Well this is brilliantly bizarre; pivotal US underground mail-art and poetry figure John M. Bennett spills his guts on Middle America and other matters in a compendium of perplexing and peculiar performances set to fractured flute, marimba, concrète tape works and FM synthesis in a way that reminds us of Laurie Anderson’s hyper-influential ‘Home Of The Brave’ via Fluxus, Max Headroom, Burrroughs, Kurt Schwitters. All newly remastered by contemporary avant conduit Jack Callahan, ‘A Flattened Face Fogs Through’ yields a fascinating cross section of JM Bennett’s vast catalogue, selected and sequenced by John Also Bennett (JAB) from some 15 hours of cassette recordings issued 1986-1995. Encompassing fleeting glimpses of warped and processed tekkers thru to relatively straighter recitals, each juxtaposed with dizzyingly imaginative instrumentals that account for half the interest, the set plunges us into a highly personal perspective on American life in the ‘80s/‘90s, salvaging a poetry from its mundane, “corn walled, strip mall infested landscape” that resonates with Lynch’s evocation of the surreality underfoot USA, and dovetails with early dada and fluxus movements explored by Burroughs (whose manuscripts he edited) and the work of Bennett’s contemporary Richard Kostelanetz. Flattened Face includes recordings of classic Bennett poems like “The Shirt The Sheet”, “Last In Line”, “The Transmission”, and “The Blur”, the sound works presented here were made with a spirited cast of collaborators and conspirators - Byron D. Smith, Ficus Strangulensis, Mike Hovancsek, and Jack Wright to name a few (not to mention JMB’s oldest son William E. Bennett, then a child). They represent a fraction of John M. Bennett’s massive output in this marginal but fertile artistic community, and should stand as a testament both to it and to the underlying strangeness of language, the American Midwest, and of being itself.”.
