Downtown Manhattan -- that is, Manhattan south of 14th Street -- has had more than its share of artistic cult figures over the years, and Joseph Smalkowski, aka Copernicus, is among them. Copernicus' eccentric brand of spoken word started earning him a small underground cult following in downtown Manhattan venues in the late ‘70s, but it wasn't until 1984 that he fully took the plunge as a recording artist with his debut album, Nothing Exists (which was originally released as a vinyl LP and was reissued on CD by MoonJune in 2010). Early in his career, Copernicus performed without musicians -- which is the norm for most spoken word artists -- but it didn't take him long to realize the power of combining words with music. And on Nothing Exists, he is backed by a full band of musicians. A variety of influences can be heard on this 1984 recording, ranging from punk to avant-garde jazz to avant-garde classical. The music, however, isn't very abrasive -- edgy, certainly, but not abrasive. It's music that works well for Copernicus, who brings a lot of passion to his abstract spoken word performances. More than once, Copernicus' passionate rants have been likened to the work of a Shakespearean actor -- and that Shakespearean element is alive and well on stream-of-consciousness tracks like "Nagasaki," "Atomic Nevermore," "Blood," and "Quasimodo," all of which helped set the stage for an interesting recording career. Copernicus, like a lot of avant-garde artists, can be quite self-indulgent. But that's part of the fun -- at least if one isn't afraid of the cerebral or the experimental. Copernicus' recording career was off to a promising start with Nothing Exists.
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