Perfect Sound Forever

 

Fist

KIP HANRAHAN

"THIS SONG COULD BE RIVERS..."
Ed. Colin Buttimer
(December 2010)


Kip Hanrahan: musical director and producer, éminence grise whose portraits are most often captured in half light, face partially hidden in the darkness or obscured by a hand (anything to conjure some mystery, wrong-foot the obvious). Shadow poet of New York angst and lover of Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, points south...

(Again)

Kip Hanrahan: Label owner (American Clavé), sometime percussionist, speaker of intense, breathless prose, incredible networker (must be - given the number and breadth of contributors he marshals), New York refugee, curator of musics diverse, chronicler of desire, friction, fear and the will to violence... (I love that the chorus of the final song on Hanrahan's album 'Tenderness' are the words "Don't fuck with me..." - expressed with varying degrees of vehemence, over and over...)

American Clavé: a miracle of a label - who else would release Teo Macero and DNA and Astor Piazzolla, and fashion settings for poets Ishmael Reed, Paul Haines, Piri Thomas and Miguel Piñero?

(And again)

Kip Hanrahan: The Google dance reveals a digital footprint that's shallow at best. (Somehow that's a relief, absolving us from the tedious sifting of questionable sources.)


  Talking about Kip
Jeff Jackson and Jeff Golick

Plenty of titles you could hang round his neck...
Jason Gross

Kip chose to be filed under Hanrahan
Peter Ridley

Love is Like a Cigarette
John L. Walters

The Street Poetry of Regressive Loops (Or Vice Versa)
Marc Weidenbaum



Kip Hanrahan


* Though these pages are remorselessly black and white and grey, seek out Hanrahan's music - in one of those endangered record shops, at a friend's house, on We7 (or Spotify or Last.fm or Pandora or... ) and discover the rich colour of his music. Dive in, let chance guide you.

** This Song Could Be Rivers... is a quote from the song Trust Me Yet. It's on the 1983 album Desire Develops An Edge.

*** You need to know more. Visit American Clavé. Read a short interview in Jazz Times. Watch this recording of Busses From Heaven on YouTube.


ALSO SEE COLIN BUTTIMER'S WEBSITE



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