Mockup for Sydney Highrise Variations poetry score

As we begin our final, frenetic push toward completing the recordings for our poetry score to The Sydney Highrise Variations by Les Murray, it becomes time to assemble ye olde dread online mockup, so as to have - all in one place, for everyone working on the project to consult - a snapshot of where we are now for each of the 27 tracks that will go on the final record.

We will release the final CD on Friday, Nov. 13 at The Luminary Center for the Arts, along with an Art Invitational where artists respond to the poem. The work will be sold on silent auction, with proceeds split equally between artist, venue and our organization Poetry Scores.

The Sydney Highrise Variations

1. “Far above the tidal turnaround”

2. “Transients at speed”

3. “Inked in by scaffolding and workers”

4. “On its vaulting drum”

5. "Also, it's a space probe"

6. "They docked at apogee”

7. "The new city standing on its haze"

8. "Repeat their lines"

9. The peajacket era"

10."Vanished from the central upsurge"

11. “Hot-air money driers”

12. “In the land of veneers”

13. The starving spirit is fed upon the heart

14. "Employment and neckties and ruling themes"

15. "In ambiguous battle at length"

16. “The C19-20”

17. "The cantilevered behometh"

18. "In the age of piety"

19. "We must fly in potent circles"

20. "Breath of catching up"

21. "Might end and mutate and persist"

22. “Skill and the shadow”

23. "To be solar I must be nuclear"

24. "Six hundred glittering and genteel towns"

25. "Modernity's strange anger"

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My coproducer Matt Fuller and I will shuttle through this mockup this evening in a phone conference and assemble final notes on what we need to do to finish this thing. It's ever a challenge, when the core musicians for the project are dispersed between St. Louis, Nashville, Los Angeles and Chicago.

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The image is an architectural drawing by Lij, which will form the basis of the cover art.