SWIFTY LAZARUS' debut full-length CD, THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE,, is a groundbreaking fusion of spoken word, musique actuelle, techno and hip hop beats, Jazz, and wonky samples from radio and film. The 65.55 minute song-cycle (two years in the making) is almost a possible world soundtrack for a feature Orson Welles never made. The group was inspired by Welles' Mercury Theatre innovations in sound and performance, as well as Golden Age radio's plays and war broadcasts. Other influences include Hitchcock's fascination with fetishism, anxiety and murder (not to mention Bernard Hermann's haunting insistent strings), and avant-garde pop and alternative musics, from McLure to McLaren. Equally significant for both Walsh, composer, and Swift, poet (who both perform on the CD) was the example of Glenn Gould, as master craftsman of edited and arranged radio docudramas, whose contrapuntal voices opened the way for seeing spoken word as a primarily recorded art form separate from both page and stage, existing in the medium of disembodied broadcasts, and yet part of the continuum from Churchill's speeches to Fortner Anderson's disturbing, complex monologues. A critic in Budapest has called SWIFTY LAZARUS "media DJs" for how they sample and play with current events and recontextualize ideology and politics in the light of conspiracy (and post-modern) theory. This is poetics as performance, play, paranoia and protest. The rich, disturbing textures and symphonic structure of the CD suggest Wagner as filtered through Loony Tunes, by way of WW2 propaganda.

Todd Swift is one of the founders of spoken word in Montreal. Lately he has resided in Hungary and Paris, where he has composed two books of poems, Budavox (DC Books 1999) and his latest book Café Alibi, being rreleased this fall. In another of his incarnations, Swift is an anthologist, surveying and compiling the works of poets from around the world.

Swift works with Tom Walsh-a jazz musician/composer who tours internationally most of the year. Walsh is the founder of NOMA, and leads/co-leads five other contemporary groups; three of them duos: Walsh/Underhill, with Toronto's sax genie, Richard Underhill; Midi Tapant (High Noon), a digital/acoustic adventure with Pierre Tanguay and "found-sound"; Pots & Pans, a six piece modern cabaret group, Royal Jelly, an exclusive hiphopjazz party band, and Swifty Lazarus. Walsh is featured on more than 40 releases, both internationally & nationally, from such popular names as the Cowboy Junkies, Barenaked Ladies, the Polka Dogs, Bran Van 3000 and Bobby Wiseman, to modernists such as Paul Cram/Julius Hemphill, Gerry Hemingway, Michael Vlatkovich, Jean Derome, René Lussier, Pierre Cartier, Normand Guilbeault and a healthy dose of CD releases by Ambiances Magnétiques.

TOM WALSH - SAMPLER, TROMBONE, PROGRAMMING, COMPOSED MUSIC TODD SWIFT - SPOKEN WORD, VOICE PERFORMANCE, POETRY & TEXTS

FEATURING

NORMAND GUILBEAULT

CATHERINE KIDD

ADEENA KARASICK

EARL PASTKO

POTS & PANS

NOMA

ADONYI ADRIENN

NATHANIEL MERCIER-WALSH

Read a review