In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Kelly Krumrie’s novel Concentric Macroscope is semantically inventive and captivating.
Claire Donato wrote of the book:
“Channeling the dexterity of Renee Gladman’s ‘thinking texts’ alongside the lucidity and pacing of Jenny Offill, Kelly Krumrie’s CONCENTRIC MACROSCOPE uses language to build architectures that generate a world. This is a book of the unconscious, one that cultivates a deepened relationship to not-knowing. In stunning, sparse prose—an ether of technology and longing—Krumrie thinks analytically about what we cannot yet hear in our own language, and in languages not yet invented.”
In her own words, here is Kelly Krumrie’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Concentric Macroscope:
Concentric Macroscope is about transmissions—about radio waves and about communication, what’s said and unsaid. It’s about the transmission of information, and about echoes, and repetition. It’s about the invention of languages. In the realm of a vibratory knowing, the narrator experiences comfort, failure, and heartbreak. She’s convinced her waiting, and her inaction, will get her something. This playlist is composed of a few things I listened to while working on this book, and some I found only after, or they were sent to me by people who were also interested in the book. Each of these songs in some ways engages with these ideas (and others), and it follows a bit of a trajectory that might map to the course of the book itself.
Dean Blunt, “as long as ropes unravel fake rolex will travel”
Is this a Meredith Monk sample? (Yes.) Vocalizations of a kind of beeping but not the sound of a beep, an imitation, or the sound of a sound, as if referencing an instrument or something else previously heard, but itself.
A C Marias, “Just Talk”
If only they could talk! Send a transmission through the air. The narrator refers to a time when she was working with a group of nuns, and one of them had gone missing. The album this song is on is titled One of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing). (Actually—many of the album titles are in conversation as well. I’ll begin to list them.)
Daily Toll, “Belljar Convenience,” A Profound Non-Event
Sometimes it’s convenient to stay jarred.
Who Cares?, “Discipline,” Who Cares?
A song called “Discipline” by a band called “Who Cares?”? This is just what I’m after—
Algebra Suicide, “Let’s Transact,” The Secret Like Crazy
This song feels like it’s about power and secrets, making deal, and a kind of confidence the narrator would think she has, or would be a little jealous of.
Linda Perhacs, “Parallelograms,” Parallelograms
My editors at Crop Circle made their own playlist for Concentric Macroscope, and I listened to it while we were working on edits and design. This song was on it (as well as others by Broadcast and Clarissa Connelly, who also appear here). This song is so unexpected and strange—stick with it. Boy, I do like thinking about parallelograms.
Broadcast, “Tears in the Typing Pool,” Tender Buttons
Concentric Macroscope is also a book about writing, making something through writing language, writing on a chalkboard, and passing notes—so this song works well in content and in mood, and it circles back to the Dean Blunt.
Cocteau Twins, “Pandora (For Cindy),” Treasure
I love the entwined voices here, and layering, and I love that I have no idea what they’re saying (without looking it up, which I haven’t). (I’m liking that some of the songs on this playlist are short and some are long.)
Clarissa Connelly, “De Novo,” Tech Duinn
There are two songs from this album I would include (but I am limiting myself to one)—the other is “Faced Him and Gave In.” Both have a kind of… coming from the gut, or maybe from deep in the lungs, that I see the narrator reaching as she reaches, climbs, lights up in light of everything. (And the I I I I I…)
Carly Simon, “Why (12” version),” Why
I’m sorry—this one is such a jam. And I feel like I really feel her! And for our fearless narrator!
Kate Bush, “Suspended in Gaffa,” The Dreaming
This song feels insane to me (see the music video, too) but in the very, very best way: a confusing feeling of being strung up, tied up, tangled, dangling—and still wanting it all.
Laurie Anderson, “Let X=X,” Big Science
Satellites are out tonight.
BONUS TRACK: Larum, Micah Frank, & Chet Doxas, “Silva Ignis,” The Music of Hildegard von Bingen (Part One)
I really wanted to end this on the Laurie Anderson because I just love the way that song ends (and she says, “I gotta go”), but I would be remiss not to include a composition by our original nun conlanger, Hildegard.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Kelly Krumrie’s playlist for her book Math Class
Kelly Krumrie is the author of Concentric Macroscope, from Crop Circle Press, and the books No Measure and Math Class, which were published by Calamari Archive. Her writing can be found in journals such as Coma, Cleveland Review of Books, 3:AM, Your Impossible Voice, Full Stop, and Black Warrior Review, as well as in the anthology Cybernetics, Or Ghosts? From 2020-22, she wrote figuring, a column on math and science in art and literature, for Tarpaulin Sky Magazine. She serves as a contributing editor for Annulet: A Journal of Poetics and as an editor for A Row of Trees: The Journal of the Sonic Art Research Unit. She holds a PhD in English & Literary Arts from the University of Denver and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.