This is the 12th album from performer-poet Copernicus, and was recorded on November 2nd 2008. On that day he gathered together a large ensemble of improvising musicians, led by long-time musical director Pierce Turner (keys). It is free form, it is chaotic, but there is a strange and erry passion that makes it quite compelling to listen to. Copernicus orates as opposes to speaks, and I can imagine him with wild eyes in the middle of a storm of his own creation, the wind and rain striving to stop him. But he has a presence, so that even when his voice is little more than a whisper it demands to be heard and is the centre of the universe.
This is music that you will either love or hate – there is no middle ground. It is Beefheart taken to the nth degree, music that is at the very limits of that definition, but somehow I find it hard to turn it off once it has started playing. Is this music even sane, or something that is taking the listener into new areas of their own mind? I don’t know, but do know that I have never heard anything quite like it.
