Burroughs, William S.

Break Through in Grey Room

Brussels, Belgium: Sub Rosa, 2013. First Edition Thus. LP. (Schottlaender E5, pg. 108). William S. Burroughs’ “Break Through in Grey Room” consists of mid-60s cut-up tape machine recordings made by WSB in various locations in London, Paris, & elsewhere. As James Grauerholz writes on the back cover blurb of the LP, “…now the wild boys were in the streets, in London and Paris too, and Burroughs was inspired to hope that the world could really change. In the creative world-switchboard of the Beat Hotel, in various London hotels, in a house in the Arab Quarter of Tangier, he experimented with tape recordings, hoping to cut the pre-recorded time line of present time, and let the future leak through.” Grauerholz continues with a note on the importance of polymath associate of WSB, Ian Sommerville. “Many of these tapes are as much Ian Sommerville’s work as Burroughs, or even more…Ian was a sorcerer’s apprentice, and the other sorcerer was the late Brion Gysin. The development of all the early cut-up techniques was a pure collaboration between Burroughs and Gysin. It was Brion who led the way on a crusade to rub out the word, and with Anthony Balch the cut-up was applied to film, in “Towers Open Fire,” “The-Cut-Ups,” and “Ghosts at No. 9.” This reissue can be rightly categorized as a First Edition Thus: it first appeared in 1986 (also released in Belgium by Sub Rosa) and on CD in 1994. It returned to LP in the edition offered here [a limited run of 800 copies] in 2013. This copy is sealed in shrink-wrap, as new. As New. [Item #4157]

Price: $40.00