With Etienne Daho 2000

Peter Daou, Etienne Daho, moi, Juliette

2000 saw the release of 'Make You Love' on EMI, and Etienne Daho's brilliant 'Corps et Armes', which featured our duet of 'Make Believe' from 'Plutonium Glow' (1997)

The release of 'Make You Love' was followed by a one week sold out show as Etienne's guest at the historic Olympia Theatre in Paris, and a 6 week tour of France.

A special Electro Lounge Live now featuring Vanessa Daou 89.9 FM NPR

A special Electro Lounge Live with host David Luckin -
now featuring Vanessa Daou 89.9 FM NPR or online

'Snow' video | part 2 of 'Love Among the Shadowed Things'

Vanessa Daou 7digital Widget

Collin Kelley on 'Love Among the Shadowed Things'

"You simply must listen to (or download) Vanessa Daou's brilliant, Love Among the Shadowed Things, recorded for the Weird Tales for Winter show curated by Jonny Mugwump on UK radio station Resonance 104.4FM. Poetry, ghostly jazz, sinister choirs, footsteps, trains clacking on tracks, a needle endlessly circling the lead-out of a record and Vanessa's unmistakable voice -- it's like the soundtrack for a film David Lynch has yet to make. Brava!"

Collin Kelley

Weird Tales for Winter: Newsletter #10

Weird Tales for Winter: Newsletter #10

"I first encountered Vanessa Daou in the strangest of situations. I had been aimless and adrift for a few years in Manchester in the north of England. In fact, I'd been forced to abandon Manchester for the vacant industrial satellite town of Bolton as I made a final attempt at finishing a bachelors in Philosophy. A shopping centre had been opened- pure chrome and harsh electric light, a giant bunker, a 'designer' fortress dropped in the abandoned heart of Salford. The launch and subsequent management of the centre had been entirely botched so that my 10 hour shifts would involve contact with only 10 customers a day (and that was on a good day). Nobody ever showed. I spent nearly 2 years in a bleakly over lit trance- you see, I have my reasons for obsessing about Ballard.

There was a music store there specialising in discounted music- the usual array of budget classics, nothing unexpected- no surprises. One day, bored to the point of dementia, I wandered off my patch to leaf through the same cod’s just for something to do and this one fortuitous time, I found a new neon-blue artefact staring back up at me. Zipless by Vanessa Daou.

I recalled seeing something favourable about it in The Wire magazine. There was one copy, it looked out of place, surely some mistake... A collaboration between New Yorkers Vanessa and her then husband Peter with words adapted by Vanessa from Peter's aunt Erica Jong, Zipless is a beautiful trove of sublime erotic electronic pop. And as anybody who loves pop music knows, there can be more subversiveness in the space of a 3 minute adrenaline shot of pop than in vast swathes of avant-garde investigation. What gave the album an edge was the sheer surreal intimacy of Vanessa's voice and delivery- like an Yves Tanguy painting, every vocal shape seemed to take on an alien quality- strange and familiar all at once.

Cut to 2010, with a succession of always morphing productions exploring a weird ambient hinterland between pop, jazz, soul and electronica, Vanessa has moved into multimedia production, dance, computer coding and released her first self-produced album Joe Sent Me, a strange riff on the speakeasy that spirals into explorations of love and loss...

Tonight's penultimate Weird Tale is a gothic tone poem from a wintry New York City- a blurring of song, poetry, sound with her trademark intensely soft intimacy. You can check Vanessa's own web hub for the Weird Tales series here.

I look forward to joining you at the witching hour..."

jonny mugwump

Weird Tales for Winter & things that go Mugwump in the night

Weird Tales for Winter

airing Jan 25 - Feb 1 2010
every night at midnight


(tones by the time attendant)

WTFW newsletter #1

WTFW newsletter #2

'Joe Sent Me' on Collin Kelley's Best of the Decade Top Ten

I'm deeply & immensely honored to be included in Collin Kelley's top 10 best of the decade list. Collin's aesthetic is reflected in his album choices: a heartbeat of Rock 'n Roll & the pulse of Poetry ...

The List:

Aerial - Kate Bush (2005) An epic double album 12 years in the making and one of the best albums ever. Combining electronica, rock, flamenco, classical and sampled bird sounds, it's a rich, multi-layered, emotional work. Worth the wait and then some.

The Fame/The Fame Monster - Lady Gaga (2008/09) Proving that an American artist still knows how to make hooky, dance music.

Vespertine - Bjork (2001) Dreamy, sampled soundscapes and some of her best songs - "Pagan Poetry," "Unison" and "It's in Our Hands" -- are all here.

Deep Cuts - The Knife (2003) Swedish brother and sister duo Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer's brilliant collection of electropop, including one of the best songs of the decade, "Pass This On."

Joe Sent Me - Vanessa Daou (2008) Jazz, pop, and poetry in this smokey, sexy album.

Read the full list on Collin's Blog

The Chillcast with Anji Bee: Chillcast Top 20 Podsafe Tracks of 2009

I'm honored to be on Anji Bee's to 20 list for 2009. Anji Bee's Chillcast is a must for those whispered nights when candles burn, phones are off & grooves are slow -

XOV

Vanessa Daou: 'Love Among the Shadowed Things', new music & poetry for 'Weird Tales for Winter', a collective radio series on Resonance 104.4 FM, UK

Vanessa Daou: Love Among the Shadowed Things

Coming soon: New poetry, sound & music for 'Weird Tales for Winter', a collective radio series curated by Jonny Mugwump for his always mind altering Exotic Pylon radio show on Resonance 104.4 FM

Broadcast January 31st 2010
Total playing time 30 minutes

Other featured artists contributing to the "hauntological dream project":

Moon Wiring Club
West Norwood Cassette Library and Matthew de Abaitua
Dolly Dolly
Belbury Poly and Lawrence Norfolk
Radio Joy
Mordant Music
John Foxx

follow me on Twitter & Facebook & my new myspace poetry, sound & art site for updates, news & links

follow WeirdWinter on Twitter

full site pending - subscribe to exoticpylon for updates, images, resonances

Collin Kelley & The Importance of Being Venus

To give voice, to be the voice, to have a voice: Collin Kelley's Conquering Venus has less to do with what happens and everything to do with what the characters say and the consequences of their words as they are set into motion.

Words are things, and while it is possible to forget how much they matter & become inured to their potency as a result of the perpetual influx of our streaming Tweets and feeds, every once in a while, we read a poem or book, hear a voice reciting verse or prose, and we are reminded of the potency of words and are left to reflect on the invisible residue of their meaning.

Paris and The Louvre come alive in CV, providing the scenic as well as symbolic backdrop for what is a beautifully written and absolutely riveting story about Love, Desire, and the conflicts that ensue as a consequence of conflicting desires.

A central theme that runs through the novel is the statue of the armless Venus de Milo; it is both subject of various key scenes and object of the characters' commingled desires. The statue's armlessness projects a sense of helplessness, one that has been triggered by a violent breaking, yet, Venus' beauty and sensuality remain intact.

We are left to wonder; it it Venus herself who, in being so admired and defiant, is doing the conquering? How does conquering Venus play into our understanding of the fictions we create about ourselves and the tenacious objects of our own desires? Perhaps part of this conquering involves re-constructing one's unique reality into a mythical picture that projects one's own fictive life, not unlike the aptly imagined twin-limbed Venus de Milo on the cover of Conquering Venus.

Daouhaus: The Classic Remixes - featured & available on iTunes

Daouhaus: The Classic Remixes
featured & available on iTunes

Welcome to the Daouhaus: A Conversation with Vanessa Daou, by Collin Kelley

"Jazz. Pop. Trip-hop. House. Spoken word. Vanessa Daou has put her unmistakable voice to all these genres, but many clubbers also know her as a dance icon thanks to floor-fillers like "Surrender Yourself," "Near the Black Forest," "Two to Tango" and "A Little Bit of Pain." From the beginning of her career with former husband/producer Peter Daou as part of The Daou to her solo success in the ‘90s, Daou has been a favorite with DJs and remixers, especially Danny Tenaglia.

Coming off the success of her latest album, Joe Sent Me, Twisted Records has just released a compilation called Daouhaus: The Classic Remixes. Seven of Tenaglia's reinventions are here, alongside deep grooves by David Morales, Olive and Mood II Swing. The album opens with the 1992, fourteen-minute opus that is "Surrender Yourself," which rocketed to the top of the Billboard Dance chart and heralded a new direction for club music, bringing it from the underground to the mainstream."

Read full interview by poet/novelist Collin Kelley at Soldout

'Conquering Venus' by Collin Kelley

sipping green tea, deeply engrossed in 'Conquering Venus' by Collin Kelley - poetry meets prose in this novel; it begins with these beautifully sculpted lines "In his dreams he can remember her name. From the shadowy first glimpses when she was peripheral, on the edge of a crowd or morphing into a friend..." inspired, inspiring - more thoughts to come...

The 4th issue of Ouroboros Review

The 4th issue of Ouroboros Review is out; if you crave beauty, fantasy, shades, shadows, and infinite nuance, if you have the desire to stir your poetry-starved imagination, don't wait, read it...

A highlight is Collin Kelley's engrossing interview with Cecilia Wolloch who discusses her life, influences, and her new work 'Carpathia' -

Each poem is an essential read. I'm loving Michelle McGrane's language-lovely poem 'Augusta Fabergé' [p44] & very much looking forward to her 3rd collection of poetry 'The Suitable Girl', published by Pindrop Press in 2010.

If you missed issue 3, take time to soak in every word of Michelle's interview with John Siddique. When you reach the part when he says "The Basic act of writing for me is an act of Love", pause, revel, reflect, read on...

Etienne Daho: The Invitation

Etienne Daho is a voice drenched in the sensual, engulfed by a Poet's truth and fueled by Love's fire. 'L'invitation', his latest album, speaks to every heart that is drawn to the equally destructive and seductive flame of Desire.

With a profound understanding of Desire's manifold facets, Daho puts into words and sings about its many intangible flickers: pleasure and pain, power and surrender, a simultaneous loss and discovery of self, the beauty as well as the bruising of ones manifold illusions. Daho explores the many subtle angles and sharp edges of Eros - self-doubt, self-destruction, self-sacrifice - and invites us to join him on his journey of Love and Desire through his Music and Poetry. Do we dare follow...?

I've translated 'L'Invitation' below.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Invitation

Ah I burn I burn, your tentacles trapping me from the depths of Hell
giving me the cruel sensation of walking barefoot on glass.
The goodness of your hand, generous and perfect,
beckons me to come, giving me the sweet feeling
of being alive again, invited, invited.

At the table of the guests where one lives until one dies
from those things that satiate, you invite me to take my place
to divide the honey of the honors of your heart.

Willingly I accept the best treatment that is reserved exclusively
for the guests at the naked feast, which makes the tongues
of the evening come untied.

Oh now I burn I burn to taste all these dizzying nectars,
whose black and crimson poison make the blood of lovers beat indecently.
Your confident kiss calls me to another adored destiny,
giving me the sweet feeling of being alive again, invited, invited.

What can I do, I want to share the volatile liquors
at the table of poets, of assassins, all like me, invited here.

Willingly I accept the best treatment that is reserved exclusively
for the guests at the naked feast, which makes the tongues
of the evening come untied.

L'invitation

Ah je brûle je brûle, les tentacules m'attrapant du fond des enfers
me donnent la cruelle sensation de marcher pieds nus sur du verre.
La bonté de ta main généreuse et parfaite qui me fait signe d'avancer,
me donne l'aimable sensation d'être à la vie de nouveau convié, convié.

A la table des convives, convives
Qu'on vive jusqu'à ce que repu l'on en meurt.
Tu m'invites à prendre ma place à partager le miel des honneurs de ton coeur.
Volontiers j'accepte le meilleur traitement
Que l'on réserve tout exclusivement
Aux invités le festin nu, qui fait les langues au soir se délier, se délier yeah

Oh je brûle je brûle de goûter à présent à tous ces nectars affolants,
dont le poison noir et pourpre fait battre indécent le sang des amants.

Ton baiser confiant m'appelle à tout autre destin adoré,
me donne l'aimable sensation d'être à la vie de nouveau convié, convié.
Convié yeah

A qu'y puis à qu'y puis je, la liqueur volatile je veux toute la partager,
à la table des poètes, des assassins, tout comme moi ici conviés.

Volontiers j'accepte le meilleur traitement
Que l'on réserve tout exclusivement
Aux invités le festin nu, qui fait les langues au soir se délier, se délier yeah
yeah yeah yeah...

The Horrible fact of Human Trafficking

The heartbreaking reality of most suffering is that it occurs in silence, behind the closed doors of our neighbors, co-workers, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers. The horrible fact of human trafficking is that its victims are the most vulnerable amongst us. They become nameless statistics: faceless, voiceless, shocked into their new caged-in realities of unspeakable shame and horror, swept aside by the twin tides of silence and denial.

A few years ago, I saw the this photograph which - as great photographs do - illuminates a reality that would otherwise remain hidden from view. The purpose of Art, Poetry, Literature, Drama, is to lift the veil, peel away the layers, gnaw at the bone of truth so that the terrible as well as beautiful mysteries of existence can be gleaned and confronted, if not ever fully understood.

News reports on the terrible toll of human slavery should be commonplace, not sporadic. These websites provide updated information as well as personal accounts. Bookmark them, add them to your feeds, and contribute in any way you can:

BBC Special Report on Human Slavery

CNN News & Videos About Human Trafficking

PBS Photo Essay: Confronting the Problem of Human Suffering

Human Trafficking.org

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center

UNODC - Human Trafficking

The Campaign to Rescue & Restore Victims of Human Trafficking

Could X-ray scanners work on the street? 

High School Halloween, Music & Memory

"Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know, she's half crazy
It's why you want to be there..."

Leonard Cohen, from "Suzanne"

This year, Halloween triggered my memory of this yearbook photo from 11th grade which many of you viewed on Facebook (thanks to all for your insights, witticisms & ruminations)

I've always believed that we all hold inside of us, from an early age, the seeds of our eventual 'grown up' selves. Although I didn't intentionally set out to become a singer or songwriter, when I reflect on my past, there's the impression of a clear trajectory that led me to that career decision.

Many would argue that being an artist is something that is somehow programmed inside, that true artists do not choose their paths, that it is their fate or kismet that chooses them. But it can also be argued that, for some, there comes a time to decide, a crossroads. Andy Warhol began his career in magazine illustration and advertising. Robert Motherwell studied Philosophy before he changed direction and rigorously pursued Painting.

While I was at Vassar, I was declaring a major in Aesthetics until I transferred to Barnard/Columbia and declared a double major in Art History/Studio Art. It wasn't until my senior year when I studied Poetry with Kenneth Koch that I realized I had reached that crossroads.

I've always perceived of this monumental moment as metaphorically akin to the moment when Alice picks up the bottle and reads 'DRINK ME', and after confirming that it is not marked 'poison', swallows the otherwise unmarked liquid. Her decision, while not well-informed, is not precipitous. That decision to follow the untrammeled road and become an Artist is fundamentally based on that need to do as Alice did, follow her inner need to open the door into the enchanting and mysterious adventure and explore the sometimes treacherous new terrain, come what may.

It was during this time in High School that I began discovering & devouring music that was tapping into me on all levels of Poetry, intellect & emotion: Leonard Cohen, The Ramones, Blondie, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, Joan Armatrading, The Go Gos, The B-52s, Pink Floyd, The Police. Soon after, I would discover Francoise Hardy, Julie London, Juliette Greco, Nico & The Velvet Underground.

My good friend, pictured above in the photo, was as much of a music hound as I was. I haven't asked her yet if she remembers that particular night of Rock 'n Roll debauchery... Halloween & Rock 'n Roll share a similar ethos: to find trouble where you can & head into that place which is at once thrilling & frightening. Everyone at some point in their lives plants the seed of who they are to become. For me, that moment is captured here, in this photo.

The Artist is all things: creator, witness, inventor, storyteller, gift giver, shaman, seducer, rule-breaker, Philosopher, thief, magician, myth-maker, bellwether With instinct as much your guide as intelligence, the Artist chooses to follow that unruly path of most resistance, hypnotized by that the ever-present temptation to metaphorically drink that mysterious, unknown & tantalizing essence.

Collin Kelley, Storybook Burlesque, The Concretes

"Well, Ive been haunted in my sleep
Youve been starring in my dreams"

The Rolling Stones, from "Miss You"

I love this cover of 'Miss You' by The Concretes - played by the 'Storybook Burlesque' during one of their lovely & voracious performances on Sunday night at The Tank, NYC -



Novelist, poet and playwright Collin Kelley read portions from his much lauded new book 'Conquering Venus', which he lovingly signed - i'm eager to begin reading it...

iPhotos from event coming soon -

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