The Perfect Vision ~ Soundwalk
Collective with Patti Smith (2019 & 2020)
A collaboration between Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli) and Patti Smith: The Perfect Vision is a triptych of albums released by Bella Union. Inspired by the writings of three French poets: Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud and René Daumal, and recorded in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico, the Abyssinian
valley of Ethiopia, and the Himalayan Summit of India respectively, each album
retraces the poets’ footsteps, channelled through on-location recorded
soundscapes, with Patti Smith revisiting the words that have been inspired by
the landscapes.
The sounds captured and composed by Soundwalk Collective helped Patti Smith in her readings that dive so much deeper than mere readings. “It’s just attempting to create a breathing body of work that keeps growing as you do it; it’s alive,” she says. “You can’t just do it because you say you’re going to. People can go out to Central Park and record the wind, but we have wind from the top of sacred mountains, we have the sound of stones from the most dangerous parts of the Copper Canyon in Mexico.”
This project transcends what we think we see, by multiplying experiences, languages and energies – it aims to explore a dimension that exists on a non-physical plane. “We went to search for a perfect vision, in spaces where you can still feel a sacred presence – where the Gods are still among you,” says Crasneanscki. “In this idea of perfect vision, there is the idea of oneness, and with that comes a sense of supreme love.”
FIRST ALBUM
The
Peyote Dance focuses on Artaud’s time in Mexico in 1936. The album’s
opening track, recited by Gael Garcia Bernal, evokes Artaud's horse ride to the
Tarahumara mountains with the help of a local guide.
During his
stay, engaging in ceremonies with the Rarámuri Indians and peyote shamans,
Artaud had a transcendental experience which resulted in the book The Peyote Dance.
Stéphan
Crasneanscki, the founder of Soundwalk Collective travelled to the Sierra
Tarahumara to record on-site, returning to the village and cave where Artaud
lived. Gathering stones, sand, leaves, and many instruments such as violins and
drums that the Rarámuri made themselves, the artists were able to awaken the
landscape’s sleeping memories and uncover the space’s sonic grammar: hearing
the wind blowing through the valley, or entering a cave, one will find a
specific silence or resonance.
Listening,
reading and improvising to the tracks in a New York studio, allowed Patti Smith
to channel Artaud’s spirit. “The poets enter the bloodstream, they enter the
cells. For a moment, one is Artaud,” she says. “You can’t ask for it, you can’t
buy it, you can’t take drugs for it to be authentic. It just has to happen, you
have to be chosen as well as choose.”
Other texts
written after Artaud’s return to France, where he remained in a mental asylum undergoing
electric shock therapy, were also revisited by Soundwalk Collective and Patti
Smith. The penultimate track on the album is a poem written by Patti Smith in
homage to Artaud’s last hours in Ivry.
The energy of his last poems reverberates and cannot be silenced, Patti says of The Peyote Dance. “We understand that this work and the artist are not dead, they find life when we are recording them.”
FULL TEXT AT
https://bellaunion.com/artists/soundwalk-collective-jesse-paris-smith-featuring-patti-smith/
AVAILABLE AS 1 CD OR 2 LPs with BOOKLET:
01 Una Nota Sobre El Peyote
Words by Antonin Artaud, read by Gael García Bernal (in
Spanish)
02 Indian Culture
Words by Antonin Artaud, voice: Patti Smith
03 Tutuguri, The Rite Of The Black Sun
Words by Antonin Artaud, voice: Patti Smith
04 Tutuguri, The Rite Of Black Night
Words by Antonin Artaud, voice: Patti Smith
05 The New Revelations Of Being
Text from ‘The New Revelations of Being’ by Antonin Artaud (1937),
voice: Patti Smith
06 Alienation And Black Magic
Words by Antonin Artaud, voice: Patti Smith
07 Ivry - lyrics Patti Smith
Words by Patti Smith, voice: Patti Smith
08 Basalówala Aminá Ralámuli Paísila
Words by Antonin Artaud, read by Martin Chávez Ramírez "Makami" (in Spanish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpN5csFlQF0&list=PL8SS2dxMMcRP-9pldQ_TpT9o89753E2GZ
SECOND ALBUM
For the album Mummer Love, the Soundwalk Collective
journeyed to Africa to explore the intricacies of Arthur Rimbaud’s most obscure
period when he found himself in Harar, Ethiopia – an epicenter of Sufism in
Africa. A strand within Islam, Sufi focuses on spirituality, meditation and
chanting sessions. Sufi music is about reaching a communal ecstatic state to
gain access to the unknown. Stephan Crasneanscki spent time with the Sufi masters
in Harar to record their music and chants in the shrine, of which he says: “You
obtain connections to other levels of yourself and consciousness. This
connection, like poetry, is a universal language. A language of the soul, for
the soul.”
The Collective searched for earthy sounds that hold memories.
For Mummer Love, they found themselves recording under the tree where Rimbaud
photographed the shrine of Sheik Abadir Umar ar-Rida al Harari. “As the rain
fell, I wondered if I was hearing the drops hitting the leaves the same way
Rimbaud did 140 years ago,” Stephan says. These sounds and Sufi chants are
juxtaposed with Patti Smith’s poems, like the title track. Written to Rimbaud, Patti’s
words are rooted in multiple aspects of the self: from the passion of a lover
to the care of a mother, and everything in between.
Further contributions come from Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-jazz, and Phillip Glass, who’s long felt a connection to Sufi music. “Because we are working with other people’s work, and not just reading it but channelling these people, they become a fourth mind. We are Rimbaud, you, I, and the work,” Patti Smith says in conversation with Stephan Crasneanscki. “It makes me think of Rimbaud’s energy, his strong will,” she says. “If we, the living, send out radio and energy waves, the energy of those last poems is still reverberating.” Mummer Love was released 8th November, to mark the anniversary of the death of Arthur Rimbaud, on 10th November (1891).
FULL TEXT AT https://bellaunion.com/2019/09/soundwalk-collective-with-patti-smith-share-la-maison-de-rimbaud/
AVAILABLE AS 1
CD OR 2 LPs with DL:
01 Aw Abadir
02 La Maison De
Rimbaud [feat. Philip Glass]
03 Eternity
[official video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q69zcEyUmSM directed by Stephan Crasneanscki, pictures by Éponine Momenceau, Stephan Crasneanscki, Anastasia Ivanova, editing by Jenn Ruff]
04 Song of the Highest Tower [feat. Ethiopian musician, Mulatu
Astatke & Sufi group of Sheikh Ibrahim]
05 Mummer Love – poem by Patti Smith
06 Farewell
07 Bad Blood [feat. Philip Glass & Sufi group of Sheikh
Ibrahim]
08 Sensation [feat. Mulatu Astatke & Sufi group of
Sheikh Ibrahim]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjbSrqFt09I&list=OLAK5uy_nQRKa3Th6rqCZhxF6blAjY4cTIg7G4G50
THIRD ALBUM
The
sounds of Himalayan winds, sacred mantras and water rippling in the holy
river Ganges, invite us to Peradam, which takes as its entry
point René Daumal’s early 1940s novel Mount Analogue: a Novel of
Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing - unfinished
at the time of his death from TB at 36 in 1944 – a metaphysical journey to
“the ultimate symbolic mountain” in search of meaning. In it, Daumal introduced
the idea of the “peradam”, a rare, crystalline stone harbouring profound truths,
that is only visible to seekers on a true spiritual path. The Soundwalk
Collective travelled to Nanda Devi in the Himalayas, Rishikesh, Varanasi and
Kingdom of Lo (Upper Mustang) to channel Daumal’s metaphysical quest in
physical sound. The Collective’s field-recordings help to flesh out the soundscapes
of Peradam, alongside contributions. Tenzin Choegyal brought his voice,
Tibetan drums, singing bowls, dranyen and damru to the tracks 'Peradam', 'Spiritual
Death' and 'The Rat', a poem by Patti Smith that journeys across a fecund
metaphorical landscape of life, death and cyclical nature. 'Knowledge of the
Self' features the sitar of Anoushka Shankar - Daumal toured America as an
impassioned spokesman for Uday Shankar, the Indian dancer, brother of musician
Ravi Shankar, Anoushka’s late father. Charlotte Gainsbourg contributes to 'The
Four Cardinal Times'. The first track, 'Nanda Devi', features a Sherpa in his 70s
who gently encouraged Stephan Crasneanscki up the mountain. The mountain teaches us the
slowness and calmness that Daumal wrote of, ‘The Mountain is the connection
between Earth and Sky. Its highest summit touches the sphere of eternity, and
its base branches out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is
the path by which humanity can raise itself to the divine and the divine reveal
itself to humanity.’
Daumal’s spiritual quests and influences include Rimbaud, the
Pataphysicians, hallucinogens, GI Gurdjieff’s teachings, the idea of
self-abnegation as the key to internal awakewing, Hindu philosophies - he
taught himself Sanskrit - Peradam features some of his translations.
Peradam arrives as “the final stone”, says Stephan Crasneanscki,
in The Perfect Vision; it expands on “the living space”, says Patti Smith,
that Daumal left for future seekers to enter and create out of.
“We are not trying to make a living, we are not trying to
have physical gold in our hands – it’s a different type of gold, it’s
metaphysical gold,” says Patti. “It’s like a peradam in Daumal’s world. The
only time we’re able to hold onto it is during the process. We don’t even get
to hold it through our life; only the process.” “In the end, it goes out into
the world and becomes whatever it becomes – perhaps one person in the year 2070
uses it as a springboard for another work.”
FULL TEXT AT https://bellaunion.com/2020/09/happy-release-day-to-soundwalk-collective-with-patti-smith-2/
AVAILABLE AS 1 CD OR 2 LPs some with Patti Smith signed A4
print:
All songs performed by Patti Smith except 'Nanda Devi'
01 Nanda Devi
[feat. local Sherpa, Dhan Singh Rana and Tibetan musician, Tenzin
Choegyal]
02 Peradam – written by Patti Smith, performed by Patti
Smith
[official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFGwYUe4Yhs
directed by Stephan Crasneanscki and with editing and visual collage by
Jenn Ruff]
03 Knowledge of the Self – Translated from Sanskrit by René
Daumal, performed by Patti Smith
[official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyGrJfHCbU]
[feat. British Indian sitar player and composer, daughter of
Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar]
04 Dawn at Rishikesh – no word on this track
[feat. Tibetan musician, Tenzin Choegyal]
05 Spiritual Death – words by René Daumal, performed by Patti
Smith
06 The Four Cardinal Times – words by René Daumal, performed
by Patti Smith
[feat. French actress and singer-songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg
(in French)]
07 Hymn To The Liquid– Translated from Sanskrit by René
Daumal, performed by Patti Smith
08 Vera – words by René Daumal, performed by Patti Smith
09 The Rat – poem by Patti Smith, performed by Patti Smith
^ The words are from the official Bella Union
website
 |
Front cover text handwritten by Patti Smith |
2016 ~ Previous collaboration between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith:
Killer Road – A Tribute to Nico
(all music composed by Soundwalk Collective and Jesse Paris
Smith)
Killer Road is a sound exploration of the tragic death of Nico, Velvet Underground vocalist and 60s icon, while riding her bike on the island of Ibiza in the summer of 1988. A hypnotic meditation on the idea of perpetual motion and the cycle of life and death, the composition features Patti Smith lending her unique voice to the last poems written by the artist. Soundwalk Collective uses a travel log of field recordings and samples of Nico's signature instrument, the harmonium, to create a magnetic soundscape.
2 LPs / 1 gatefold CD - deluxe versions with 16-page booklet:
My Heart Is Empty
Evening Of Light
Saeta
Secret Side
Fearfully In Danger (Live in Berlin 2014)
I Will Be Seven (Live in NYC 2014)
[video footage live at Union Chapel, London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mflX2Kwbk8w]
The Sphinx (Live in Berlin 20014)
My Only Child
[video footage live in Berlin 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBGvgafM1Wo]
Full album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hil54huNpeg
