The
Mind Shop
…being of sound…
NEW: The Mind Shop’s first album-length CD, Treetop
Songs, released 19th October 2008, contains nine tracks, as follows:
1. The Other (words by R. S. Thomas)
2. Without / The Uses of Light / Pine Tree Tops (words by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island)
3. Serinus serinus (words by Jeff Hilson, from Bird bird, recited by the poet) [MP3]
4. My Bonie Bell (words by Robert Burns) [MP3]
5. What Waits For Me (words by Mary Coleridge)
6. Dreaming Hill (improvisation on an original song by The Children [Gibbens/Weston])
7. Slides (words by David Miller, from Collected Poems)
8. To Live So Long (improvisation on a song by The Children)
9. Petronia petronia (more from Bird bird, as above)
The album was recorded in Jo’s Kitchen, Blackheath; in the Wren church of St Anne & St Agnes in the City of London; and at Tipi Studios in Upper Norwood.
It's
all in…
The Mind Shop
The
Mind Shop melds
sung poetry
with instrumental improvisation in a unique lyrical style. The group formed
in 2001 to play at the Burns Night celebration at the Poetry Café,
the headquarters of the Poetry Society in London. Armorel Weston sang
her own setting of a Burns poem, ‘My Bonie Bell’, while David
Miller and John Gibbens made a range of music-type sounds on their respective
instruments. Since then this simple but effective method has been applied
to an expanding repertoire that includes lyrics by Yeats and Mary Coleridge
and Bob Dylan, traditional spirituals, and poems by the two poets in the
group.
The
Mind Shop played:
- Jazz Vespers in the Lutheran church of St Anne & St Agnes in the City of London
- “Honey & Locusts”, a festival of poetry, music and spirituality at the church of St Edmund King & Martyr (a stone’s throw from the Bank of England)
- the Southwark Festival
- The Klinker, London’s most notable night of the unexpected, and so on…
The
Mind Shop are
Armorel
Weston singing and playing shakuhachi (find out more about her here),
John Gibbens on electric guitar (find out more about him here)
and David Miller on clarinet. David Miller is a London-based poet, prose
writer and musician, whose books include The Waters of Marah: Selected
Prose 1973–1995 (Singing Horse Press, Philadelphia, 2003) and
Collected Poems (University of Salzburg Press, 1997). He is a founding
editor of Kater Murr's Press (http://home.freeuk.com/katermurr/)
and one of the organisers of Crossing the Line, a monthly series of poetry
readings at the Poetry Café.
Go to the Trading Post to
buy Treetop Songs
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