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PATTI SMITH

Soundwalk Collective With Patti Smith

Correspondences Vol.1

    Spanning over 10 years, it traverses a wealth of geographies and their natural environments, where the artists have uncovered sonic steps left by poets, filmmakers, revolutionaries, and the impact of climate change. Soundwalk Collective's founder, Stephan Crasneanscki, has explored, captured and collected the world's remotest places in sound to awaken a sonic memory within the landscape, uncovering traces of past and current histories of the world we are living in.

    The resulting compositions are made of sound that reflect our relation to this world, the environment, the soul of our existence, and the creative process of the artist. Initially composed as long travelling shots, soundtracks to an invisible movie, Stephan brought these recordings to Patti Smith, giving her new landscapes to channel her poetic vision. This ongoing resonance between the artists - which started during a chance encounter on a plane - has been shaped by their correspondences: ongoing conversations with the intention of reflecting on life and nature.

    For CORRESPONDENCES, their collaboration focuses on eight unique pieces that revert the relationship of sound to image. Sound came first, and only then would imagery be found to tell the music's story, visually edited to each soundtrack. From a collaboration with TBA21- Academy exploring the destructive impact of seismic airguns and human interventions in the oceans, to the resilience of Nature in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, to the decentralized societies envisioned by Peter Kropotkin, to the wastelands of Pasolini's last night: the pieces presented become thought-provoking audiovisual journeys

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Pasolini
    2. Medea

    Soundwalk Collective With Patti Smith

    Mummer Love

    A sonic cross-continental experience, ‘Mummer Love’ is the second album in the ‘Perfect Vision’ triptych collaboration between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith.

    For this body of work, Soundwalk Collective journeyed to Africa to explore the intricacies of Arthur Rimbaud’s most obscure period. After leaving France and what he deemed the ‘Western stagnation’, Rimbaud found himself in Harar, Ethiopia - an epicentre of Sufism in Africa. Sufi practise focuses on the renunciation of worldly things, the purification of the soul and the mystical contemplation of God’s nature. A strand within the wider Islam religion, it focuses on spirituality, meditation and chanting sessions.

    As with the other albums in the triptych, the Collective searched for hidden, earthy sounds that hold memories and embed existence. For ‘Mummer Love’ they also found themselves recording under the tree where Rimbaud photographed the shrine of Sheik Abadir Umar ar- Rida al Harari, the founder of the holy city Harar. “As the rain fell, I wondered if I was hearing the drops hitting the leaves the same way Rimbaud did 140 years ago,” Stephan Crasneanscki from Soundwalk Collective says. These sounds and Sufi chants are juxtaposed with Patti Smith’s poems, like the title track ‘Mummer Love’. Written to Rimbaud, Smith’s words are rooted in multiple aspects of the self: from the passion of a lover to the care of a mother and everything in between.

    Further contributions to the album come from Mulatu Astatke (widely considered the father of Ethio-jazz) and Phillip Glass, who has long felt a connection to Sufi music, coming together and evoking a call and response between piano and vocals of the Sufi masters. It is simultaneously the first time Glass collaborates with Smith and so Harar becomes an extraordinary meeting place for all to celebrate the beauty of Rimbaud’s work.

    ‘Mummer Love’ is released around the anniversary of the death of Arthur Rimbaud (10th November 1891).

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Millie says: The collaboration of dreams – Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith. Compelling instrumentals and sound recordings joined with Patti Smith’s poetic spoken word makes it work so well. Taking inspiration from Ethiopia, using Sufi music takes it to a whole new level.

    TRACK LISTING

    Aw Abadir
    La Maison De Rimbaud
    Eternity
    Song Of The Highest Tower
    Mummer Love
    Farewell
    Bad Blood
    Sensation

    Soundwalk Collective Feat. Patti Smith

    The Peyote Dance

      The Peyote Dance’ is the first in a triptych of albums to be released by Bella Union over the next year titled ‘The Perfect Vision’, which take their inspiration from the writings of three emblematic French poets: Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud and René Daumal and their necessity to travel to different lands to acquire a new vision and perspective on themselves and artworks. Perhaps a perfect vision, it is one that allowed them to transcend forms and borders, both physical and mental. 

      Recorded in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico, Abyssinian valley of Ethiopia and Himalayan Summit of India respectively, the central idea is that each landscape holds sleeping memories that are the witness of human passage. Each album retraces the poets’ footsteps, channelled through on-location recorded soundscapes and musicalities, with Patti Smith revisiting the words that have been inspired by the landscapes.

      The triptych marks a new chapter in the collaboration between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith, who first worked together on ‘Killer Road’ in 2016.

      ‘The Peyote Dance’ focuses on a brief part of Artaud’s life, when he travelled to Mexico City in early 1936 to deliver a series of lectures at the University of Mexico on topics including Surrealism, Marxism and theatre. In the summer, he travelled by train towards the Chihuahua region and by horse to the Tarahumara mountains with the help of a mestizo guide, which the album’s opening track, recited by Gael Garcia Bernal, evokes. Artaud was drawn to the story of the Rarámuri: Native Indian people who live in the Norogachi region of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, the Sierra Tarahumara. One of Artaud’s goals was to find a peyote shaman who could heal him; allowing him to recover from an opioid addiction.

      During his stay, encountering the Rarámuri Indians and peyote shamans of Tarahumara and engaging in ceremonies, Artaud had a transcendental experience which resulted in the book ‘The Peyote Dance’. For the eponymous album, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith revisited writings from the book and other texts written after Artaud’s return to France, where he remained in a mental asylum in Rodez undergoing electric shock therapy. During this dark period, the encounter with the Rarámuri stayed with him as his last significant, happy experience. The final track on the album is a poem written by Patti Smith in homage to Artaud’s last hours in Ivry.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Una Nota Sobre El Peyote
      2. Indian Culture
      3. Tutuguri: The Rite Of The Black Sun
      4. Tutuguri: The Rite Of Black Night
      5. The New Revelations Of Being
      6. Alienation And Black Magic
      7. Ivry
      8. Basalówala Aminá Ralámuli Paísila

      Patti Smith

      Easter

        Patti Smith's third album was her most commercial sounding album to date, and due to the inclusion of the Bruce Springsteen penned (with lyrical amendments from Smith) "Because The Night" it also became her biggest seller. This isn't a 'sell out' slbum though, she still stick to her defiant, poetic lyrics but here she  manages to create a balance between her art and commercial success.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Till Victory
        2. Space Monkey  
        3. Because The Night  
        4. Ghost Dance 
        5. Babelogue 
        6. Rock N Roll Nigger  
        7. Privilege (Set Me Free) 
        8. We Three 
        9. 25th Floor 
        10. High On Rebellion 
        11. Easter 

        Patti Smith

        Horses

          Patti Smith, godmother of US punk, political activist, poet and freedom fighter, was the first artist of the New York CBGB scene to get a major label deal (even before The Ramones). Smith's debut album invokes the spirit of her 1960s influences (Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix etc), updating them with a typically cool twist of NY art-rock. Produced by the Velvet's John Cale and featuring a powerful sleeve photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, this inspiring 1975 set includes the classic gender-bending cover version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" and seven other self-composed tracks. In 2003 Horses ranked in the Top 50 of Rolling Stone magazines' "500 most influential albums".

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Mine says: To be honest with you, I hardly know anything else in Patti Smith's back catalogue (and when she plays 'Because the Night' live I make a run to the ladies) but I have once been told that I don't really need to know anything else she released and maybe that's true. If a record deserves to be called a classic it's this one.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Horses
          2. Land Of A Thousand Dances
          3. La Mer (de)
          4. Gloria
          5. Redondo Beach
          6. Birdland
          7. Free Money
          8. Kimberly
          9. Break It Up
          10. Land
                  Horses
                  Land Of A Thousand Dances
                  La Mer (de)
          11. Elegie
          12. My Generation ( CD Only Bonus Track)

          Patti Smith

          Twelve

            Her first collection of new studio recordings since 2004, sees Patti covering 12 famous rock songs by amongst others Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Nirvana, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, The Rolling Stones, Allman Bros and Paul Simon.


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