Exotica Suite & Other Fictions. Wayne Burrows + CD
Exotica Suite begins with an Easter Island creation chant in the style of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell and an imaginary Polynesian colony in England in the 1780s then takes in a series of tall tales featuring Hawaiian musicians. Other Fictions fabricates occult histories in Nottingham caves and embarks on a labyrinthine sea voyage with the body of a late Hawaiian King. Now gathered in one place for the first time, the various forgeries, stories, false lectures, misleading anecdotes and other writings in Exotica Suite & Other Fictions are the flip-side to Black Glass: New & Selected Poems, also published by Shoestring.
Exotica Suite simultaneously exists as an audio CD, included with the book..The recordings featured on the Exotica Suite CD remix and re-edit some of the texts from the book, then perform these to music created by Paul Isherwood, best known for four acclaimed albums made with The Soundcarriers, most recently Entropicalia (Ghost Box, 2014). The recordings hopefully go beyond the usual idea of putting readings to background music and work instead to create free-standing tracks from the source materials - taking inspiration from Eden Ahbez, Yma Sumac, Link Wray, Sun Ra and an imaginary British-Polynesian folk tradition, among other things. Featuring contributions from Adam Cann, Dorian Conway, Rebecca Lee, Arianne Churchman, Parisa Eliyon, Alex Crispin & Greg Walsh.
“…spins a web that oscillates between the fictional and non fictional and encourages us to reflect on how we navigate the past and how this could affect all our futures.”
Katherine Wood on ‘Marine’ (2013)
Book Contents:
Part One: Exotica Suite
A Creation Fragment from Easter Island
An Account of the Hawaiian Colony in England (1790)
The Kumulipo Variations
Four Hula Songs for the Goddess Laka
The Sorceress
An Imaginary History of Musical Polynesia
(i) The First Musician
(ii) Joseph Kekuku Between Two Worlds
(iii) Sol Hoopii Finds A Sack Of Souls
(iv) Arthur Lyman’s Marimba Calms Pele’s Rage
(v) Shell-Ears And Tin-Ears
Invocation to Sun Ra (1914 – 1993)
Part Two: Other Fictions
Marine: A Story in Eight Objects
A Marriage of Styles
The Disappearances
The Peel Street Codex
The Nottingham Medlars
An Edible Alphabet
Fabricated Archives
Spirit Wrappings
A Mandinka Song: Theme & Variations
Disturbances
The Enigma of Robert Holcombe
Convulsive Beauty: A Fabricated Lecture
Twelve Non-Specific Sites
CD Contents:
Side 1:
The Hawaiian Colony Ballad I
Creation Fragment
Altar Prayer For Laka
A Hula for Laka (For Link Wray)
The Hawaiian Colony Ballad II
The Sorceress
Side 2:
Ankle Bracelet
Flute Interlude
Kumulipo Variation
The Hawaiian Colony Ballad III
Subliminal (Invocation to Sun Ra)
(Shoestring Press, 2015)
New paperback book & CD,
175 pages, 210 x 148mm, b/w illustrations..