What’s the idea and why we’re excited?

Above all, we're enjoying our collaboration with actors and melding literary fiction with music. Until the advent of the printing press storytelling was collective and shared. Hearing a story read aloud, taps into something deep and primal inside all of us. We've augmented that with virtuoso musicianship and state of the art recording. What we've ended up with is different to an audiobook or a radio play. It’s not episodic, so you can dip in and out of new worlds, genres and eras in any order you please. In that sense, we feel like we’re developing something new. We've only selected stories that reach a satisfying climax (oh la la) and have a sense of playfulness. These stories will end up in anthologies; we just chose to publish them in this form where we can share them more readily than in journals; and share them with busier people.

On Storytelling

Kati: “There’s a focus on imaginative storytelling. There’s something subversive in each one. These stories aren’t anecdotal and don’t feel like excerpts… What stories do you like, Nick?”

Nick: “I enjoy a tale like Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus, Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King, Paul Auster’s Mr Vertigo, or Johnathon Carroll’s Outside the Dog Museum.I like Nabokov, Voltaire, Roald Dahl… at the moment, I admire a sense of playfulness. But I'm still faithful to older loves like Hemingway, Carver, Camus, McCarthy, Malouf, and Garcia Marquez.”

On Music

Nick: “Kati doesn’t use sound effects, valuing original composition over sound design. This is not just a track playing in the background. Music is composed specifically for each actor’s reading. The composition is timed to accord precisely with the reading. Kati’s scores give each story an extra dimension, lending nuance, and immediate raw emotion.”

Kati: “My first love was Cannonball Adderley. I love how he combines virtuous, beautiful saxophone playing with a great sense of humour, for example on “African Waltz“. I like the depth of John Coltrane. I’m also a big fan of Indie-music like Grizzly Bear. Then there is Pink Floyd! José Gonzales!”