“Bold curating now about bold curating then, Deep Time runs deep and feels vital with satisfying, intermingling art forms.”
“Mitchener’s passions are deeply personal but also resonate with a broader community of artists, curators, writers and researchers who, through sonic and listening strategies, grapple with the question of what it means to pay attention in a world where this capacity is increasingly under threat.”
” (…) it is both the epitome of a solo record and somehow simultaneously its undoing.”
“(…) this is the aural equivalent of gazing into a crystal-clear night sky.”
“It’s mischievous, transformative material that helps bring lively, confounding poetry into new dimensions. Anyone who’s interested in all the many forms of sound poetry will find a huge amount of inspiration right here.”
Otoroku DL/LP
“unknown tongue” might be the most impressive piece of all. Multitracking her vocals, she conjures up a drama of communication beyond language: her two characters seem to meet, argue, scheme, get frustrated, hit an impasse, muddle through, and finally begin to play and harmonise with each other.
“The evening culminated in Mitchener bringing together all the night’s musicians and all of them wheeling into free jazz reaching a crescendo from Mitchener that shook Oto’s golden ceiling filaments and had its audience screaming in delight. Powerful, indelible, of an ilk no stranger to Oto regulars, but utterly mesmerising and original and even disturbing for any crossing its threshold for the first time.”
“Mitchener’s greatest strength on the album is her ability to say a lot with very little. She reminds us that poetry is not just words, it is something to feel deep within the body.”
Mike Hobart
“The first night of performance artist/vocalist Elaine Mitchener’s two-day Cafe Oto residency delivered articulate spoken-word, shapeshifting sonics and intense free jazz.”
