Sound Mess and Other Poems

by The Be Blank Consort. Compact Disk. Press Me Close Eds and StampPad Press. ISBN 1-892280-20-5.

Book Review by

This is a CD of sound poetry. Well, yeah, it is sound poetry but it is sound poetry also and too to. Well unlike The Beatles first album where I think you got 11 hits here on this Sound Mess you get 42 hits! Yes, friends and neighbors?42 jumping swirling dadareams squirrels and voice melding up and in tune forty-two cuts! The Blanks are K. S. Ernst, Michael Peters, Scott Helms, Josh Carr, Carlos M. Luis and the one and only supreme John M. Bennett. The others in the ensemble are supremes also but that would make them The Supremes and not the Be Blank Consort, what is what they are as a real thing like quick drying water resistant Marks A Lot Permanent Markers! So, enough of this jibber gibber jabber. This is a CD of ensemble choral sound poetry and each selection is a weave of temperaments, pitch and tone. The voices are at one time solo within ensemble and with the other ear you might hear the mess. All voices then compliment and the balance of the mastering and making of this product is then a double wowo wowo because to get the effect of solos with the mesh or mess is mighty hard but here it is pulled off and pushed off and pulled together and gather and tied with a ribbon of sound. How to say about this product I think of braid, rope of distinct parts solo and yet one. Innovative for the egoless presentation and yet allowing enough space for the personality of each voice to exist. The ensemble performs works by its members and works by Al Ackerman, C. Mehrl Bennett, Ficus Strangulensis and Jim Leftwich.

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