Released at September 24, 2012
(c)2012 samadhisound IIc.
His dwelling is filled with the dust of past miracles. It flows in through the keyhole and under the door and is stored as wind and weather, as salt and sorrow and dust. He worries about the smaller gods, they are merry and irresponsible, they have forgotten their destiny and so they are anmiable of purpose. He tries to keep them in order. Night after night he sits entering them in thin endless ledgers, name upon name, with a slightly quavering hand. He recreates them in solemnity and in writing. The lamp over his desk burns into the night as he attempts to repair defect little gods. They filll him with deep melancholy and a sense of meaninglessness that he will not admit to. He remembers everything the lesser gods prefer to forget and this wears him out; he grows haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. He takes their education in hand, he gives them maps of the heavens with adjoining regions, and provides them with an inventory of the universe. At full moon he sings to them, the old songs forgotten by the smaller gods. They make faces and yawn. The weary old god gathers his last strength and starts over again.
Uncommon Deities poem (Punkt 2011) on music by Jan Bang and Erik Honoré.
Music by Bang, Honoré
Poem by Paal-Helge Haugen
Poems by Paal-Helge Haugen and Nils Chr. Moe-Repstad
The CD release of Uncommon Deities isnÂt a document of the installation, but a reinvention: the poems and Sylvian’s readings are placed in new settings by Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. The cofounders of the Punkt festival and close collaborators on the original installation, Bang and Honoré draw on new performances by the deeply sympathetic trumpeter Arve Henriksen and the startling, elemental singer Sidsel
Endresen. These improvisations join live material captured at last year’s Punkt events, in a production that’s spacious and atmospheric, somber and escapist, light-hearted and steeped in history – a recording as rich as the ancestry of the work that inspired it.
Jan Bang – samples
Erik Honoré – samples, synthesizer, synth bass
Arve Henriksen – trumpet
David Sylvian – voice
Official microsite of Uncommon Deities
