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LP
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VOCSON 180LP
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This third Gil J Wolman record released by Alga Marghen, bringing together mégapneumes from the '60s, sheds new light into the poetic revolution of the time, or a kind of organic infra-language. It's the physical poetry of a serial killer that is recorded in the two "Mégapneumesm" as well as in the extract from the (last?) "Mégapneumes" (excerpt), the tape that was found still wound on Wolman's tape recorder after his death. "Les Callas," an astonishing piece possibly based on several super-imposed recordings of Wolman's voice at Radio Télévision Française (ca 1961), features a Lettrist choir recycling Rimbaudian vowels, while high-pitched screams emerge, culminating in a polyphony worthy of some tribe resistant to domestication. "Un coup pour rien", "Un coup pour deux" and "Tu vas la taire ta gueule", recorded at Radio Canada in 1965, are presented here for the first time on record, completing the program of this historical and radical anthology. In a conversation with Ilse Garnier, she told Frederic Aquaviva (the curator of this edition for Alga Marghen) that Henri Chopin had precipitated the end of his attempts at sound poetry with this definitive formula: "Le souffle, c'est moi!". On the other hand, in Gil J Wolman's record library appears this eloquent dedication by Chopin on his record Audiopoems, released by the English label Tangent in 1971: "For Gil J Wolman, evident in 1 (because the first), evident in 1971, evident in 2071, evident in 3071, in short to the sup-herbal Gil." But unlike Isidore Isou, Wolman was not the sort of person to send out a leaflet in order to make clear what he had achieved with this new poetry, and besides, he himself had consigned Isou to the old world, with the new beginning represented by his mégapneumes, which in fact date from 1950, when he first joined the Lettrist movement. He was undoubtedly one of the first poets to use the resources of the tape recorder and its varispeed, for example in L'Anticoncept, in 1951, also used a decade later by Brion Gysin with "I Am that I Am" and Henri Chopin. Also, in 1973, François Dufrêne produced a manuscript on a torn silkscreen poster where one can read "Gil J Wolman is one of the most important phonetic poets." Wolman is an essential innovator and artist: a poet, writer, visual artist, film-maker and video-maker who, like Gherasim Luca, did not need to give numerous public recitals or recordings to make his mark. To be Duchamp or Arman: Wolman chose his side!
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LP
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VOCSON 091LP
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Is it to "en finir avec cette idée des chefs-d'oeuvre" ("be done with this idea of masterpieces"), as Antonin Artaud proclaimed, that Gil J Wolman calls his recording Wolman et son double, in a détournement of Artaud's famous essay collection and "masterpiece" Le Théâtre et son double (The Theatre and Its Double) (1938)? Artaud's Tête-à-tête performance at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier on January 13, 1947, had a major impact on the future sound poets of the "poésie physique," François Dufrêne, Jean-Louis Brau, and Gil J Wolman. The "poésie physique" of Gil J Wolman, his "mégapneumie" (poems of breath and sound) appeared as soon as 1950 and eventually developed into an improvisation for breath and organic sounds originating from the throat and the whole body. The work seems to be designed to disturb the human aspect of speech. Wolman et son double, a previously unreleased recording probably from the late '70s, is Wolman's most theatrical -- as well as musical and lyrical -- piece. This is due to its duration and above all to its experimental recording techniques; Wolman records a series of improvisations on a 30-minute track, then mixes them with a new series of mégapneumes. The mixing and manipulations with echo and Larsen effects are a novelty if compared to the other mégapneumes recordings. The first track begins with a hum, immediately overlaid by Wolman's "poésie physique": hoarseness, cough, strangulation, twisting, wheeze, rumbling, hiccups, asphyxia; a whole set of gripes against himself and his speech. Wolman breaths and winces, he mimes the impacts, the scars of the blows by an invisible fighter, actually his double. Wolman et son double suggests a theatrical set, with characters entering the stage of the mégapneume. They are archetypes rather than psychological characters: a dybbuk or an old witch with a sardonic laugh; the drum major with his martial clicks; several warbling, trumpeting and barking animals, mad masters of a human speech conspiracy. Before the piece's end, an insolent call for a national strike is heard. Artaud observed that "actors in France no longer know how to do anything but talk"; Wolman et son double may well be the national strike from that show, from "masterpiece" art.
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