Performs Monument Maker

Description

The first recording from the duo of multi-award-winning Scottish author David Keenan and Bruce Russell, guitarist of the greatest underground rock band of the late 20th century, New Zealand's The Dead C, was recorded live in Christchurch, New Zealand, as part of the WORD festival in August 2023. A series of live improvised sets pairing readings from Keenan's monolithic and critically acclaimed modernist masterpiece, Monument Maker (White Rabbit 2021), with Russell's guitar and electronics, the music takes off on the kind of post-VU fantasy of punk-primitive free music laid down by Russell in projects like A Handful of Dust while expanding Russell's no-technique blues with scalpel-sharp riffs and informal blats of pure electricity that match the text’s religious erotomania. Keenan reads with shamanic intensity and sonorous, incantatory rhythm, while Russell evokes the very ghost of the book straight out of the sky.