On Halloween 2024 I released the third album of spoken word poetry with music called Song of the Beasts. The music is a collection of the more than thirty + songs I’ve created in the last year for the podcast The Poe Underground. The title Song of the Beasts comes from the second “song” and is a poem of the same name by British poet Rupert Brooke. I finally settled on the title after playing around with different designs for an album cover. The image of beast mayhem in a city street struck me as being vivid and ironic and found it to be the perfect match for the title.
Both Song of the Beasts and Radio Night Poems, were assembled and mastered around the same time, so you can consider these two albums to be companion pieces. Of course, all of the songs on both albums were recorded a various times, and often one after the other. The choice of songs was made based on its relation to the other pieces. On both albums I wanted the songs to flow from one into another, presenting different moods, ideas, and tones. The albums are meant to be an experience, rather than a collection of songs that have no relation to the other. Radio Night Poems is closer to a “concept album” than Song of the Beasts, as the songs on RNP were definitely chosen based on their similar theme of eventide happenings. Song of the Beasts songs were chosen mostly based on their sonic signature and relation to one another.
The poems of well known poets Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Robert Herrick and the famous poem Invictus appear on the album along with my own works. The genres of music changes according to the poem hopefully without drawing much attention to the disparities in styles. As I have previously stated on the podcast, The Poe Underground is about the music just as much as it is the about the poetry. Both art forms music be equally strong and meet in the middle. You may listen to Song of the Beasts in its entirety here for free. I hope you enjoy it.
D.K. Mckenzie – November 26, 2024