Announcing the Release of Daouhaus: The Classic Remixes

Daou Records in conjunction with Twisted Records

Exclusively on Beatport

google: rare obsolete words

google: rare obsolete words

psychomachy, conflict between the body and the soul
Eleutherommania, manic desire for freedom
Facetiae, term for books of inappropriate or lewd nature
Tuberous, yielding an abundance of milk
Otherguess, an old word for different
Reserate, an old-time word for unlock or open
Fabulist, one who invents fables
Ucalegon, neighbor whose house is on fire
Alectryomachy, cock fighting
Ailurophilia, love of cats
Chasmophilous, fond of nooks, crevices and crannies
Gynorikolobomassophile, one who nibbles on women's earlobes
Hydrophilous, loving or preferring water
Scopophilia, obtaining sexual pleasure from seeing things
Clinophilia, passion for beds

"etienne daho présente...." | A selection of songs selected and compiled by Etienne Daho with: Peter Doherty, Antsy Pants, The Last Shadow Puppets...

etienne daho présente....
A selection of songs selected and compiled by Etienne Daho with: Peter Doherty, Antsy Pants, The Last Shadow Puppets, Vanessa Daou, The Wave Pictures, Jeremy Jay, Goodbye Simone, Jeffrey Lewis, Pacific! , Girls, Music Go Music, Dirty Fields, Coming Soon, Stilts Hook, Howard Hughes, Mr. Ward, Violens, Sin FAng Boil, Brisa Rock, Phoenix.

etienne daho présente @ Fnac
myspace.com/etiennedaho

Daou Records

Essential Poetry: Collin Kelley - Meeting Jeanne Moreau

Music that moves me: Little Dragon - 'Twice'

Black Room Session: Little Dragon - Twice

"Hurricanes": Part III 'JOE SENT MDE' at MCCC

Part III: "Joe Sent M.D.E." at Mercer County Community College - "Hurricnaes" from Elixir Productions Theatre Co. on Vimeo & YouTube


HURRICANES

Soon life's knowing will come.
it will dust the mind like talcum.
Meanwhile, everyone will dream
at least once
of times they tried to run.
but their legs got stuck
in the ambivalence of love's mud,
in the imagination's straining.

Our days are drenched by hurricanes
entering sideways in our minds
with no warning.

It's gray where the thinking thinks,
where the radar blinks.
It's the surge of you
that burns me crimson.
I am asleep, asleep all day,
blood running,
an accident of treason.
((My mother was the one
who laughed from other rooms
while I cried, the division between us
multiplied a thousand times))

You say (and I quote) Don't do the math
(end of quote), italics mine.
(Quote again) just come here (end quote).

So what if I do? I go nowhere with you,
and everywhere.
I am subsonic, plutonic, woebegone,
forlorn, language forgotten, towel shared.
I am scared, scarred, scarlet letter 'A',
hermit, Hamlet, tragic, victorious.
I am soldier, souvenir, medal of honor
attached to your pocket. I am intrinsic,
entropic, order, chaotic,.
limited to this word
I have just finished,.
conception of the infinite.
Masculine, feminine, everything is division;
days, dollars, mortgage rates,
bequeathed estates.
Leave me with nothing
more than your essence.
Invisible lover, indivisible number,
only then will I remember,
remember with my lack of logic.

With you I am myth maker, glass breaker,
soul taker, hip shaker. I am techtonic,
ironic, sardonic. With you I am purified,
pornographic, protean, prolific;
for you I am problematic,
acrobatic. Yes, like I said,
every crevice that cracks in me
I spread for you since that first night.
in my bed when the flash of my life.
turned your blue eyes red.

And so the story always goes
ending before the author knows.

Our days are drenched by hurricanes

entering sideways in our minds
with no warning.

© 2007 Vanessa Daou

---

Joe Sent MDE website


Joe Sent Me-poetry

'Joe Sent Me': Review on PopMatters

"Opening with a menacing scrape of guitars, "Manifesto", the album's first track, gives way to a robust, near-hip-hop beat under the support of a rumbling bassline. The temperature of both exhilaration and desire rises right around the time Daou sings, "You’re a sexy gun," during the very moment a high-hat kicks in. The vocals are buried deep in the mix and give the impression that they were recorded under a suffocating heap of blankets, amplifying the sense of claustrophobia inherent in the song. Meanwhile, the electronicized cabaret-stomp of "Black and White" unfurls in a silver spray of ghostly piano licks and burlesque horns. In addition to being the album's most accessible track, it also features some of the most inspired lyrics Daou has ever penned."

Read full review by Imran Khan on PopMatters

Anji Bee's Chillcast #178: Classic Chillout

Hear 'Save Yourself' from JOE SENT ME on vocalist & podcaster Anji Bee's Chillcast #178: Classic Chillout

The lovely Anji Bee writes:

"I was torn between titling this one "Classic Chillout," "Classic Chillcast," or "Lovely Ladies." Today's show is exactly that, a classic Chillcast mix of lovely chillout tunes with Internationally diverse female vocals. My favorite! I've had quite a few high quality trance tracks sent in recently, but this week I was really in more of a mellow mood so what we’ve got here is a nice collection of downtempo, lounge, worldbeat, r&b, and one little drum & bass tune for good measure. Enjoy, baby!"




Link to Anji Bee

Artist of the Week | Anji Bee 5/09

After an 8 year hiatus, the lovely Vanessa Daou has returned with a delicious new album. Part smooth jazz, part experimental folk - Miss Daou paints an aural portrait of a smoky basement lounge where a sexy poetess performs side by side with a sensual chanteuse. Daou flows effortless between the two worlds of spoken word and song, and we follow along, held in sway by her siren’s call. Listening to 'Joe Sent Me' is like coming back to your favorite old haunt to find that time has stood still and preserved the magic of that first time you discovered it there, hidden just below the surface of the busy city streets.

Link to Anji Bee

Zipless/Vanessa Daou

"Vanessa Daou's 1994 debut album Zipless consists entirely of musical interpretations of the poetry of feminist writer Erica Jong, as found in her 1991 collection Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected. ... According to the description of the album on Daou's website, "Jong's emotionally complex and sexually-charged narratives radiated against the sumptuous backdrop of Peter’s masterful arrangements and Vanessa’s engrossing vocal caresses." Jong herself provided a vocal for the album, reciting her own poem on the track Smoke. The album's title alludes to a two-word phrase coined by Jong in her 1973 novel Fear of Flying, referring to a sexual encounter between two strangers, without emotional commitment or involvement. One of the words is "zipless." We're far too delicate to include the other word here."

Read original blog post at Classics Rock

1-900-SELFPLEX @ the New York International Fringe Festival

Jody P. Person (JOE SENT MDE choreographer) and Alex DeFazio (JOE SENT MDE dramaturg) have a show at the New York International Fringe Festival this August. The show is called 1-900-SELFPLEX; it premiers Aug 17th and runs through the 28th. The show is being presented by Elixir Productions Theatre Company, an independent group of theatre artists dedicated to developing plays and performances about gender, sexuality.

Interview with GirlieGirl Army Founder Chloé Jo Berman

Sultry Siren: An Interview with Vanessa Daou

"We were introduced to gorgeous Vanessa Daou via her Zipless, her seminal 1994 record. Zipless, a sexually-charged, feminist collection of pieces inspired by the work of her husband Peter’s aunt, the poet/novelist Erica Jong, has been touted as the ultimate sex record. world-over. In fact, we think it (much like kombucha, good red wine, or a little smoke-age) is a serious aphrodisiac - download it on itunes asap. Or at the very least watch the video for the single "Near The Black Forest."

Vanessa's early underground success brought her to the attention of Columbia Records/Sony which signed her to a seven album record deal in 1992. Together with her then musical partner, producer and husband, Peter Daou, on piano, the pair recorded as THE DAOU and released their debut album, HEAD MUSIC in 1992.

In 1994, the duo decided to launch Vanessa as a solo artist with Peter as co-writer, producer and arranger. Vanessa's newest record Joe Sent Me is another foray into the breathy, transcendental plane of Daou's endlessly sexy voice, brilliant mind, and sophisticated beats. Plus, the gal is no dummy; as a Visual Arts and Art History major at Columbia University, Vanessa has always approached her art as a synthesis of sight and sound, written word and song. The Windy City Times writes: "Electronica, smooth jazz, drum-and-bass, poet, chanteuse, painter. Vanessa Daou is one artist who thrives on not being pigeonholed."GirlieGirl Army Founder Chloé Jo Berman recently had a quick chat with the glamorous chanteuse about her music, green living, and what she simply cannot go without."


Full interview @ the eco-glamorous & always informative GirlyGirl Army

"The Hook" Part II "Joe Sent M.D.E." at Mercer County Community College

Part II: "Joe Sent M.D.E." at Mercer County Community College - "The Hook" from Elixir Productions Theatre Co. on Vimeo.

THE HOOK

We learned all the pleasures of the tongue
before we knew each other's names,
long after all the pain had come.
Imagine the shock of a fish
when the hook finds its mouth
Then the sigh it heaves
When it shakes it out

Our first kiss was like this
And there's the hook

I used to swin wild and free
but like a lazy cod I took the bait
Now I'm like a shark in the dark
I never close my eyes anymore

I twisted like an unruly marlin
so I'd love you this madly.
I knew just how the story would end
and I'd miss you this badly

And in the end I'd do it again
And there's the hook


© 2007 Vanessa Daou

Hear Raul Vincent Enriquez' audio interpretation of THE HOOK

---

Joe Sent MDE website

Joe Sent Me-poetry

Joe Sent MDE & The Hidden Language of the Body

Excerpts from "Joe Sent M.D.E.": "Black & White" from Elixir Productions Theatre Co. on Vimeo.

Dance is language expressed by the body.

On 'Joe Sent Me', I set out to explore the hidden potential in poetry, the nuances of breath, recollection, regret, hesitation, the illicit, the many shades of meaning of Jazz and its secret coded language locked in its Prohibition-era inchoateness.

In 'Joe Sent MDE', choreographers Janell Byrne and Jody Person explore a myriad of physical as well as verbal murmurings, facial gestures and hieroglyphic movements that combine the contemporary with the historical to convey meaning. One aspect of Joe Sent MDE that resonates so much with my own aesthetic is how their combined choreographed language froths and fulminates but never fully boils over. Like seduction, it's the gestures that are hinted at, the implied movements that hover, the lingering moments that matter most.

About 'Joe Sent Me', I've written: "For me, music is a response to the world, and the voice imbues the words with life and gives them breath. I'm especially interested in the idea of recording as an act of preservation of experience. To be a recording artist is - quite literally - to make a record of sounds, voices, words, and breaths. Every record I create, I plunge into the depths of life in all aspects of experience: sound, images, dreams. Music is a time capsule, capturing, distilling and preserving the essence of what it means to be alive. The role of poetry, of words and language, is to remind us."

The role of Dance is to embody and set into motion those truths that are locked inside of us. Like our imaginations, our bodies can move in many, often opposing, directions: they stretch, stir, stagger, surge; this can be expressed beautifully, forcefully, ironically, irrationally, improbably, impulsively.

In dance, as in life, once a movement is made, it makes its indelible impression in time, space, and in our minds. 'Joe Sent MDE' reminds us that our physical selves are wrapped up in our mental selves, and that each generation holds within it a unique capacity to convey its own set of beliefs, motivations, dreams, & fears, as well as those of the past that continue to cast their shadows on the theatre of our collective memory.

---

Joe Sent MDE website


Joe Sent Me-poetry

NYTimes slideshow on speakeasies & "Joe sent me" code words

View full slideshow here

From the article "Bar? What Bar?"

eye_present on 'black & white': mp3jackpot winner

Black and White

by Vanessa Daou
pop, urban/R&B, jazz

eye_present says: Vitaminsexia, what a stupendous MP3. Vanessa Daou is soo cool. Everyone knows how famous Ms. Daou is. I saw her when she appeared with Jamiroquai. A free song from her new CD "Joe Sent Me" is really great. This song is a collage of slow-burning smoky jazz, hazy Delta Blues, radiant electronic pop, and sultry soul you hope you'd find in a lounge in Paris.

mp3jackpot.com

vitaminsexia on 'joe sent me'

Black and White
by Vanessa Daou
pop, urban/R&B, jazz

vitaminsexia says: Vanessa Daou's breathy whisper-singing is so perfectly suited to this sultry after-hours serenade. Joe Sent Me is her new album, in which she is backed by some super sophisticated acoustic jazz sounds with subtle and precise digital treatments that couldn't be more contemporary if they were made next week. Buy at iTunes Music Store.

mp34u

GΞИT on 'Joe Sent Me'

The artist who started electronica while still a student and received excellent critics from the New York Times , who reached number one on the billboard charts with Danny Tenaglia’s remix of “ Surrender yourself”, who was subsequently sexually charged with her album “Zipless”, released in 2008 "Joe sent me", reflecting her desire to focus on the words of the album (http://www.myspace.com/vanessadaoumusic). Making the songs connect with the real world experience, and jazz history, Vanessa says. The album which was born as a project of music , poetry and related graphic content and which ultimately would undergo a name change and be called "Joe sent me" a nod to the popular US Prohibition era password to enter the red light district, is a real world of music and poetry to a new dimension of electronica: electroerotica. This album was so powerfully erotic that made me replace Sade’s "Love is stronger then pride" and discard all the mediocre lazy Sunday afternoon lovers."

Love, Words, Music

Joe Sent MDE: after the show with The Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.)

With the Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.) after their absolutely stunning, scintillating performance of Joe Sent MDE... video footage of the performance on these pages coming soon...

Joe Sent M.D.E.: New York Times Calendar Events in New Jersey

WEST WINDSOR Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College “Joe Sent MDE,” a dance performance featuring the music of Vanessa Daou. May 16 and 17. $10 to $14. Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road
kelseyatmccc.org (609) 570-3333


New York Times

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Moods: You, The Night, And The Music

The first in a series of sophisticated, mood-enhancing soundtracks for modern living. From the worlds of dance, electronic rock, nu-soul, future jazz and beyond.

Recommended if you like Vanessa Daou, Osunlade, Fat Freddy's Drop.

CD price: $12.97

CD Baby

Invisibility cloak edges closer

"Scientists have rendered objects invisible under near-infrared light.
Unlike previous such "cloaks", the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking. Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light." BBC

Just say that Joe sent you: The backroom aural sex of Vanessa Daou (Inside Entertainment, Canada)

Just say that Joe sent you The backroom aural sex of Vanessa Daou Electro-beat poetess Vanessa Daou made a name for herself back in 1995 with the release of her debut solo album Zipless. The jazztronic curio was a white hot fusion of sultry beats, cool jazz and the lovelorn eroticism of Erica Jong's poetry. On subsequent albums, Daou earns a reputation as a downtempo queen, whose seductive musical exotica could be affectionately dubbed "aural sex." Inspired in part by a backroom tour of New York's 21 Club (a one-time speakeasy during the Prohibition days), Daou's self-produced new album, Joe Sent Me, is a rediscovery of Prohibition-era jazz. The album draws upon the era's sound as well as the shady goings-on perpetuated by speakeasies and the underhanded dealings with the laws of both the land and the heart. "What strikes me the most about the Prohibition era," Daou told Inside E, "is how the music broke through racial, gender, legal and ethical barriers, and how it continued to cut its radical path through the '40's and '50's and into the '60's when Beat poets began to merge words with Jazz." On an album where grime and elegance rub shoulders, Daou fosters a musical space where her electro-grooves and acoustic set-ups coalesce. Daou's ghostly vocals billow and swirl like a thick, phosphorous dream; they don't so much inhabit the songs as haunt them, spilling over into sonic atmospherics. Proving she can still sway the masses on a dancefloor, Daou showcases her knack for serious beats. Replete with a horn section sounding from beyond the grave of some red-light district of yore, the track Black & White throbs like a palpitating heart, cellophane-wrapped in a punchy synth-glam sheen. It also sports one of the spikiest f*ck-off lines to ever grace a pop song. "Here's the pen you gave me to write my poetry; I said I'd give it back to you the day you stopped inspiring me." On Hurricanes (a track indebted to the avant-garde poetry of Anne Waldman), the cut-up phrasings of Daou's mosaic poem languidly plays catch-up with the percussive loop of a hand slapping the thigh. It's a album of jazz, for sure, but the aesthetic at work here is almost punk; sound and poetry are layered like graffiti. "What interested me," Daou explains, "was, in an inverse way, freeing poetry and language from music. This approach was inspired by my web meanderings where I would be listening online to spoken poetry in one window and music on YouTube in another. When I began to conceive the sound of Joe Sent Me, I was hearing a new kind of sonic landscape where the words merged with the music without being locked into it or too syncopated with the beat, the way an overheard conversation sounds when music is playing." Daou also tackles R&B, offering an alien twist to an often tired genre. Many of the songs depict love at a haunted crossroad where sex and death intersect, and Daou explores the anachronisms of desire, role-playing the aggressor in a relationship in which she has been victimized. The approach is always understated and a sense of mystery fills every space on the canvas. Joe Sent Me is an album shrouded in the blue haze of a back-alley nightclub where its lonely patrons rove the city nights in unrest. - Written by Imran Khan - Inside Entertainment, Canada, April 2009

Interview with Alvyn Haywood, host of "Jazz School" WWFM

My visit to Mercer County Community College last month included an at length & many faceted conversation with Professor Alvyn Haywood, host of 'Jazz School' on WWFM [ Jazz On 2 89.1 FM, Trenton's Jazz HD Channel ] . We touched on topics ranging from the importance of Jazz in the context of contemporary culture, specific inspiration for me during the writing of JOE SENT ME, the background of my connection and collaboration with Academic Theatre Program Instructor Alex DeFazio which led to JOE SENT MDE, future plans, and more.

Professor Haywood & those at WWFM are shaping an immensely innovative and important program, one that reaches out to Trenton & beyond in a broad-minded and all-inclusive way, a model for radio stations everywhere that seek to educate, influence & inspire their audience as well as entertain.

Stream it here!

Anji Bee: Chillcast #161: Sexy New Tunes

Chillcast #161 with luscious voiced Anji Bee of Lovespirals...







Playlist:

1. "Black & White" Vanessa Daou Joe Sent Me (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
2. "Viens" Sr Mandril Terragroove (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
3. "Destiny Complete (Bittersweet Version - DJ Drez Remix) The Angel feat. Mystic Supa Crucial Downtempo Remixes & Rarities (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
4. "If I Could Tell You" Blu Mar Ten Close EP (2009) Buy on iTunes | Buy the Vinyl
5. "On the Bridge" Monodeluxe and Paola The Lounge Suite Vol. 1 (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
6. "Bred an Budda (The Particle Mix - ft Becks, Shaggy & Anji Bee)" Loveshadow ccMixter (2008) Free CC Download
7. "Heaven" WK-Collective Heaven (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
8. "Wonder (Live)" Karmacoda Ultraviolet Live (2009) Buy on iTunes | Buy at CDBaby

'Heart of Wax': Conquering Venus Book Trailer

I'm deeply honored that Collin Kelley has chosen 'Heart of Wax', from my new album 'Joe Sent Me', to be the soundtrack to the trailer for his forthcoming novel Conquering Venus. About the novel, Gary Zebrun writes: "From Memphis to London and to Paris, Martin Paige seeks redemption after a terrible and violent loss. The wonder is that he still believes in love, even when it appears like an apparition in an elusive and conflicted young man. Collin Kelley takes you on a sometimes frolicsome, sometimes tragic tour of the heart in this engaging first novel."

Thank you, Collin, for the spark that you ignite with your words and the smoldering fire that continues its slow burn in our hearts.

Collin Kelley & the Charge of Poetry

"I want to drive away into the morning light,
headed for Spain, hurting like hell,
but with my head up
and the taste of him on my lips."
Collin Kelley, from 'Why I want to be Pam Grier'

We feel it as a jolt, a surge, as though we've received some invisible electrical charge: then, a window opens up, there's a flash of recognition, a recollection, a memory that had been dimmed, dulled or denied, then, a slow opening of the mind - a thought, emotion, sentiment, perception - our finger is on the pulse of something, an inkling, that we were, previously, unable to identify.

Whether spontaneous, structured, confessional, or historical, Poetry condenses meaning into tight, terse, tensile language: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"; one phrase engenders an endless stream of impressions, iterations, and interpretations. Poets might be whimsical, reclusive, oblique, or explicit, remembered as defiant or ignominious... Whatever the destiny or description, all Poets use words as they choose them: as tools, as weapons, seeking to exact revenge, some positing a particular vision of the world, others, a plea for redemption.

David Herrle writes: "Collin Kelley's social/political poems are never mixed to go down smoothly like, say, a Sea Breeze. They're Tanqueray served neat." Kelley achieves the sweepingness of love's paradoxical emotion in one phrase:

"I want to drive away into the morning light,
headed for Spain, hurting like hell"

and exquisite nuance in the next:

"but with my head up
and the taste of him on my lips."

The charge, the surge: Poetry.

Forbidden images: the charge of art, music & poetry...

the forbidden, desire, gestures as messages, Salome, dance as expression of rebellion, exaltation, freedom, redemption...

Julie London: 'Cry Me A River' from 1955

Julie London, one of my all-time favorites & earliest influences...

'Joe Sent Me' Digital info: iTunes, Rhapsody...

IODA Distribution featured release
Vanessa Daou Bio
Joe Sent Me info

Vanessa Daou

"Black & White" (mp3)
from "Joe Sent Me" (Daou Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Rhapsody
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album

Coolness: Christine Swint on 'Joe Sent Me'

"Vanessa Daou's new album, Joe Sent Me, is exactly what I want to listen to now. I’ve been keeping the CD in my car while I drive around town, and I even played it for my yoga class the other day. They melted.

Daou's vocals are pure silk, and the jazz riffs underneath are the wind that rustles the lyrics. It's heaven. Her work shows the heights that can be reached when the artist takes risks – it's contemporary, fresh, original. Go listen. And go read too. Collin Kelley's interview with Vanessa Daou is on page 28 of the current issue of ouroboros review. A huge thank you to both artists for being a part of our fledgling magazine."

Words by poet & writer Christine Swint @ Balanced on the Edge

radio's new paradigm_jonny mugwump & the exotic pylon

"I think that it's time for a new adult art."
Donal Kuspit

Neoteric realms of philosophy & sound, sonic streams-of-subsciousness, future-past sound wave vestiges, music's sublime resonances... Jonny Mugwump and The Exotic Pylon is equal parts accident and alchemy, a weekly "palette cleanser", War-on-Terror's sonic aftershock: a reflection, a recitation, a sonic projection on the scrim of our collective imagination.

"All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born." With these words, Yeats, in 'Easter, 1916', brings to life and reifies our awful suspicion that sometimes what is terrible lives alongside what is beautiful. Violence, terror, tragedy, catastrophe, have left past poets intrepid but disconsolate. Post-modernists have taken refuge in frivolity as a way of escaping hopelessness, but we are seeing the burgeoning of a new era of artists, museum goers and radio listeners have begun to reject Mass Media's rapacious maw for feel-good art and music.

"Categorization is not to be taken lightly."
George Lakoff, 'Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things'

A byproduct of the commodification of music has been its categorization. The silent edict is: if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit in. This has led to a whittling down of choices for the consumer, a kind of creative censorship. What's left is the lowest common denominator, a homogeneity of sound which for the artist, hungry for newness and nuance, is at once fettering and freeing.

Since the forbidden cannot be suppressed - lessons learned from Storyville, Prohibition, the Recording Ban of the 1940s, and History's banned books - these constraints have historically been not a bane, but a boon for artists who are armed with the knowledge that what is hidden is, like all mysterious things, the most seductive, and inso being, the most desired.

"A number of artists to-day set out to create no more artworks. Instead they want to get out of the museum, and provoke modifications of the space of everyday life, giving rise to new forms of relations."
Jacques Ranciere, ' Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art'

"It's a question of the authority of things," says Anne Veronica Janssens. 'The Exotic Pylon' questions this authority, and takes refuge in the hybridity of contemporary experience, foraging Art, Philosophy & Radio history for context while forging a new sonic language. Beyond playing music, Jonny Mugwump is proposing a new perspective on the world, one that denies the doctrine of categorization. One listen to his show and you'll be jarred into the recollection that music is an Art that has the capacity to be sublime as well as subversive, and enlighten as well as entertain.

Like love and desire, the term 'sublime' refers to a feeling which by its nature cannot be defined; it is felt in the half-light, in the moonlight, both fearful and beautiful, it moves imperceptibly toward some intuited infinity, away from the known, part of a hidden continuum that with each generation keeps tuning in to a new auricular frequency.

Luke White writes about "the strange 'after echoes' ... of the idea of 'the sublime'..." Today's handful of Artists, Musicians, Poets and Sound Alchemists are shaping a new paradigm, a 'sublime' that can be digitized, widgtized, Googled, YouTubed, streamed and forever archived, a new sublime that is felt in the resonance of their 'after echoes'.

---

Join 'Jonny Mugwump and The Exotic Pylon' Facebook Radio Show page here

Forthcoming interview with Jonny Mugwump + links tba

SRO @ MCCC!

From start to finish, Friday was a perfect day at Mercer County Community College!

Academic Theatre Program Instructor Alex DeFazio & I began the day with a great interview by Rachel Katz who hosts the dynamic 'Views & Voices' at WWFM, a classical music public radio station that operates out of Mercer County Community College.

Afterward, we had an at length & many faceted conversation with Mercer Communications professor Alvyn Haywood for WWFM's 'Jazz on 2', Trenton's Jazz Station. We touched on topics ranging from the importance of Jazz in the context of contemporary culture, specific inspiration for me during the writing of JOE SENT ME, the background of my connection and collaboration with Alex DeFazio which led to JOE SENT MDE, future plans, and more.

Professor Haywood & those at WWFM are shaping an immensely innovative and important program, one that reaches out to Trenton & beyond in a broad-minded and all-inclusive way, a model for radio stations everwhere that seek to educate, influence & inspire their audience as well as entertain. Read more about 'Jazz on 2' here.

The students who attended the Q&A were some of the most interesting, inquisitive & insightful that I've come across anywhere. Questions ran the gamut, from the technical, relating to the signing recording contracts, to the personal, concerns about the future possibility of facing the 'casting couch', something every female artist will most likely have to face at one time or another. We discussed the importance of smartly navigating the sometimes treacherous music business waters, the current state of flux & chaos in the industry, the various ways of keeping one's inspiration alive & vital, and the importance of discipline as an artist.

It was a packed room and an amazing conversation! Thanks to all the MCCC students & faculty members who made their presence felt by attending & participating in what was an experience for all to remember! As we approach the JOE SENT MDE performance dates (May 16th & 17th) I'll be creating a virtual document of the experience here, as well as featuring artwork by immensely talented Mercer Art, Design, Dance & Theatre students. Come May 17 & 18th, I'll be adding video & photos of JOE SENT MDE.



See you there!

Vanessa Daou Visits Mercer County Community College 3/27

"The Academic Theatre and Dance Programs at Mercer County Community College are hosting a campus visit by #1 Billboard Dance Artist Vanessa Daou on Friday, March 27 at 12:30 p.m. The community is invited to join Ms. Daou for a Q&A session in the Studio Theatre (CM 122), located next to Kelsey Theatre on the college's West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. The event is presented free of charge.

According to MCCC Theatre Program Coordinator Jody Person, Ms. Daou's visit to campus represents an extraordinary opportunity for Mercer students and members of the community who are musicians, graphic designers, dancers, programmers, visual artists, performers and writers. Says Person, "Vanessa has performed everywhere from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to the Olympia Theatre in France. She's also an interdisciplinary artist who works with music, poetry, visual art, graphic design, and interactive digital art. Most importantly, she's a thinking artist, and this is precisely the quality we are working to nurture in students of the Theatre and Dance Programs at MCCC."

Link to full article on Broadway World

@bendrix on blip.fm

@bendrix on blip.fm: "Vanessa Daou: erotica artist/poet. "Plutonium Glow" (1997) dreamy female vocals caught in an electro space age vortex." codesignal.com

The Daou of Poetry: A conversation with musician and poet Vanessa Daou By Collin Kelley

A portion of my interview by incredible poet, novelist & journalist Collin Kelley from issue #2 of the Ouroboros Review, a stunning new poetry & art journal:

Collin: Let’s start back at the beginning of your life as a poet – who inspired you?

Vanessa: When I was attending Columbia University, I studied poetry with Kenneth Koch. His class was amazing and he was such a communicator for his vision and idea of poetry. He shattered the notion that poetry is something unapproachable and obtuse. I became interested in spoken word because of him and I often read at PostScrypt, the poetry spot at Columbia.

......

Collin: Joe Sent Me is amazing. The music reminds me of Miles Davis’ score for Elevator to the Gallows, and the spoken word element is really strong here; much more so than on the other records.

Vanessa: Originally, I conceived of Joe Sent Me as a soundtrack of sorts to my own life, perhaps a projection of it, as a kind of sonic document of my experience through time. I have a background and interest in research and one of those interests is in code, with respect to words and the kind written for a computer. Joe Sent Me is an old speakeasy password from the Prohibition-era. You said those words at a door and suddenly you were in this hidden, mysterious place. That idea intrigued me. On the digipack for the album there is a quote from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art that reads, “Words on a page of poetry are a code for human emotions.” That idea is the heart of the album.

Issue #2 also contains poetry by Michelle McGrane, Iain Britton, Rebecca Gethin, Julie Buffaloe-Yoder, and Robin Reagler, and more.

Make sure to view Hunter Ewen's illustrations & listen to his score to Amy Pence's poetry, follow the link in the NEWS section of Ouroboros here

Editors Jo Hemmant of flourescence & Christine Swint of balanced on the edge have created an internet savvy & highly forward-looking Poetry & Art experience.

JOE SENT M(D)E

"The Mercer Dance Ensemble features a group of MCCC's [Mercer Community College's] most talented students and alumni, plus some special guests. This years concert will be a landmark collaboration between the Mercer Dance Ensemble and critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Vanessa Daou.

Choreographed by dance faculty Janell Byrne, with guest choreography by Jody P. Person and others, Joe Sent M.D.E. features music from Daou’s new album, Joe Sent Me, which she named after a code-phrase that was used to gain entry into Prohibition-era speakeasies. Daou says the album is about "the transmission of ideas through time, the secret ranges of the voice, fleeting nights of love and desire, the archiving of dreams, memory, and the imagination." Joe Sent M.D.E. transforms Daou's ideas into a suite of dances constructed around the central metaphor of the album – to discover "secret codes," in a language of the body, that will open doors into illicit paces of rebellion and abandon"

[ Kelsey Theatre ]

Joe Sent Me-poetry & Intangible Culture

"...the sense of here/not here, this want of places to
be, enter & make
sagacious."
Barry McKinnon, from Two from In the Millennium


I've always loved the sounds of words, but words mean nothing until and unless meaning is provided or attached. The beauty of Poetry is that meaning can be sensed, gleaned, inferred, intuited, without the necessity of being fully understood. Poets love to tease out meaning from fleeting things - the evanescence of a street lamp on a dusky day, the sense of absence from the low hum of someone's murmurs heard through walls.

A unique element of poetry is its ability to compress and condense feeling, as well as its portability & flexibility: it can be transferred, translated & transmitted, it fulfills our need for immutability as well as intangibility. Perhaps the reason Poetry continues to thrive throughout the ages is that it fits into Primary as well as Secondary Oral Traditions. And while, at its core, a poem consists of words in one form or another, a great poem speaks to everyone and is appreciated equally by the theoriser and blogger. In the final analysis, a poem is apprehended not by applied knowledge but by the totality of its essence.

While I'm drawn to the intimacy of a poem on the page, I've always loved to hear a poem as it is intoned by its author. One of the aspects of technology that I love is its ability to re-contextualize a song or a poem, and while the debate rages about Poetry's place within the truly unruly realm of the Web, on needs only to look back at the invention of the typewriter to see its effect on the generation of Dada Poets who contemporaneously harnessed and applied its potentialities to an infinite and ever-expanding degree.

I've conceived of JOE SENT ME-poetry as part of a living document, where each poem takes on a life of its own outside of the writer and the written hand. As a featured guest of Barcelona Poesia 2008, I created JOE SENT ME @ BarcelonaPoesia2008 to reflect the way my mind reconstructs my experience of Barcelona, the vibrant clash of its cultures and co-mingling of languages live and breath in my memory in a a vivid and tangible way.

I wanted to flesh out the tonal & vocal nuances of some of the spoken poems on JOE SENT ME, which led to my collaboration with sound & visual artist Raul Vincent Enriquez who shed his sonic insight into THE HOOK and LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; Bruno Galindo, who shaped flawless & beautiful Spanish translations of THE HOOK & LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; and Daniel Sisla, fellow guest poet at the Barcelona Poesia 2008, who has so perceptively and impeccably created Catalan translations of LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK, DREAM, and INTO THE NIGHT (both not included on the album). The poems on JOE SENT ME were recorded by Greta Byrum who shared her ear & expertise with their recording at Recorded Books, New York City.

The aim for these pages is to break down each poem into its component parts:

word/sound

structure/form

rhythm/repetition

writer/reader

speaker/listener

creator/viewer

imagination/interpretation

The internet provides the perfect vehicle for the nuances of poetry, for the transportation of its substance & essence, for the transmission of its message through time. For me, raw computer coding languages hold within them pure poetic potential: the hope is to shape new ways of perceiving technology and its relation to language, music, things remembered, things heard, reflection, recollection and the spoken word.

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For further excursions into intangible realms, visit:

Drunken Boat

exoticpylon

UbuWeb

Weird Deer

Year Zero One