Album Notes

Poetry. Music. Neurotransmitters in the brain fire off enough electricity to light up a 40 watt bulb. Now increase the amperage. Switch on the 'action potential' of spoken word artists/poets jamming with musicians. POEMusic! And that's just what happened among eleven poets associated with the celebrated series HYDROGEN JUKEBOX and a rockin' punk/funk/rock/jazz hop/blues band, The Ne'erdowells, detonating together in this explosive recording of spoken word and improvised music. When these two waves entrain in the most spontaneous and unpredictable ways it's BRAIN AMPIN'!

The music improvisational genius of The Ne'erdowells--Davey Patterson (guitar), Matt Riganese (keys), Mary Noecker (bass), and Ry Pilla (drums), with additional tracks by Brant Lyon (keys)--in collaboration with eleven of the most talented and inventive spoken word artists/poets in the New York City scene--David Lawton, Jane LeCroy, Peter Carlaftes, Thomas Fucaloro, Karl Roulston, Puma Perl, Brant Lyon, Frank Simone, Robert Gibbons, Jane Ormerod, and Kat Georges--have put together a high-energy and totally inventive album of spoken word/poetry that so deeply synergizes word and sound that it can only be described as POEMusic exploding on the tongue.

From Lawton's boisterous paean to garage bands and the history of rock-n-roll, to LeCroy's dystopian visions of bionic (de)humanization, Carlaftes' hilarious spoof of virtual reality taken to the edge, and George's idyllic Californian lifestyles gone awry, to Roulston's neo-Beat blues harp and cool word jumble, Gibbon's gospel-inflected tribute to Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg, Perl's soiled valentine to Coney Island, and Simone's storm-tossed tale of survival and reminiscence, to Fucaloro's jazz hop poem of drug-addled love, and Lyon's encomium to body odors, to Ormerod's wild ride through a phantasmagoria of punked-out images, BRAIN AMPIN' takes off and never comes down until it's gone all over the map.