Sole / Ravi Zupa

The Pyre is a collaboration between Tim Holland and Ravi Zupa--a 72-page illustrated epic poem with an accompanying full-length "audiobook" album. The pair evokes the confusion, violence and hope of 12,000 years spent digging in the mud. Holland's far-reaching story of civilization is told in the language of ancient myth and draws on Keats, Villon, Debord, Byron and The Epic of Gilgamesh. The poem touches on everything from work, time, human interaction, invention, progress and ethics, expressing the eternal theme: "The only craft we have perfected is the ungentle one." The visual inspiration for The Pyre comes from the persuasive art of propaganda as it appears throughout history. Zupa's series of original drawings adds another dimension to the text using familiar styles from the German Renaissance, Japanese block art, religious iconography from Europe, Asia and pre-Columbian South America, and 20th-century revolutionary propaganda. The CD is a cross between an audiobook, a Herzog soundtrack and an instrumental album, and features 14 tracks recorded on an analog eight-track and computer. Continuing in the vein of the critically acclaimed Mansbestfriend series, the would-be instrumental sections merge with the narrative and draw the listener into the beautiful and chaotic world that is The Pyre. Zupa is Denver's resident poet-painter, sculptor, film artist, activist and intellectual, perhaps best known for his complex and stylistically varied music video work for several international bands including Sole, Why?, Themselves and Genghis Tron. Indie hip-hop pioneer Holland, founder and ex-member of Anticon, is the embodiment of DIY / anti-establishment experimental hip-hop. Over the course of a decade and a half, he has released more than fifteen albums as Sole, Sole and the Skyrider Band and Mansbestfriend. His radical approach to hip hop songwriting has earned him countless accolades and a worldwide cult following.