Sole and Ravi Zupa – The Pyre

Sole’s first book, The Pyre, (a collaboration with Ravi Zupa) is now available for pre-order (ships August 17). Check out the video trailer featuring audio, text, & visual samples of the project.

The Pyre:

“The Pyre” is a collaboration between Tim Holland & Ravi Zupa. It is a seventy-two page illustrated epic poem with an accompanying full length “audiobook/album.” Holland & Zupa evoke the confusion, violence, hope, and voice of twelve thousand years spent digging in the mud.

Ravi Zupa is Denver’s rare resident poet-painter, sculptor, film artist, activist & intellectual. Through his refusal to commit to one discipline Ravi has built himself a broad tool box to draw from. Though his main focus and skill resides in drawing and painting, he is 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 Tim Holland, founder and ex member of anticon, is the embodiment of DIY anti-establishment experimental hip-hop. Over the course of fifteen years he has released 15+ albums under the monickers of sole, sole & the skyrider band, & mansbestfriend. His radical approach to hip-hop songwriting has earned him countless accolades and a worldwide cult following.

The visual inspirations for “The Pyre” come from the persuasive art of propaganda as it appears throughout history and in all geographical areas. It is a series of original drawings by Zupa that give added dimension to the text using familiar styles from the German Renaissance, Japanese Block art, Religious Iconography from Europe, Asia and pre-Columbian South America, & 20th century revolutionary propaganda.

Holland’s far reaching story of civilization is told in the language of ancient myth. Drawing on influences as diverse as Keats, Villon, Debord, Byron & The Epic of Gilgamesh. The poem touches on everything from work, time, human interaction, invention, “progress,” & ethics. The result is a melting pot of past/present/future motifs, expressing the timeless theme; “the only craft we have perfected is the ungentle one.”

The album is a cross between an audiobook, a herzog soundtrack, & an instrumental album. Featuring 20-plus songs recorded using analog 8-track & 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.”

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