Brion Gysin

His record presents some of the most important experiments in cut-up and recording technique by the famous poet and artist, Brion Gysin. Originally recorded in 1958 at the histori- cal Beat Hotel in Paris: ‘Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty well. The poets have hardly touched it. In March, 1958, when I was living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make available to literature the means that painters have been using for fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them.’ 40 previously unpublished minutes of hypnotic, pure cut-up, only the voice of the author plus background noise from the Uher 4400 reel-to-reel recording machine; a fabulous, minimal piece of history. ‘What to do with this all? Paste it to the wall with some photos and see what it looks like. Wait, paste these two pages together and cut in the middle. Paste it all together, end to end, and send it out like a big piano-roll. After all, it’s not but matter. There’s nothing sacred about words