This audio CD features readings of the poems by Paul Kane and music by Katie O' Looney. The folding booklet contains poetry and notes by American poet Paul Kane. He has published five volumes of poems including Work Life (2007) and A Slant Of Light (2008) as well as eight other books of various kinds. The music plays with the poems in various ways: it responds to, shapes and at times, leads the text as a parallel creation, partly composed and partly improvised.

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Paul Kane writes: The genesis of Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements was a poetry reading in Périgord in the south of France where Katie and I met up. We spoke casually about doing something together at some point but soon thereafter Katie came up with a serious proposal for collaboration. She wanted to do a project centered on the number seven, which, fortuitously, coincided with some reading I had been doing in Catastrophe Theory, which defines seven possible models for how complex systems fail when pushed too far. As we began experimenting with sound and poetry, with Katie in Ireland and I in the States, it became clear that we would have to complete the compositions live. The project needed spontaneity and a healthy dose of improvisation. At this point we approached The Guesthouse in Cork and they offered to host us as artists-in-residence for a period in the summer of 2012. This proved to be the perfect arrangement in the perfect place. Cork is such a lively center for music and sound artistry that we were buoyed up by the rich mix of conviviality and inventive experimentation going on around us. As we fashioned the work and discovered where it seemed to want to go, we became convinced that a CD would be the best way to pull it all together. Farpoint Recordings generously agreed to take us on and we were able to refine and extend the collaboration under their expert guidance. The combined result of music with poetry is greater, we feel, than the sum of its two parts.

With thanks to Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York and The Guesthouse, Shandon, Cork, for their kind assistance with developing this project.

Track Listing:

1/ Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements
2/ The Garden Wall
3/ A Memory Room Impromptu
4/ Co. Kerry
 
Mixed and mastered by David Stalling.