At the time of its release in early 1975, unpitched speech was not taken for granted as musical material by composers, nor was there a widespread movement of sound poetry in the U.S. This now-legendary anthology, therefore, was a novelty and for some an inspiring revelation. Long prized by collectors (it has been out-of-print since 1984), this album of sound art made of spoken words inspired a burst of related activity during the decade of its circulation. A younger generation of American composers and poets began to adopt speech music, pre-dating rap, poetry slams, or even the storied emergence of performance artist Laurie Anderson.

For each of the participants on this CD, the inspiration and permission to work in this medium came from entirely different sources. But the idea was in the air, and before the Seventies came to an end, the U.S. was filled with composers, poets, visual artists, performance artists, choreographers and others, enthusiastically embracing concepts that took root with the Dada experiments of Tzara, Hausmann and Schwitters in Europe half a century earlier.

Thirty years after its first appearance, Other Minds is pleased to present the first CD version of 10 + 2. The original version on LP was only the second album (in a series of about 50) released on the now-defunct 1750 Arch Records label, founded by Thomas Buckner in Berkeley, CA.

Our thanks to the Aaron Copland Fund for Music for its generous support in this reissue endeavor and to the artist participants, all but one of whom, Brion Gysin, still are living and creating their unique work as of this date.

Charles Amirkhanian
San Francisco
October 21, 2003