"What Is This Place"
Best
CD of 2007 "Okay, I'm supposed to be
reviewing books. But "What Is This Place" by Ian Ferrier
is spoken word at its finest. Ferrier's layered sound is engaging. The
CD, featuring the five-woman choir The Diviners, as well as Sam Shalabi
and Kathy Kennedy, blends Ferrier's haunting poetry with sweet musical
improvisations. Treat yourself to it in 2008!"
MJ Stone - HOUR magazine
This
album has the creativity of an artist who has been working on their sound
for a while and has fine-tuned it with success. My favorite part of listening
was when every so often a line would resonate with me and bring up a lot
of thoughts and memories. And in my mind, that is the mark of good poetry.
Feminist Review (Feb.2008)
This is jazz poetry, to pigeon hole it, a remarkable blend of spoken word eerily comparable with the legend that is Jack Kerouac but with wonderful musicianship beneath. Every piece draws the listener closer in to this Canadian’s world and evokes more and more interest and curiosity as you drift in and out of the album.
Steve Williams - UK Vibe (July 30, 2009)
Here's the link to the entire review:
http://ukvibe.org/index.php/sans_frontier/
"Exploding Head Man":
(other
spoken word CDs) leave me searching for the heart of spoken word, for
Kerouac's legacy of instant nostalgia and cathartic aggression, an insistence
on the music of words that, nevertheless, acknowledges the unique possibilities
of language.
I find it in Ian Ferrier's Exploding Head Man.
National Post
"Even
without instrumentation, the poetry of Exploding Head Man-heady,
impassioned, sometimes hallucinogenic stuff that regularly makes nods
to the Beat work he grew up on-has sonic power. Dreamy words soothe, lusty
sentences steam, and with a delivery that's often more gentle than the
imagery it yields (even at its most volatile, Ferrier's vocalizations,
with their warm, cushiony and almost child-like diction, scream pseudo
innocence), his spoken word is a complex song in and of itself."
The Gazette
