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Text-Sound Compositions A Stockholm Festival | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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 'Text-Sound Compositions - A Stockholm Festival' is a truly delicious CD box set re-releasing roughly six hours of sound poetry that originally came out on limited edition vinyl between 1968-77. This series was made in collaboration with the intermedia organisation Fylkingen and the Swedish National Radio as part of yearly festivals that were held in Stockholm at that time. Each festival included a handful of international poets who also appear on the discs. The majority of the LPs were distributed between other arts organisations at the time and so have never really been available for public consumption. This reissue provides an interesting selection of work from more familiar names such as Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin, along side Swedish and other European sound poets who are less well known to me. This period of the late sixties is presented in the liner notes as a 'golden age' of excitement in electroacoustics and poetry. I have a problem with this uncritical framing of the past. Women appear only twice as composers in 50 pieces - though female voices are heard in almost every other track. I wonder who these women are, what are their stories, and why have they been marginalised in this lavish 60 page booklet of liner note essays? Of course this box set is a fixed historical document, but it could have also provided a space to reflect on the past. Instead it repeats the dogma of 'grand old men of the avant garde' ad nauseam, causing a slight distraction from what is otherwise an interesting set of texts. These notes provide a useful context explaining how the revolution of tape gave the voice back to the poet, in a similar way that printing presses effected the experiments of writers. The liner notes evocatively describe the way these emerging technologies turned the body into a factory of sound-making, where tape manipulation could create new extra-biological sounds, feats of superhuman creation, which were both otherworldly as well as remaining identifiably human. Many of the works represented were realized at the Electronic Music Studio (EMS) or the studios of the Swedish Radio. It is difficult to assess (without being more familiar with the artists' work) how these experiments reflect more typical working methods of the people involved. It is unclear how much of the effects and composition were just used because there was the opportunity to experiment. This could be why some of the tracks have faired better in the last 30 years. The analogue filters and transparent tape manipulation can sound warm and organic to our digitized listening habits, but at times the limited palette of effects and brittle reverbs begin to sound dated and harsh, obscuring the texts with heavy handed electroacoustic techniques. Though many of the pieces are based in the Swedish language, being able to understand Swedish is not an absolute requirement as a lot of these works exist on a raw vocalisation level, using mouth sounds and utterances which exist in all languages. This is a intriguing document that represents both the excitement and naivety of the age. The liner notes provide an informative introduction to the world of text-sound, the CD's will provide many more hours of fascinating exploration. Review by Mark McLaren
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