POPULISTA presents UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Triptych)

BR POP 07: 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes

Voice by Pete Simonelli
Guitar by Miron Grzegorkiewicz
Bass Guitar by Michał Biela
Turntable by DJ Lenar

1. Houston, Texas
2. Port Aransas, Texas
3. Parchman Prison, Mississippi
4. Me for Texas An' Me for Tennessee

Text excerpted from 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes by John Lomax and Ruby Lomax
Audio quotes excerpted from their recordings
Music by Michał Biela, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, DJ Lenar and Pete Simonelli





BR POP 08: Ten Intrusions

Voice by Pete Simonelli
Guitar by David Grubbs
Organ by David Maranha
Percussion by Andrea Belfi

1. The Rose
2. The Crane
3. First Intrusion
4. The Waterfall
5. The Wind
6. The Street
7. Lover
8. Second Intrusion
9. Soldiers-War-Another War
10. Vanity

Selection of texts follows that of Harry Partch's „Eleven Intrusions”
Texts by Ella Young, Ella Young and Lao Tzu, Tsurayuki, Willard Motley, George Leite, Giuseppe Ungaretti
Music by Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, David Maranha and Pete Simonelli





BR POP 09: Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America Without a Trace

Voices by David Grubbs, Małgorzata Penkalla and Pete Simonelli
Guitars by David Grubbs and Miron Grzegorkiewicz
Organ and violin by David Maranha

1. Destroy All Photographs
2. Kill the Dog
3. Die with Dignity

Text excerpted from Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace
Music by David Grubbs, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, David Maranha, Gosia Penkalla, Pete Simonelli

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All music premiered and recorded at Playback Play 2012 in Powiększenie
POP 08, 09: mixed and mastered by The Norman Conquest,
POP 07: edited and mixed by DJ Lenar and Michał Libera, mastered by The Norman Conquest
Produced by Michał Libera
Artwork by Aleksandra Waliszewska
Layout by Piotrek Bukowski
Published by Bôłt Records
Distributed worldwide by Monotype Records
Distributed in Poland by Bęc Zmiana

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Three takes on America – three journeys and three documents. Written and recorded.

Year 1939, John A. Lomax and Ruby T. Lomax in their Plymouth – going South. 6502 miles, tons of audio recordings and a diary where the voices of South and the report on the voices of South become barely distinguishable.

Year 1949, Harry Partch – leaving for Gualala. Old smithy on a cliff, an isolated recording studio, breeding of a troop of small creatures called „Eleven Intrusions” - perhaps one of the first cosmopolitan reinventions of American native music.

Finally, just recently, an anonymous quest for vanishing – say north of Highway 15 and West of Baker. Online manual.

All three documents were approached by musicians who met in Warsaw for Playback Play 2012 – a week long series of rehearsals and performances. And then put together to form – what exactly? A historiosophical narrative in music arrangements? A distant mirage of something we have already heard somewhere? Three images of America facing each other?

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I love them more than all the others, the arrangers. The ones who sign their names inside the work […] what arrangers are signing is above all a listening
- Peter Szendy

Populista is a pool of reinterpretations, overinterpretations and misinterpretations of the past. A salon where Beethoven takes a revenge on Kagel; Schumann love songs finally get hopeless and field recordings of Ferrari are field recorded again. It is a genre-less collaboration in an area called „listening”. The music we love or the music we hate – if only for a reason. Do not expect brands. Expect statements on music, listening and other sweetmeats like pop, memory, sex, cuisine, tradition, kitch, canon, individuation… and America.