john m. bennett: a flattened face fogs through

Well this is brilliantly bizarre; pivotal US underground mail-art and poetry figure John M. Bennett spills his guts on Middle America and other matters in a compendium of perplexing and peculiar performances set to fractured flute, marimba, concrète tape works and FM synthesis in a way that reminds us of Laurie Anderson’s hyper-influential 'Home Of The Brave' via Fluxus, Max Headroom, Burrroughs, Kurt Schwitters. ​ All newly remastered by contemporary avant conduit Jack Callahan, ‘A Flattened Face Fogs Through’ yields a fascinating cross section of JM Bennett’s vast catalogue, selected and sequenced by John Also Bennett (JAB) from some 15 hours of cassette recordings issued 1986-1995. Encompassing fleeting glimpses of warped and processed tekkers thru to relatively straighter recitals, each juxtaposed with dizzyingly imaginative instrumentals that account for half the interest, the set plunges us into a highly personal perspective on American life in the ‘80s/‘90s, salvaging a poetry from its mundane, “corn walled, strip mall infested landscape” that resonates with Lynch’s evocation of the surreality underfoot USA, and dovetails with early dada and fluxus movements explored by Burroughs (whose manuscripts he edited) and the work of Bennett’s contemporary Richard Kostelanetz. “During the 1980’s, Bennett began to experiment with newly available home recording technology and electronics. After 1985’s The Spitter, which featured Bennett reading his poems alone, he began pairing performances of his poems with improvised music and vocal processing to create immersive sound worlds for his surreal explorations of the mundane. From his home studio in Columbus, Ohio, these recordings were released via self-dubbed cassettes alongside formidable chapbooks of visual poetry and traded through the postal service via his already prolific poetry imprint Luna Bisonte Prods (also home to the venerable Lost and Found Times periodical). These cassettes often featured unique artwork and calligraphy by Bennett himself, amounting to handmade art objects in the tradition of Fluxus Mail Art. A Flattened Face Fogs Through was selected and sequenced by John Also Bennett from perhaps some fifteen hours of material, taken from cassettes spanning from 1986 to 1995. Concrete experiments with voice and tape manipulation, FM synthesis, early sampling keyboards, experimental percussion, flutes, and saxophones create a phantasmagorical backdrop for Bennett’s panting and gurgling poetry performances, spinning a sputtering picture of a quaking domestic void, at times evoking an almost Lynchian existential dread emanating from the shopping center parking lot. Flattened Face includes recordings of classic Bennett poems like “The Shirt The Sheet”, “Last In Line”, “The Transmission”, and “The Blur”, the sound works presented here were made with a spirited cast of collaborators and conspirators - Byron D. Smith, Ficus Strangulensis, Mike Hovancsek, and Jack Wright to name a few (not to mention JMB’s oldest son William E. Bennett, then a child). They represent a fraction of John M. Bennett’s massive output in this marginal but fertile artistic community, and should stand as a testament both to it and to the underlying strangeness of language, the American Midwest, and of being itself.”