Stephen Oliver’s voice resonates with strength and passion. With the highly original music of Matt OttleyΒ this CDΒ transports us across soundscapes of harmony and disharmony, life and death, peace and violence.
Stephen Oliverβs voice packs all the tonal shifts of a heavy-duty gearbox. The resonance is bedrock; Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas, Ken Nordine rolled into one.
Matt Ottleyβs compositions make for a collaboration of high originality, moving effortlessly through modern classical, rock, blues, and jazz notation.
Oliverβs poems challenge, delight, and entertain. Beat for beat, groove for groove, Oliver & Ottley perfectly counterpoint one another. The words and the music deliver exactly what this recording promises: aΒ King Hit.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
King Hit is a diverse selection of poetry beautifully read by Stephen Oliver with musical accompaniment by Matthew Ottley … The editorial quality of the product is excellent.β
β ABC Enterprises
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Elsewhere has always had a soft spot for poetry/spoken word and interesting writing, and in the past has posted from the likes of Selina Tusitala Marsh who is a compelling Pasifika voice, and from the AUP book/double disc Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance, as well as posting interviews with, or articles about, writers such as Beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti, black-British reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, revolutionary US writer Amiri Baraka and others.
In fact we have a whole section of this on-line magazine dedicated to Writing in Elsewhere.
Perhaps this collection by writer/broadcaster Oliver could more correctly be in that section, but the music by Australian multi-instrumentalist Matt Ottley is so integral to the conception that we acknowledge it here.
Oliver has spent so much time in Australia (and elsewhere) that although he is much published, he is barely known here — yet there is something immediate familiar about his voice: it has the authoritative tone of a news-reader (well, one from days gone by I suppose) and indeed he has made a living doing voice-overs and the like.
But his words — delivered in a masculine, assured, compelling manner — reach from evocations of ancient poetics to images from the contemporary world with an ease which is admirable and can, at times, be usefully disconcerting. He wastes little time on niceties and although there maybe wisps of nostalgia they are fleeting.stephen
This is poetry with the impact of a news report (“Emblem for Dead Youth”), base politics grabbed by the throat and shaken (“Stalin’s Cotton Socks”), descriptive phrases which are instantly memorable (“a Delft-glazed moon”) and references with a global reach (“Hania”, “A Simple Tale”) which never talk down to the listener. Earthy but intellectual, considered and gripping.
And with baroque piano figures, rock guitars, driving percussion, cello or exotic oud from Ottley –as well as soprano Hester Hannah in a couple of pieces — this is poetry as music in your ear. Not always easy, never pretentiously arch, this is a collection that reveals its many layers slowly — and will take you on many (and diverse) journeys.
β http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
It works beautifully: the music is entirely
appropriate to the mood of the poems in every case, and the readings are often superb. I particularly liked ‘Braidwood’, “Gaudeamus Igitur”, and the low, jazz rhythms .. of the “Ballad of Miss Goodbar.β
β Dr Nicholas Reid