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The CD "Futurism & Dada reviewed" is a kind of swindle for unaware people. Not only the tracks are confusing, but also the fragments that are presented as finished pieces do not have a proper explanation. Two examples: Tristan Tzara's poem is a fake version by the group "Ex voco" which has little to do with the original one, whose "score" is perfectly and clearly written throughout. Schwitters' "Ursonate" is just an arbitrary fragment of a work lasting in its complete version around 50 minutes. Even the track numbers (not shown on the back) are wrong (and the CD ends with a "joke" as track 16). Not recommended for a serious approach to the fascinating subject.

I'm writing this largely in response to the only other review for this CD on Amazon, which nearly put me off from buying it. In the end, I'm glad I did.

I'm something of an expert on Dada, having read widely on the subject, and had just completed reading "The Futurist Moment"; natuarally I was curious to hear recordings of the performance works of both these movements, both poetic and musical, as I'd only heard Schwitters' "Ursonate" to date, and performance played such a crucial part in both Dada and Futurism.

I'll start with the bad news. As you might expect, many of these early recordings, particularly of the Futurist musical works, is of very poor quality. And as noted in the other review, the performance of "L'Amiral Cherche un Maison a Louer" is an interpretation by a later group, not Tzara et al in performance. As also noted there, the track listing is wrong, and though I could discern what I was listening to by picking through the listings, a neophyte might be confused by it.

However, as one with a passionate interest in the early 20th C. European avant-garde, owning and hearing these rare recordings is a pleasure, and it's a worthy addition to my library on the subject. The Futurist pieces seem to prefigure much late 20th c. "Noise" and Electronic music; it is also fascinating to hear Marinetti declaiming "The Battle of Adrianople". Wyndham Lewis's Vorticist poem with its jargon and pace seems to anticipate Kerouac and the Beats. The later interpretation of the Dada piece cited above at least effectively gives one the idea of what this 'simultaneous poem' was like in performance (Remarkably, Spike Jones came to mind) and one can better understand the outrage of a contemporary bourgeois audience. There are also interesting interviews (recorded later, of course) with Tzara, Huelsenbeck, and Duchamp. And where else can you hear Apollinaire himself reading his poetry? Even if the recording is of marginal quality, it is a wonder it survives.

All in all, if you are also passionate about these movements, it's worth owning as a resource to turn to when one is reading about these performances, and put some living flesh on their bones, so to speak...