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Honeyland
Aidan Andrew Dun composer
Lucie Rejchrtová piano
Poet and musician Aidan Andrew Dun offers extremely unique works of spoken word poetry recitation, with keyboard accompaniment, in his Ravello Records release HONEYLAND. The album’s offerings can be seen to have roots in a number of Western musical and literary practices. Dun’s geographically specific epic poetry recalls the writings of James Joyce, and his interest in reciting poems to music suggests the influence of English poet and painter William Blake.
Dun’s rhythmic delivery (particularly in Ball) and the characteristics of the musical performances, seem to indicate the influence of the jazz poetry tradition. When taken as intimate musical, and not literary works, the album’s tracks can be seen as an extremely distinct example of melodrama, a tradition of works featuring narrated poetry and musical accompaniment dating back to Schubert.
Lucie Rejchrtová’s keyboard accompaniments serve as a foundation for Dun’s recitations. In Vale Royal and Black Passing, the piano tends to establish a repetitive rhythmic framework.
Rejchrtová is also very imaginative and thoughtful in her use of electronic effects beyond the basic piano sound of her keyboard. Across the album, these effects range from atmospheric uses of reverb and delay, as in To A Dancer, to dramatic instrumental sounds, including guitars, various synthesizers, and percussion instruments, as in Invitation to GQ and Her Feet as Two White Swans.
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Artist Information
Aidan Andrew Dun
Aidan Andrew Dun spent a fantastical childhood in the West Indies and knew his calling for poetry from an early age. Returning to London as a teenager to live with his inspirational grandmother, dancer Marie Rambert, founder of the Ballet Rambert, he briefly attended Highgate School but left without academic qualifications after taking (perhaps too seriously) the role of the rebel-chieftan Aufidius in Coriolanus. After three years travelling the world with a guitar AAD was drawn back to London to explore the psychogeography of Kings Cross, magnet to other visionaries before him. Vale Royal, gestated over twenty-three years, dreams of transforming an urban wasteland into a transcultural zone of canals at the heart of London. When Goldmark published the epic poem in 1995, Allen Ginsberg flew in from New York to perform - with Paul McCartney - at the launch of Vale Royal at the Royal Albert Hall (in a reprise of the Wholly Communion event of thirty years earlier).
Lucie Rejchrtová
Lucie Rejchrtová is a pianist and keyboard player from Prague. Classically trained and influenced by her minister-father's love of jazz and gospel music, she enjoys playing different styles including jazz, blues, rock, ambient/electronic and her own compositions. She has gigged and recorded with a number of Czech and UK bands and musicians, e.g. Joe Carnation Band and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.