Chris Philpot, Justin Rhody, Abigail Smith

*43 copies limited edition* Language does not sit comfortably above the instruments on Eleven Poems. It enters their field of vibration, its discontinuities meeting the sustained friction of strings and the unstable surfaces of percussion. This new language-and-sound trio from New Mexico brings together Chris Philpot’s disjointed text arrangements, Justin Rhody’s bowed electric taishōgoto and Abigail Smith’s resourceful percussion practice. Across eleven cuts, the relationship is less poet-with-backing-band than three-way investigation: how can words, tones and physical gestures occupy the same space without simply explaining one another? The record is scheduled for release on November 6, 2026, as a heavyweight seven-inch on Physical.

Philpot’s arrangements make language feel spatial. Phrases form loose constellations rather than settling into an orderly narrative, leaving the surrounding sounds room to complicate their meaning. Rhody’s bowed instrument supplies a sustained counterweight, turning attention toward the friction and resonance of the string. Smith approaches the drum head as a responsive surface rather than merely a means of marking time. Handheld vibrational devices, mallets and found objects activate it in different ways, producing an accompaniment concerned with grain, pressure and duration. The instrumentation is economical, but its possibilities are not: small changes in contact can alter the character of an entire passage. Here, minimalism means concentrating attention rather than reducing expression.

What distinguishes the collaboration is its refusal to assign language and music fixed jobs. The instruments need not illustrate a phrase, and the poem need not provide a key to an otherwise abstract sound. Free verse and extended techniques instead share a sensitivity to interruption, spacing and uncertainty. Rhody and Smith also perform together in the free-improvising trio K/S/R and experimental ensemble Discretion; Philpot co-founded the independent literary publisher and event series PRROBLEM Press. Those parallel activities give the project a meeting point between experimental performance and independent literary practice. Its otherworldliness emerges from tangible actions: a bow drawn across strings, an object touching a membrane, words placed in unfamiliar proximity.

Recorded in January 2026 at No Name Cinema in Santa Fe, Eleven Poems was mixed at home by Rhody and mastered by Jeffrey Rocketmild Jefferson, whose credits include Jackie-O Motherfucker and The Lodestones. The setting brings this finely scaled experiment back to a specific community and room. Rather than inflating poetry into theatrical declaration or treating instrumental texture as atmosphere alone, the trio works through close contact. These are brief, collaborative constructions in which meaning remains mobile, carried as much by a vibration’s persistence as by the words beside it.