In Search of Whatever by Vernon Frazer

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Vernon Frazer is a regular contributor to this blog. He appears in AlteredScale.com 1, AlteredScale.com 2, and AlteredScale.com 3.  

on Jar Moff's "Commercial Mouth"

by Kevin Colpean

Destabilizing music, for Jar Moff, is not an excuse to be incoherent. Instead, his first LP, the two song Commercial Mouth, acts as a magnet, picking up hyper-fractured samples of pop songs, to form new geometric rhythms. I’d call the shapes collage-like, but the pieces themselves are no longer reference points. Whatever pop remains is unidentifiable. What listeners can latch onto, though, are hip-hop beats overtopping the fragments.

The restrained downtempo beat in the first track, “Tziaitzomanasou,” is a spaceship sending its passengers through Kubrick-like voyage. Cosmic whirrs, laser beeps, loops of rewound transmissions . . . the travelers are far from Earth. The near psychedelic chaos reminds me of Acid Mothers Temple, but more aware of sonic momentum and when to change movements. The spaceship is also breaking down. At times, the beats collide with rhythmless industrial clangs, halting the tempo in what feels like frantic malfunction, until a new beat churns into play. The battle creates tension. Over twelve minutes of this struggle plays out, until the track fades into the distance, indicating an off-screen continuation instead of a resolution.

Track two, “Commercial Mouth,” is more recognizable as instruments playing music. After a brief layering of looped samples, the song eases into free jazz. Sax, drums, and piano take over, while still retaining the hip-hop/cosmic subtext. Track two achieves a level of depth that pure space rock, heavy psych, or downtempo hip-hop often lack. Moff isn’t simply asking his audience to zone out; he’s asking them to consider the outcome of flooding speakers with the remains of de-contextualized/re-contextualized music, as if he’s rapidly flipping through nothing-to-watch TV and wants to know what we see in the cadenced blur. For a first album, Commerical Mouth shows Jar Moff to be an ambitious artist—more than just another person behind a computer mashing together songs.

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Kevin Colpean has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cal State San Bernardino. He has worked for several literary magazines including Bravura and Ghost Town. He has an extensive music collection that always seems to be just a few albums way from completion.

than a mere

by Jefferson Hansen

dawned bright

cold

this could be the day

of a break

a crack

an end to part of

this derision

for even stupidity

develops a momentum

to its own

erosion

could, could

rolls out in front

which part will

give its

treasures and wish, now,

seems less than

naïve

than a mere

distraction

what wouldn’t when

could comes

around

and the lessening of

the angle

the pour of heavy

issue

down the slope of stance

the twist

of trip

and feint of fracture

the dissolving

weight rises into

vapor

and there is no

final need

set the stuff in order

prepare your responses

and just hang

around

persistence

alone brings fortune

The Nose Knows

by Dan Ryan

The warmdry wind of autumn

blowing today it was.

The wind native midwesterners

of non-native descent

with the current season

associate.

That season from summer

peeled itself

away.

Just last week.

On Friday.

No midwestern nose mine

mind you

but

a pacific northwestern nose

the change

noticed.

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Dan Ryan is a regular contributor to this blog, and he appears in AlteredScale.com 3.

Tom Cassidy—Untitled

(Click to enlarge and isolate)

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Tom Cassidy appeared in AlteredScale.com 3 and is a regular contributor to this blog.

Tom Cassidy's written and drawn works have appeared in hundreds of smallpress and mainstream publications, as well as galleries and museums around the world. His works are archived in dozens of art institutions, often under his own name. With John Bennett and Scott Helmes, he co-edited Vispoeology (2007), an international anthology of visual literature for the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, where he also co-curated None of the Above in 2009. In 1976, Tom co-founded the Portland performance poetry troupe The Impossibilists, who were reunited in April, 2008, for a series of shows by the Oregon Heritage Commission. He is currently a board member, performer, and curator for Cheap Theatre and Patrick’s Cabaret.

Easily Accessible Before

by George J. Farrah

And this being true

  a  steepled

     sail of a   shirt

                or

                 news

         eating  buffalo

            the mark

                   of

                        November

                   in  Spring

Who hears sad

         young wives  electricity

  (I am draining  out an awful story

                                                      or song)

  to   wire you   this

     building   kneeling

       in   places

         who   am   I

                               Kindling?

                  or

                  the  full 

                    harrowed field

              (my so called

                        musings)

      isn’t  it iris  grey

       when you talk noon?

                      a  re-assembled

                              ancient

                            streak

                                         of any

                                               city

                                                 at any time

   

                       the poplars

                              and ash

                            are

                         raging

               the  women and men

                    appear  as

                           sharp

                                     canvas

                           dishes vacuuming

             the first one I mentioned

         the future furniture is not

a rape of nature they say the best critic

 is dying with the daytime always entirely

  comfortable anywhere I will admire the floor

   again and mention sunsets similar to those flowers

     that were easily accessible before but parts of this

      like a news business are the first to be trimmed

         express themselves before the people and what

          laws apply to that because as it is true of any goal

            established by the designer of it our behavior

              is not the problem nor internet nor legs or virtual

                turf the patterns lead to substitute versions of

                  reality which we all know are unfortunate in

                     what skill gets larger it is not something they

                       would have told us above passivity thinking

                         through the whole culture like that brings

                                 it a start   so  the heart

                                   may   respond  just so.

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Farrah will appear in the AlteredScale.com issue three launch reading. (Click link for details.)

This poem appears in Farrah's upcoming book,  The Low Pouring Stars (Ravenna Press). Farrah is a visual artist and holds an MFA in writing from Bard College.

Narratives Off Lance Olsen's CALENDAR OF REGRETS (FC2)

by Jefferson Hansen

(Click on each page to isolate and enlarge.)

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Lance Olsen is the author of numerous novels, including Nietzsche's Kisses (FC2).

The Edge Of A Reservoir

by George J. Farrah 

                              She told him

but waits until the lashes (lakes)

what do you see?

the sleeping sight

the weather of Mother

the wasteful alone     alove

  the edge of a reservoir

          so high up   (in your clouds)

                                   I am  a  fire  pet

                  she  said

    

   someone   is   the judge

                          

        a  kindness of the hand

                              toward you

wisely  a breath

comes  to  being

  out of the language

of the loving

a relentlessness like

  the    leaves

                          the grass is

                        now

            the whole  world

            as tall  as 

               you are

            and

               as rhythmic

            as you need

                to  be

                       I  think  maybe

            you’re a contribution

            of  pouring  stars

            

                     down  my   shirt

                             he  says

             but the  year wanders. they wander.

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Farrah will appear in the AlteredScale.com issue three launch reading. (Click link for details.)

This poem appears in Farrah's upcoming book,  The Low Pouring Stars (Ravenna Press). Farrah is a visual artist and holds an MFA in writing from Bard College.