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Yes, 'Dead City Radio' is great fun... the music can be a bit overbearing in places, and to be honest there's a lot of it I would have prefered to hear unaccompanied, or at least with more minimal arrangements, but it's nonetheless assembled with an excellent ear for Burroughs more accessible and audio-friendly 'bits', and serves as a good reminder of how much of his early writing was pieced together from his spoken word "routines".
It's probably the item I'd be mostly readily lend to a friend who happened to ask "so, William Burroughs, what's all that about?", although it does rather give the impression of a bunch of collaborators hungrily feeding off the old man's myth, shoving their favourite 'cool bits' in his face and going "oh, go on, read this!".
The upshot of this is that it's a far more fun and coherent listening experience than WSB would likely have come up with on his own, but then, do we really want that? Wouldn't true fans of his work prefer their Burroughs as he was; awkward, fucked up, obsessive and uncompromising?
Speaking of which, 'Breakthrough in the Grey Room', being rather more undiluted Burroughs straight from his own tape recorder, is an album I've found a lot more rewarding; absolutely ESSENTIAL listening to accompany any investigation of his cut-up period works, tape recorder theorising and the like... shines a great deal of light on the headspace and ideas he was getting at, and is just an endlessly fascinating and startling recording in it's own right.
"Curse Go Back", with Burroughs whispering an 'anti-curse' spell over frenzied joujuka piping, is as terrifying a bit of occult field recording as you'll ever hear, and tape recorder experiments like "Recalling Active Agents" demonstrate more about the death of language and properties of recorded sound in 90 seconds than any number of volumes of dry theorising.
Plus, that "K9 Was in Combat with the Alien Mindscreens.." track makes a fantastic room clearence device. Those wishing to convince their housemates / neighbours of their creeping insanity, look no further.
Personally, I've found Burroughs written work flows a lot better and makes a lot more sense once one is familiar with his voice and vocal mannerisms... perhaps the only thing he actually has in common with Jack Kerouac! |
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