CHOPIN, HENRI - Revue OU Deluxe Edition

"After almost seven years of work, Algamars proudly presents the deluxe edition of Henri Chopin's Revue OU.The cloth hard-bound box includes the elaboration of all the elements of the Alga Marghen anthology (four CDs) with the complete Revue OU recordings (with new silkscreened sleeves), a 76-page book with full documentation on Revue OU (with new silkscreened jacket), Henri Chopin's "You Got To Laugh" booklet, an Henri Chopin "For William Burroughs" full color poster, 30 fold-out OU inserts (by Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck, Paul de Vree, Hugh Davies, Bob Cobbing, Jacques Bekaert, John Cage, Tom Phillips, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Michel Seuphor, Ben Vautier, Stefan Themerson, Richard Orton, Pierre Albert-Birot). This box also includes a numbered edition of Henri Chopin The Body Is a Sound Factory & Co LP as well as an original OU Revue-Disque 10", No. 40-41. The following editions and artworks were specially created for this deluxe edition: a previously unpublished book by Henri Chopin titled La char des siècles and five original art pieces: a signed dactylopoem by Henri Chopin, a signed collage by Bernard Heidsieck, a piece of Hugh Davies' Shozyg, a signed visual poem by Sten Hanson, and a Xerox art piece by Bob Cobbing. Since the end of the fifties, Henri Chopin, an explorer in the new recorded sound poetry field, has never ceased, through his own work as well as through his publishing activities (Revue OU, a magazine with records from 1963 to 1974) to defend the electronic exploration of the voice and the body. If Henri Chopin's Revue OU is such a remarkable publication, then this is surely because it is one of the truly - and most authentically - contemporary publications of its time. As Chopin observes, he considered the sound poetry published on the records in OU to be a distinctively new form of art. On one hand sound poetry constitutes an almost archetypal practice, but on the other hand sound poetry also emerges from the very sources of recording technology by means of its use of electro-magnetics. As this collection of CDs (remastered under the supervision of Henri Chopin) reissuing the complete Revue OU records indicates, Chopin's most striking achievement was to consistently identify and publish the first major works of many of the most visionary transatlantic artists exploring the new recording technologies of the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Far from attempting to establish any mono-dimensional movement, Chopin characteristically championed a wide variety of those poets, writers and composers whom he perceived to be "in movement," and whom he subsequently applauds as "Fabulous Independents." Following an editorial logic of selectively eclectic inclusion, Chopin's OU records published an astonishing diversity of inter-generational and international experiments. These include intense electronic readings by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin; pioneering optophonetic works by the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann; "crirythmes" and vocalic improvisations by François Dufrene and Gil J Wolman; fragmentary poemes-partitions by Bernard Heidsieck; high-tech text-sound works by composers such as Ake Hodell and Sten Hanson; electronic abstractions by Bengt Emil Johnson; phonetic poems by Mimmo Rotella; "handy tech" performances on self-built electronic instruments by Hugh Davies; haunting tape-manipulations by Ladislav Novak; playful improvisations by Bob Cobbing with Anna Lockwood; dramatic monologues by Paul de Vree; electronic concrete music by Jacques Bekaert and - of course - Chopin's dynamic orchestrations of the body's "factory" of corporeal sounds. Chopin's writings equally consistently championed the "electronic language revolution" facilitated by what he describes as "technological means which extend the human body," thereby inaugurating an enormous expansion of human expression. Edition limited to 30 numbered copies." - Alga Marghen .