"You hunger for knowledge like a thirsty fish" was anadmonition by a Zen master to his pupil and an apttitle for this double LP by The Hafler Trio which created, collected and juxtaposed the sounds of religious observanceand persuasion. Fish, apparently, have a memory span of 16 seconds. Fast-changing cut-ups of mediababble segue into a muezzin call, shouting crowds, pure frequency and tone.
   At this part, The Hafler Trio were extending Gysin And Burroughs's Third Mind and cut-up theory into a new Sound. The Third Mind connects two apparently unrelated Elements (people as well as any specific subject/matter) to create a third "unspoken" meaning that favours intuition over reason; as Burroughs explains,"to make explicit a psyche-sensory process that is going on all the time anyway", breaking down the either/or proposition of Aristotelian logic, "one of the great shackles of Western civilization."

The photograph, taken by Ben Ponton, shows a telephone cradled on the flock-wall of the beat Hotel in Paris, where the cut-up technique was reputedly invented by Brion Gysin in 1959. The typeface Erbar was photocopied from a 1930s catalogue and retouched. The colour shift to green was achieved by switching the cyan and magenta films from the four-colour separation. A wrap-round sticker sealed the cover and included the evocative track titles, eg - a loud egg, the blind table, and elderly testament...

Jon Wozencroft

The Graphic Language of Neville Brody
Thames And Hudson (c) 1994