Failing Kansas

by Mikel Rouse

Failing Kansas cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 1995
  • Label: New Tone
  • Country: United States
  • Length: 1:12:52
  • Community rating: 3.68/5 from 4 ratings

Album Notes & Community Reviews

Operating as a highly innovative, multi-layered totalist monodrama, Mikel Rouse adapts Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' directly into a dizzying vocal experiment. 'Failing Kansas' utilizes entirely unaccompanied, heavily multi-tracked spoken-word performances locked into incredibly complex, interlocking polyrhythms. It is a profoundly tense, deeply chilling exploration of murder narratives strictly through highly mathematical vocal phasing.

Genres

Descriptors: violence, rhythmic, crime, history, uncommon-time-signatures, polyrhythm, vocal, narrative, storytelling, ensemble, avant-garde

Tracklist

  1. Prelude (5:03)
  2. The Last To See Them Alive (10:18)
  3. Like My Dream (5:46)
  4. Persons Unknown (10:46)
  5. A Brief History of My Boys Life (6:49)
  6. Answer (11:23)
  7. The Private Diary of Perry Edward Smith (7:19)
  8. The Corner (10:02)
  9. In Cold Blood (5:22)

Credits

More from Mikel Rouse: full discography