STEVE MCCAFFERY - Pataphonix: Selected Sound Poems

"We Are One is proud to release the first archival retrospective of audio works by Canadian (via Sheffield, UK) experimental, concréte and sound poet Steve McCaffery. ‘Pataphonix’ collects eleven pieces recorded between 1968 and 2009, sourced direct form the artist’s previously unissued private tapes. McCaffery was a key exponent, along with fellow country persons/collaborators Bill Bissett, bpNichol, Ann Southam etc., of the unbridled cross disciplinary explosion linking disparate networks of writers, musicians, performance and installation artists the world over throughout the late 20th century, the reverberations of which are still being felt today. This collection lays bare the breadth of McCaffery’s oeuvre, from his earliest experiments for reel to reel and voice made just after moving to Toronto for graduate studies in the last 60’s, to stunning works recorded parallel his time in the influential sound poetry collective The Four Horsemen and contributions to the artist run micro-publishing imprints Underwhich Audiographics and Blewointment, and closing with the most comprehensive (to date) documentation of his massive, layered graphic opus “Carnival” realized decades after its inception. Although much ground is covered over the course of these diverse pieces, McCaffery’s radical, playful and unwavering dedication to the vocal as an abstract unit of sonic material, at times seemingly elastic in nature, serves as coagulant for, as the artist himself puts it, “…a practice of outlay, of expenditure not embodiment.” ‘Pataphonix’ presents a mind altering appraisal of one of North America’s most ingenious, yet overlooked, audio/literary figures, an essential document of fringe sound for the true believers" - We Are One.