G.J. de Rook.
Greta Monach.
The Netherlands: Slowscan, 2014.
LP.
Limited edition of 300 copies (250 for retail)
New and unplayed.
Slowscan vol. 22 is a collection of sound poems and concrete poetry by G.J. de Rook, Michael Gibbs, Greta Monach and Ulises Carrión originally published on cassette in 1978. The initiative for the release at the time originated from Ulises Carrión, who wanted sound poetry to be better known in The Netherlands. His plan was to release a series of sound poetry cassettes through his bookstore Other Books & So in Amsterdam and to distribute them among Dutch conservatories and libraries. The plan was to publish sound poets from all over the world. The series, called ‘Sound-Proof’, was introduced with a zero issue dedicated to sound poets living in The Netherlands. The recordings for Sound-Proof no. 0 were done by Greta Monach (assisted by technician Herman Kooy) at the Institute of Sonology of Utrecht University in 1978. With Sound-Proof no. 0 as an example Ulises Carrión and Greta Monach applied for a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Culture to realise the series they had in mind, but their request was denied and consequently no other cassettes appeared in the series. To make matters worse, only a handful of copies of Sound-Proof no. 0 were sold and the rest of the edition was destroyed by mistake. All that makes Sound-Proof no. 0 a rare set of recordings, which Slowscan released on vinyl in 2014 after they had been digitized by Greta Monach. The LP comes with English and Dutch inserts that contain background information on the recordings and biographical information on the artists.
