From Allmusic.com : "Break Through in Grey Room is a collection of William S. Burroughs' speeches and cut-up recordings performed and recorded between 1960 and 1976. Some are actual pieces, and others are discussions of the pieces, such as "Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups," which he read at Boulder's Naropa University in 1976. Burroughs' incredibly detached voice only sounds better with age. He seems to exist between two worlds, and he constantly jumps back and forth from the conscious to the subconscious. In fact, one can hardly tell at any time which world it is that he inhabits. The bulk of the disc is consumed by one cut-up piece entitled "K-9 Was in Combat With the Alien Mind-Screens," which Burroughs claims was the result of writing as an art form, attempting to catch up to the advanced world of collage painting. This was one of Burroughs' earlier collaborations with Ian Sommerville. The Brion Gysin piece that Burroughs uses as a sample ("Recalling All Active Agents") is a brilliantly textured two-track recording that was made at the BBC studios in 1960 utilizing the drop-in method that Burroughs speaks about. This method entails a tape recorder recording a different player whilst randomly speeding up, slowing down, reversing, and advancing the second player. What occurs is a blubbery and blurry mess of words that surprisingly creates new sentences and phrases. Here Burroughs claims, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out." Other tracks are simply found sound field recordings. One such piece, "Jojouka," features Ornette Coleman playing in the hills of Morocco, recorded in January of 1973. This is a thoroughly interesting record of all of the types of recordings in which Burroughs took part in during his 87-year life, and serves as the perfect introduction to the tape experiments of the most intriguing of all of the beat writers."
"Break Through in Grey Room" was released by Sub Rosa in 1986.
From Allmusic.com : "An obscure 1981 release that only got anything approaching mainstream notice retroactively -- after Laurie Anderson's surprise breakthrough with 1982's Big Science and its unexpected hit single, "O Superman" -- this is a double-LP set featuring one side each of contributions from Anderson, poet John Giorno, and William S. Burroughs, plus a fourth side that had three lock grooves in it; depending on where the needle was placed, you'd hear more works by one of the three participants. (The 1993 CD simply puts each participant's extras at the end of their section.) Anderson's contributions are rough-sounding early versions of minor pieces that eventually ended up in her masterwork, United States I-IV, plus an early recording of "Born, Never Asked" that's lacking in comparison to the richer-sounding remake on Big Science. Burroughs' pieces are primarily of interest to die-hard Burroughs fans, as they come mostly from the era when he was simply reworking old manuscripts, and as a poet, John Giorno makes a pretty good small-press publisher. For completists only."
Side 1 :
1. Laurie Anderson - Dr. Miller
2. Laurie Anderson - It Was Up In The Mountains
3. Laurie Anderson - Drums
4. Laurie Anderson - Closed Circuits
5. Laurie Anderson - Born, Never Asked
Side 2 :
1. John Giorno - I Don't Need It, I Don't Want It, And You Cheated Me Out Of It
2. John Giorno - Completely Attached To Delusion
Side 3 :
1. William S. Burroughs - Introducing John Stanley Hart; He Entered The Bar With The Best Intentions
2. William S. Burroughs - Twilight's Last Gleamings
3. William S. Burroughs - My Protagonist Kim Carson
4. William S. Burroughs - Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr. Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character
5. William S. Burroughs - Progressive Education
6. William S. Burroughs - The Wild Fruits
7. William S. Burroughs - The Unworthy Vessel
Side 4 :
1. Laurie Anderson - For Electronic Dogs / Structuralist Film-Making
2. William S. Burroughs - The Name Is Clem Snide / Mr. Hart Couldn't Hear The Word Death
3. John Giorno - Excerpt From Put Your Ear To Stone & Open Your Heart To The Sky
"You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With" was released by Giorno Poetry System in 1981.
Second release of Nox for AKT Production, here with the help of Kathy Acker who reads excerpts from her book "My Death, My Life, by Pier Paolo Pasolini".
"Love, Emily" was released by AKT Production in 1987.
From Discogs.com : "Conceptual artist, dancer, musician, scholar and poet, Stefan Weisser began playing the drums at age 4. Moving to New York City from San Francisco in 1979, and adopting the name Z'EV, his work with performance/noise percussion broke new ground and drew the attention of rock symphonist Glenn Branca, dancer Simone Forti, guitarist Rudolph Grey and just about everybody related to the downtown scene."
"1968-1990 : One Foot In The Grave" was released by Touch Records in 1991.
From Discogs.com : "Gregory Whitehead is the writer, director and producer of more than one hundred radio plays, essays and acoustic adventures for the BBC, Radio France, Australia’s ABC, NPR and other broadcasters.
His plays have won numerous major awards, including a Prix Italia for Pressures of the Unspeakable, a Prix Futura for Shake, Rattle, Roll and a Sony Gold Academy Award for The Loneliest Road. His recent (2005) production of Normi Noel’s No Background Music, featuring Sigourney Weaver, also received a Sony Gold Academy Award.
Whitehead is a frequent performer in literary cabarets and mixed media theatre events, as well as a featured guest speaker at conferences and audio festivals throughout the US and Europe. He has collaborated with Mark Sussman and Allen Weiss on a Theater of the Ears, and has also experimented with small-scale puppet and toy theaters.
Whitehead is the co-editor of the anthology of writings on the history of radio and audio art, Wireless Imagination: sound radio and the avant-garde, and the author of numerous essays that explore the politics and paradoxes of radiophonic space."
"The Pleasure Of Ruins" was released by Staalplaat in 1993.
