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Pop / Alternative / Experimental
Stephen Emmer's compelling new album
of music and spoken word
Mixed by Tony Visconti
Featuring Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Kristel,
Kurt Schwitters, Richard Burton and many more
Supertracks Records is pleased to announce the 7th April 2008 UK release of Stephen Emmer's 'Recitement' – a fascinating album comprising an eclectic collection of literary source texts set to original music compositions. Emmer, one of Holland's leading avant-garde music composers, first started his music career in the late 70s in the industrial post punk experimental band Minny Pops (who were originally signed to Factory Records).
Are you ready to listen? This music wants to talk.
WARNING - Recitement is an exciting, unique and international music and spoken word project featuring an all-star international cast of musicians and writers.
Stephen Emmer |
The combination of pop music and spoken word is a unique phenomenon throughout the history of music. The album contains 17 different compositions in 7 different languages and styles, performed, arranged and composed by Stephen Emmer. On Recitement everything comes together: past and present, death and life, writers and singers, poems and music.
Recitement is a unique music and spoken word album where classic and modern spoken word is performed by famous writers (Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett), singers (Lou Reed, Kazu Makino) and actors (Richard Burton, Michael Lonsdale, Sylvia Kristel), and reinterpreted in an innovative way that combines new and original music to each vocal performance in seven different languages. It's a kind of rap 2.0, created the other way around, like with a libretto for an opera: first the text, then the music. You could also call it Spoken Word Goes Pop where poetry becomes a classical film soundtrack, classic prose rap and rock and travel stories become jazz-noir or chamber pop. |
The album was recorded at Studio 150 by Joeri Saal and Stephen Emmer in Amsterdam, and was mixed by Tony Visconti at Phillip Glass' Looking Glass Studios in New York City (the latter's credits include David Bowie, T.Rex, Morrissey), and features several musical performers including Blonde Redhead's singer Kazu Makino, jazz musician Benjamin Herman, legendary pianist Mike Garson (David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins), classical singer Maja Roodveldt, old school rapper Shyrock, and Joost Kroon of New Cool Collective and pop duo Bauer (ex Bettie Serveert).
The linernotes in the CD booklet are written by Michael Brocken from the UK, who also wrote the one and only Burt Bacharach biography called Maestro! The life of a Pop Genius. Michael Brocken is Senior Lecturer in Creative and Performing Arts at Liverpool Hope University College. He is also a regular broadcaster at BBC Radio Merseyside, where he has his own series, 'Brock 'n' Roll'. Michael Brocken is also the author of The British Folk Revival and Bob Dylan: The Robert Shelton Conference. He has contributed to Wire, Mojo, Record Collector, and Radio Times.
From left to right: Tony Visconti and Stephen Emmer during the mixing sessions of 'Recitement' at Phillip Glass' Looking Glass Studios, New York City.
Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer - sacha@sachadeboer.com.
Vocal performances include Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Kristel (Emanuelle), Kurt Schwitters, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Michael Lonsdale, Sacha de Boer, Ken Nordine and Richard Burton.
“Stephen Emmer is one of those musicians/composers who knows the musical rules best and therefore also how to break them”
- Tony Visconti
Literary source texts for the songs are extracted from Charles Baudelaire, Yoko Ono, Samuel Beckett, Alessandro Baricco, Christopher Fry, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Paul Theroux, Victoria Ocampo, Remco Campert, Hugo Claus and Thomas Hardy.
From left to right: Stephen Emmer & Tony Visconti.
Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer. |
From left to right: Stephen Emmer & Tony Visconti.
Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer. |
From left to right: Stephen Emmer & Tony Visconti.
Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer. |
From left to right: Stephen Emmer & Tony Visconti.
Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer. |
From left to right: Tony Visconti and Stephen Emmer. Photo credit: (c) Sacha de Boer.
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About Stephen Emmer
 Stephen Emmer is a composer and musician from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. From experimental rock, free jazz and modern classical music to film soundtracks, television themes and cultural projects, he has been involved in many projects too numerous to mention in his musical life. He spent his 60s youth partially in India learning how to play a local wind instrument in an ashram, and then he moved to the Caribbean to get taught voodoo percussion as a boy. Back in Amsterdam in the 70s he got involved in various bands such as an experimental free jazz group, a symphonic rock group and an avant-garde new wave electro-noise group called Minny Pops.
His musical idealism made him create and produce a solo mini-album in the early 80s called Vogue Estate where he was joined by several guest artists from the UK such as the late Billy MacKenzie, Martha and the Muffins' Martha Ladley and Michael Dempsey. The album was one of the first intentional soundtracks without a film.
After having briefly joined several UK bands such as Lotus Eaters, Act and the Associates, he once again went home and got involved in production music for most of the 90s. He became the first in-house-composer for both the main public and commercial TV broadcasters in the Netherlands. Successful yet hardened and professionally seasoned by these involvements around 2006 he felt a sudden urge to liberate himself from this 'musical war zone' of demanding and undemanding clients who were more and more requiring the production music to be musically safe under the pressure of audience ratings.
He decided to return to his musical idealism of the early years and found what he was searching for: inspiration through catharsis and created 17 compositions based on literary text-fragments. The music follows no rules out-of-the-book yet refers to very different musical genres, styles and even cliché's as experienced and learned by Emmer in both his idealistic and commercial musical periods.
Or as his producer Tony Visconti puts it: 'Stephen Emmer is one of those musicians/ composers who knows the musical rules best and therefore also how to break them.' |
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“The music is wonderful.”
- Lou Reed
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Stephen Emmer
Tony Visconti
Lou Reed, Sylvia Kristel, Kurt Schwitters & many more
7th April 2008
Supertracks Records
www.shellshock.co.uk
ST75743
608917574326 |
www.recitement.com | www.myspace.com/stephenrogeremmer
Watch the video for 'Passengers' (ft. Lou Reed)
www.youtube.com/../
Peter Noble • Tracy Gosling @ Peter Noble PR Consultancy Ltd.
Central Ignition
1 Mercers Mews
London N19 4PL
Tel: +44 (0) 207 272 7772
Fax: +44 (0) 207 272 2227
E-mail: peter@noblepr.co.uk | tracy@noblepr.co.uk
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