I still thumb through the various treats, much like a child near the end of Christmas day. Tinkering. Looking. Playing. Searching for newness, after the gift’s been opened. Many themes are present in Singing to the Deaf, and each reader should be left to their own discoveries.
The level of craft amazes me. Each relic has been constructed with painstaking care. Lyrically, the words leap out at you with delicate typographic execution, but there’s no loyalty to style here. Singing to the Deaf may borrow from familiar vernacular, but the cumulative effect does not call out Swiss, New Wave, or DeStijl. If comparisons can be made, we can turn to the Dadaists with their radical typographic experiments. I feel Tzara and Arp’s influence, but Rustand leaves his own signature without a doubt.
On its website, Singing to the Deaf is hailed as a collection of lyrical songs. I like that analogy. It’s not pop music, and it’s not alternative. If compared to any musical genre, Singing to the Deaf is very much jazz. It’s free form jazz and it’s playful. Think Keith Jarrett’s Inside Out. The printed matter you explore will hold your interest. Once you’ve exhausted it, you shelve it, but will return to it again in a matter of time because inside you feel as if something’s been left unturned.
Singing to the Deaf by Paul Rustand
Contents Vary
Publisher: Widgets & Stone
...what Paul is able to pull off is incredible: rather then visualizing music (something all record cover designers have been involved in for decades) he actually manages to stimulate an emotion in the viewer, an emotion not unlike the one you feel when listening to good music.
On Sep.08.2004 at 10:47 AM