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Lillian Allen, Gary Barwin, Gregory Betts - Muttertongue: What is a Word in Utter Space

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Muttertongue: What is a Word in Utter Space by Lillian Allen (a dub poet, writer, and Juno Award winner), Gary Barwin (poet, writer, composer, multimedia artist, performer, and educator), and Gregory Betts (whose writing explores the boundaries between self, other, and alien – the radical other) is a collaborative collection that crackles in its exploration of land, language, and page space. Combining the intensity of Dub Poetry with the intricacies of experimental poetics, this album is the sonorous soundscape partner of the collection of the same name (Exile Editions, 2025).

Vinyl edition includes exclusive track: "What What What What".

All tracks are available via bandcamp, and soon to be available via streaming services everywhere. A limited run of bespoke LPs will begin shipping in mid-July.

Praise for Muttertongue: What is a Word in Utter Space:

“Sound poetry can expose the raw material of language. It can confirm that language is raw material. The poets on this record, Lillian Allen, Gary Barwin, and Gregory Betts, improvise on breath and vocal sound, and create coherence using pauses, crescendos, alternations, and other ordering devices. We recognize words when no words are spoken. We hear familiar contours. Their voices tug against language. They remind us that the sounds that have meaning for us are related to other sounds that don’t. But then don’t all sounds have meaning? Can’t all vocal sounds potentially find a place in some language? One of the meanings may well be humor, and another may be exuberance. Even if the three poets are breathing and muttering, we sense joy mingling with effort in the production of those sounds. We hear the physicality of vocalization. We hear the body. We hear the body translated as sound. We hear echoes of land. We hear poetic instinct and poetic knowledge active in the body. We hear the strain and immensity of utterance.” (Kaie Kellough)

Preorder the LP and purchase a digital download here.

Anne Waldman - Your Devotee in Rags

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Your Devotee in Rags is a missive to this age of patriarchal power. Its songs and poems are designed to specifically confront that power and hold it to account. Taking such activist inspiration from musicians like Lido Pimienta and Tanya Tagaq, musically YDIR blends acoustic and electronic genres, waltzes, laments and Pauls Boutique-era Beastie Boys mash-ups all with the intent of creating a new artistic headspace: sonic poetry. The cultural direction is forward, the earbuds open up the stereo field. Listening to YDIR is, in a word, empowering.

All tracks are available via streaming services everywhere. A limited run of bespoke LPs will begin shipping in mid-April. This is a collectible item from one of the great poets of the 20th century, showing that age can never slow her down.

Praise for Your Devotee in Rags:

“When Anne Waldman opens Your Devotee in Rags with the words “I ebb like the ocean” (on the track Hag of Beare), the legendary poet could well be describing the album itself, whose melodies and rhythms undulate keenly to entice the listener into its markedly dark soundscape, where we sit in intrigue through this compelling experiment in sonic poetry.

Waldman’s powerful wordsmithing is intuitively backed with diverse musical musings furnished by Andrew Whiteman of Broken Social Scene. Whiteman’s rolling percussion marches the eclectic music forward, thrusting Waldman’s bravely voiced poetry into the fore. Altogether, the album could be described as something of an artful manifesto, critiquing injustices across lands and ages, through to the present moment and place.” (Khodi Dill, The Grey Griot)

“As an album it is symbiotic. The sawtooth synthesizers bite in tandem with our protagonists’ chomping barbs. A familiar, telephone-like distortion frequently warms vocals and instruments alike. Drones and Sirens haunt from both ends of the frequency spectrum. It is a complete experience. A mature sense of structure skillfully coddles the raw chaos.

I predict the journey it takes each listener on will be totally unique, immeasurably useful and changing; thus, I would recommend this album to anyone.” (Luca de la Lune)

“The dissonant tracks are particularly powerful, with the anti-war cry of “Mount the Brooms, Witches!” and feminist mythography of the Kali piece feeling urgent, necessary, and a fitting adaptation of Second Wave and Beat imagery to a contemporary call to arms (…she…she…she…she…this is a FEMALE speaking). The haunting chant of the anthropocene deathwish song really hits, too: To never have enough, be enough, get enough… Preach, Anne, preach.” (Maria Cichosz)

Order the LP and digital download here.