Back in 1997, revered music producer and hall-of-fame posse-gatherer Hal Willner released a collection of spoken-word poetry celebrating the work of Edgar Allan Poe called Closed on Account of Rabies. Within the record you’ll hear Christopher Walken reading The Raven, Iggy Pop doing Tell-Tale Heart, and Jeff Buckley reciting Ulalume, among plenty of other notable guests (gotta love Abel Ferrara closing the collection with another excerpt of The Raven).
Created as much in homage to Poe as it is to Willner, then, is fellow super-producer Kramer’s new revisionist version of that album, To One in Paradise. This time around the guest list is equally diverse, with Thurston and his wife Eva Moore landing alongside famously non-vocal magician Teller on the record’s front half, and Lydia Lunch filling its back half along with archival audio from Allen Ginsberg—all with musical accompaniment provided by the project’s mastermind. “I think Poe wanted his poems to be creatures of possession, like a mythical animal that could charge straight through you and leave you changed forever,” Kramer explains. “I invited Poe’s words to enter me, and the music simply rose up to meet it while always remaining humbly below in a supportive role, always in the dark—‘ambient’ in the sense that it could be heard or ignored.”
Before the record drops this Friday, we’re getting another preview in the form of Joan as Police Woman’s reading of the collection’s title track, “To One in Paradise.” According to Kramer, this collaboration was among the project’s easiest, with the reading and music coming together in under an hour. “As Joan began to recite the poem, the music immediately emerged in my head,” Kramer recalls. “It began with a single note, gently repeating itself. I heard it all as Joan was reading that tragic temple of words that Poe created, like a prayer. I kept thinking about the act of praying, the theme of impossible devotion to someone or something that no longer exists. It was as if the music was already there, already composed, and all I had to do was play it.”
Check it out below, and pre-save Edgar Allan Poe - To One in Paradise (for Hal Willner) here.
