One and One Less is the first collaboration between David Grubbs and Eli Keszler and the first release in the UDPR series. One and One Less consists of a performance and an installation, both of which draw upon a single source text—David Grubbs’s ongoing One Poem, and the LP is split between these two forms: the live performance for reader (Grubbs) and percussionist (Keszler), and a recording of the installation version from the MIT List Visual Arts Center.
The original installation (at the MIT List Visual Arts Center from October 10, 2014 to January 4, 2015 as part of the show Open Tunings) used recorded excerpts from One Poem to trigger a range of mechanical strikes within seven custom-made, sculptural sound boxes, each of which contained an elaborate mechanism of motors and speakers built by Keszler that acoustically filtered the voice, creating a constantly changing composition—one equally verbal and percussive. Subsequent to the live performance, the installation at MIT was intended as an aural afterimage, in which the clean visual disposition of the gallery space was contradicted by the intensity of the acoustically produced sound field.
This LP is printed in a limited edition of 300 copies and includes an insert with the text of David Grubb’s poem-in-progress.
UDPR is a vinyl record series for the sound of poetry, curated by Michael Barron for Ugly Duckling Presse
