REVERT, MATTHEW - Letters to Friends of the Late Darcy O'Meara

Edition of 100. "When not designing book jackets, creating artwork, writing novels, collaborating with Vanessa Rossetto, and conquering vintage video games, the ever-talented and indefatigable Matthew Revert has been producing his own distinctive body of sound work for roughly the past five years. Revert first caught our attention through his two fine releases on the now sadly defunct Kye label run by Graham Lambkin. On these releases, and his others, Revert would often set his diaristic narrations and observations to a backdrop of droning textures, acoustic scrapes & plucks, and crude, almost plunderphonics-like, tape works. On his latest solo offering Letters To Friends of the late Darcy O’Meara, Revert’s approach is more scaled back and minimalistic. Tape, voice, mic, and breath are the primary building blocks used to create a singular soundworld that marries the primal qualities of sound poetry with Revert’s work as a fiction writer. These “letters” take on various forms: phonetic word play, stream of consciousness verbal spew, hallucinatory reflections, fragments of song verses. But, as each side unfolds, through even the most absurd moments, something approaching a climax and resolution emerges; where, like in his novels, something deeply moving and human prevails, and you are left with even more questions than when you first pressed play. Who, in fact, was this Darcy O’Meara? How are these friends connected to Darcy? Why does May work for ham and he work for hens, and how is it that the life of the party got lost in their own parade? It’s questions like these that’ll have you flipping and repeating this tape in search of their elusive answers, but then again isn’t half the fun coming up with your own." - Round Bale.