From the Guts of Bin Bags Pt.1

While walking down a street in Glasgow last year I found five bin bags full of books dumped outside a relatively well know Scottish poet's flat. They were left out for the bin men (tut tut poet...have you not heard of charity shops?). Here's one of the gems I found within the blackness...

HENRI CHOPIN - CEOLFRITH 18 (published on occasion of the Henri Chopin Retrospective Exhibition held at the Ceolfrith Arts Centre, Sunderland, from May 12th - June 10th, 1972)




"Henri Chopin (born 1922) is an avant-garde poet and musician. He is a little-known but key figure of the French avant-garde during the second half of the 20th century. Known primarily as a concrete and sound poet, he created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos. Since the end of the 50's has never ceased to defend the electronic explorations of the voice and the body, the grain of the voice, the vocal texture, the vibrations of the larynx, the labial snaps, and the hiss; first with the aid of the tape recorder, then, starting from the early 70's, by working in the best electronic music studios in Europe. A path extending from the exploration of the resonance of words, in 1956, to the new sound form of 1994, in collaboration with a cybernetic musician at Ircam, Marc Battier."

Henri Chopin - Le Ventre De Bertini (1967) MP3
Hneri Chopin - Indicatif 1 (1962) MP3

"Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.
His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus, Jiri Kolar, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Dadaists Raoul Hausmann and Marcel Janco to a fresh audience." Wikipedia + Michel Giroud

A scan from the book:

And here's the man himself in the flesh showing da kidz how to do it:

HENRI CHOPIN - Live in France 2005