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Corona SmithThe Zoo and Logical Times, second issue, an audio magazine.

Visit the Zoo and Logical Times at seethestrangething.blogspot.com

or send an email

An audio magazine, with contributions from near and far. Created in 2004 by Corona Smith. With financial assistance from the Humber Mouth Literature Festival. Material Submitted by Artists, Musicians, random people from the telephone book, Heroes and Anti-Heroes. Give it a listen and leave a review now.

UPDATED: Added a pdf of 22 page booklet that accompanied the cd's, includes artwork, track listings etc. The pdf will print out on A4 sheets and will need to be trimmed to cd size. Booklet is pageanated.

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Notes

Here it is the second Zoo & Logical Times. As you may have noticed this is an audio magazine. Like its predecessor, this issue was brought together by a mixture of chance, serendipity & plain old asking. The call went out, like a wolf at the moon, asking for “...field recordings, spoken word & experiments in sound...”. You may well be listening to the resulting deluge as you read this tiresome introduction.

Admittedly the invitation wasn’t particularly specific, the idea was to keep it as open as possible so there might be a wide response.

When asked if there should be text or a picture accompanying his contribution, Helmut Lemke replied “Its sound, it speaks for itself.” A little girl I know discovered some time ago that some letters appearing in words are silent, perhaps not surprisingly this led to the idea that all letters are silent, at least until they are spoken. Somewhere between Helmut & the little girl, there is a great wisdom.

Only the other night I was at a friends listening to Bird Song, slowed somewhat, & before long the song became howlings, barks, cries, shouts, all too human sounds, canine, bovine. Slowed again the song became huge, mournful, deep, like that of the whale. The saying, ‘As above, so below’ seemed apt, indeed I think I remarked as much at the time.

A certain uneasiness accompanied my journey home, I’m not sure why. It was a very balmy night, still, overcast & warm. A hint of strangeness to come on heavy air, so I decided to concentrate, that bit extra, on my cycling. It must have been about 2 a.m, when I rounded the corner into my street, & there, large as life, in fact a bit bigger, was a man, arms akimbo in the middle of the road, facing east, shaking his head violently from side to side, eyes rolled into the back of his head, chanting.

After the immediate surprise at this vision had subsided, one of my first thoughts was to go home, get my recording equipment & document the poor chaps ravings for this very publication. However I decided not to indulge that particular inclination & left him to his mystical trance, & hopefully not, heavier traffic. I remembered that very morning the suns face would be traversed by venus, & decided as the relatively rare phenomena would begin at 6:15 a.m, to allow it to occur in my sleep.

Anyway, I digress, the editing of material submitted was minimal & all works received have been represented, apart from two pieces the first was from Lee Patterson & was called ‘Blue Nun, 250ml’ , for the moment we can only speculate as to its contents as the compact disc didn’t work, the second was from Robert Lewis and was called ‘Clean : part2’ unfortunately the disc skipped terribly & I decided the piece was unlistenable. My apologies to you both.

Thankyou to all the people who contributed to this collection, which I believe forms a satisfyingly complete attempt at a description of these most Zoo & Logical Times.

‘Life is Sound!’

Corona Smith, Hull, 2004

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Reviewer: Corona Smith - - February 14, 2007
Subject: A Review of the Zoo and Logical Times, Issue two, an audio magazine...
The review below by Dave Windass was for the Humber mouth Literature Festival 2004 (He is reviewing the hard copy):

Zoo & Logical Times

Corona Smith kindly dropped a copy of issue 2 of the Zoo & Logical Times in at my place of work. The audio magazine arrived under plain wrapper, prompting much excitement in the office. The excitement turned to frenzy when I emptied the contents. 2 CDs! A natty little booklet! A shot-down half-sized copy of issue 1 to put this Humber Mouth Special Commission in context.

I quickly realised that Corona had a crazy streak. "Some of the print is very small and eye recommend the use of a good I glass," she adveyesed for issue 1 reading.

So, issue 2. A total of 55 tracks, a mish-mash of mashed-up spoken word, songs and didgeridooness. Corona invited people to submit field recordings, spoken word and experiments in sound and every contributor has embraced that broad brief.

I'll have to confess that, although I've listened to both CDs a couple of times (thus annoying the people I work alongside, as it was all tumbling out of my PC) I'm still a long way from taking everything in.

First impressions, though, are that there are some gems among the hideous noise and cut 'n' shunted 'n' bastardised Robert Kilroy Silk.

Coming out as an early favourite is Walter Ogleby and Andy Richardson's The Eugene Perm, an anecdotal interview about life in a hair salon so dull that it's fascinating.

There's also a stretched out intestine style mass of recordings of psychics at work by Baker Street (or at Baker Street, I'm not sure) - crazy ramblings on Princess Diana and a hamster called George and one psychic trying to convince a client that they hear voices. "No, I don't," comes the answer.

Of the two discs (one called Day, the other Night) Night is the more accessible. But I suspect that's not really the point. Much of it is good, some of it is annoying (my partner threatened to hurl the CD player against the wall after one track too many) and a lot of it - particularly that by Slippedisco - is just plain bonkers. Love it.