Poet Alice Notley gave AroarA a haunting vision

?

Andrew Whiteman and Ariel Engle take care to maintain a sense of space in AroarA?s music. ?After 10 years with Broken Social Scene, I?m content to take a break from the wall of sound,? Whiteman says.

Photograph by: Adrienne Amato and Michael Baumgart , Pop Montreal

MONTREAL - As Andrew Whiteman of Montreal duo AroarA explains it to the audience each night on their current western Canadian tour, the EP In the Pines is a series of poems by Alice Notley set to their music. Avant-gardist Notley was undergoing a treatment for hepatitis C when she wrote the poems, ?and so she experienced a bunch of crazy visions.?

Given Whiteman is suffering through a miserable flu, he?s feeling closer to the material than ever. ?Yeah, it?s difficult to imagine doing the show until you?re actually doing the show,? he says. ?And when you are, it?s an out-of-body experience.?

First, the flu experience. Whiteman and wife Ariel Engle are dream-minimalist duo AroarA, currently opening for ? and playing with ? Martha Wainwright. ?Generally during Martha?s set I?m not too worried, because I don?t do too much singing. For the AroarA set, I might change the setlist a bit.?

You?d also want to avoid sharing the mic. The tour, Canadian dates following Euro dates, has gone exceedingly well for a duo playing songs that haven?t really been released. ?It?s kind of interesting to be playing this music to people who have absolutely no clue what?s going to happen, and getting such a good response.

?Yeah, nobody knows the music,? Whiteman says, but that?s been the defining characteristic of the project: the unknown experience.

Whiteman is better (or previously) known as a member of Broken Social Scene (and Apostle of Hustle, but that project is mothballed). He and Engle had been ?major fans of (Notley). I mainly got into modern experimental avant-garde American poetry through podcasts. The Internet is so great for that.? Notley now lives in Paris, but was a key figure on the Lower East Side poetry scene of the ?70s and ?80s, a prolific and independent writer who was a Pulitzer finalist in 1998. In the Pines ?was one of her books I hadn?t read. And I noticed a few lines very quickly ? like ?Them that don?t like me can leave me alone.? I knew that line comes from The Wagoner?s Lad, this really old American hillbilly song!?

He notes that Notley?s pagination ?looked like she was writing lyrics,? and the married pair were determined to return this ?gothic Americana? to a musical state. However, they wanted Notley?s approval, which was anything but guaranteed. ?She had already turned down a modern classical composer in California who wanted to use her voice. Alice is very intense.?

While in Paris on a tour with Broken Social Scene, Whiteman was fooling around on Google and realized he?d found Notley?s address. He called Engle and asked for her advice. ?She said, ?OK, don?t freak her out or anything ? just go there and leave her a note.? ? Sound thinking. ?I was gonna drink 17 espresso shots in a row and leave her the best note in the world.?

But fate stepped in and when Whiteman went, Notley happened to be arriving in a cab. ?She was staring at me and I was staring at her.? He panicked, and began jabbering ?in this robot voice. But she was kind enough to let me walk her to the local grocery.? When he finally revealed the project, ?she looked at me steely-eyed, straight on and said, ?Oh. How are you gonna do that??

?It wasn?t ?Oh, I?m so flattered.? She was skeptical right away. And I said, ?I don?t know.? Because at the time, I didn?t.?

They began working at a friend?s house ?in the forest,? exploring ideas, plunging into the dark. The result, in the five tracks on the EP, is a disarmingly oneiric song cycle that lingers spectrally with the listener. ?Esthetically, Ariel likes things minimal so you can hear what each part is doing. And after 10 years with Broken Social Scene, I?m content to take a break from the wall of sound.?

In seeking distinctive instrumentation, they?d used a ?virtual Mellotron that Sabbath and Zeppelin used. You play the keys and it plays back tape loops. One of the patches I had was Black Sabbath ? so I used that liberally? to cast the spell.

While in Paris on this tour late last year, two years after the first fateful meeting, ?Alice came to the show and saw us play it. It was so lovely. The three of us ? me, Ariel, Alice ? stood there tearing up.? The poem comes full circle.

In the Pines is released Tuesday, March 12. AroarA will officially launch the EP with a Montreal show in early April; details to be announced.

markjlepage@yahoo.com

? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

?

?

?

?

?

?

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Poet+Alice+Notley+gave+AroarA+haunting+vision/8080723/story.html

Mcdonalds Restaurants Open on Christmas Day jessica simpson santa tracker happy holidays Stores Open On Christmas Day