Call Me Burroughs
Rhino Word Beat Music

William Steward Burroughs (1914–1997), once hailed as the “Commissioner of Sewers”, could best have been described as a modern day shaman, a sorcerer of words, of language, a visionary plotting the darker recesses of human systems of addiction and control. His writing provides excoriative postcards from the mouth of hell, puzzling dense mazes of coded and broken language, brutal, depraved and unrelenting. He predicted a bleak future for our planet at the hands of a technologically advanced and corrupt society in sharp decline (The Nova Trilogy), gorging itself on its own excesses and revelling in its own repulsiveness, an empire out of control slipping inexorably towards terminal self-annihilation. Does this sound familiar?

Call Me Burroughs was originally released by Gait Froge through her English Bookshop in Paris during the summer of 1965, subsequently released internationally through ESP records in 1966 and relatively recently re-released in CD format in 1995. These were the first of William’s readings to be formally released. They featured excerpts from his novels Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine and Nova Express, recorded and edited by Ian Sommerville in Paris during 1965. This was also the first time that the public had heard his voice, and these recordings provide fine examples of Burroughs’ dry and emotionless midwestern drawl.

There are times during these recordings when, if you close your eyes, you can almost imagine yourself back in the ’30s, listening to an eerie newscast on the family radio. That is, until you get to the part about a junkie narcotics agent whose addiction is so powerful that he actually assimilates other junkies to get a contact high (Bradley the Buyer). Next off the fork Burroughs provides us with a darkly comical tale of biological experimentation presided over by Dr. Schafer the Lobotomy Kid, who parades a human / black centipede hybrid before a vulgar medical board conference (Meeting Of International Conference Of Technological Psychiatry). Then it’s on to burning down the croakers in a search for black smoke yen with the Sailor (The Fish Poison Con).

Further on, the Nova Heat reach across wounded galaxies (Thing Police Keep All Board Room Reports), a summons is given from the rings of Saturn by the Nova Mob (Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin Hear Us Through The Hole In Thin Air) and there are long slimy looks from the District Supervisor along with details of the Mayan caper with the Subliminal Kid (Where You Belong). The District Supervisor then reveals to us the genocidal purposes of the Nova Conspiracy and the Death Dwarf gets an image fix (Inflexible Authority) before the disk finally closes with the Heavy Metal Kid wising up the marks (Uranium Willy).

Burroughs’ writing technique whilst drafting the original texts to many of these recordings (Fish Poison/Thing Police/Mr Bradley) was termed the “cut up” method, developed in conjunction with Brion Gysin during the late 50’s in Tangier, Paris and London. This involved taking a page of text, cutting it into lengthways strips and rearranging the order of the strips to form new text. Burroughs believed that this destruction of the present (pre-sent) language and traditional narrative structure possibly allowed visions of future events to leak through. For the uninitiated this can be a frustrating reading or listening experience at times, as it is far from easy to discern what is actually going on. I tend to find it far more satisfying not to look, or listen, for any ‘traditional’ structure in much of his prose, allowing the language to develop without any pre-conceived notion of its intentions or direction, and let Burroughs’ visceral text provide a road map across the desolate and fractured terrain.

William Burroughs’ influence has undoubtedly ranged far and wide; he is looked upon as the grandfather of the industrial movement and many contemporary artists in the genre such as Coil, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle cite him as a direct influence in creating their work. Listening to these recordings, it is easy to make the connection between their creations.

I’d like to wrap up by saying that these recordings come highly recommended both as an initiatory point for someone unfamiliar with Burroughs’ output and for the seasoned reader. They provide the listener with a compelling, disturbing and mesmerising journey through some of his early seminal work.

Nothing left but the recordings. Turn them off. They are as radioactive as an old joke.

Tracks:
1. Bradley The Buyer
2. Meeting Of International Conference Of Techno…
3. The Fish Poison Con
4. Thing Police Keep All Board Room Reports
5. Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin Hear Us Through The Hole…
6. Where You Belong (Rewrite)
7. Inflexible Authority
8. Uranian Willy (Rewrite)

Link: how it once was

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