The next reissue project from RVNG Intl. sublabel Freedom To Spend comes from the late author Ursula K. Le Guin and Todd Barton.
Le Guin's 1985 novel Always Coming Home, focused on the Kesh, a fictional cultural group who "might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California." The book included illustrations of instruments and tools, maps, a glossary of terms, recipes, poems and an alphabet. The box set edition included a cassette album of Kesh "field recordings" made with her friend Todd Barton.
Barton, an Oregon-based composer and Buchla synthesist, used the doubure binga—a set of nine bowls struck with cloth-covered mallets—and built several instruments of Le Guin's invention to use on Music And Poetry Of The Kesh, namely the Wéosai Medoud Teyahi and the Houmbúta.
While Le Guin, a famous fantasy novelist, passed away on January 22nd and was eulogized by fans and press worldwide, the project to issue Music And Poetry Of The Kesh on vinyl has long been in the works with the cooperation of Barton, Le Guin, their literary agent and now, Le Guin's surviving family.
Watch a short clip for "A Teaching Poem / Heron Dance"
Tracklist
01. Heron Dance
02. Twilight Song
03. Yes—Singing
04. Dragonfly Song
05. A Homesick Song
06. The Willows
07. Lullaby—Lahela
08. Long Singing
09. The Quail Song
10. A Teaching Poem
11. A River Song
12. Sun Dance Poem
13. A Music Of The Eighth House
Freedom To Spend will release Music And Poetry Of The Kesh
on March 23rd, 2018.