International ($10 + $10
shipping and handling): OUT OF PRINT |
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Were it not for the distance That sphere of elements,
iron, minerals Might be less than cold and
more Like your memory of it on a
gravel road Refracted subtly on tired
cheekbones 1. Oceanus (1:49) «Huntress» is an experiment in
cross-media collaboration between poet Carrie Olivia Adams and musicians
Joseph Clayton Mills and Deanna Varagona that reimagines the moon—understood both as a celestial body
and a cultural trope—as an elaborate recording device, positing the disc of
the lunar surface as a literal and metaphorical site of inscription,
projection, and mirroring. Taking the twenty lunar lacus—the “lakes” of the
moon—as a formal structuring principle, Adams composed a poem in twenty
five-line stanzas. Simultaneously, Mills translated topographical data about
the landscape of the moon into a series of pitch relations, durations, and
other musical parameters that provided a framework within which Varagona improvised on piano and cello. Varagona’s performances were then augmented with
electronics, field recordings, and additional instrumentation—including
samples drawn from historical and archival recordings ranging from Dvorak to
the moon landings—and were reconfigured and expanded by Mills into a series
of pieces that explicitly and implicitly draw on Adams’s text for their
imagery and inspiration. In the 50-page <<Huntress>> booklet,
Adams’s poem is accompanied by a series of found images that provide a
supplemental, parallel narrative, referencing both the text and the
accompanying music and bridging the gap between the two. Each copy of
«Huntress» includes an archival CD-R with accompanying text. Carrie Olivia Adams: text / Joseph Clayton Mills: electronics, field recordings,
piano, tape loops, guitar / Deanna Varagona:
piano, cello
Assembled
by JCM in Chicago 2013-2014
First edition: 2014 Second edition: 2015 |
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Carrie Olivia Adams Is a poet living in Chicago. She is
a book publicist for the University of Chicago Press and the co-founder and
poetry editor for the small press Black Ocean. Adams is the author of the
poetry collection Intervening Absence
and, most recently, Forty-One Jane
Doe’s, both published by Ahsahta Press. Joseph
Clayton Mills Is a
musician, artist, and writer who lives and works in Chicago, where his
collaborators have included Adam Sonderberg and
Steven Hess (as Haptic), Michael Vallera (as Maar), Noé Cuéllar (as Partial),
Sylvain Chaveau, Jason Stein, Michael Pisaro, and Olivia Block, among many others. His
recordings have appeared on numerous labels, including Another Timbre, FSS,
and Entr’acte. In 2013, in collaboration with Noé Cuéllar, he launched the label Suppedaneum
to focus on releasing scores and their realizations. Deanna Varagona was
a longtime member of the warped Nashville neo-countrypolitan
ensemble Lambchop and has also lent her talent as a
vocalist and saxophonist to such artists as Vic Chestnutt,
M. Ward, Yo La Tengo,
Neutral Milk Hotel, Steve MacKay, and a number of others. The Southern-born Varagona has also recorded under her own name, crafting
sparse windblown acoustic music descended from the Appalachian folk
tradition. |
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