bp Nichol | Motherlove

bp Nichol

Motherlove

Vancouver, Canada: Allied 03, 1968

12” vinyl record

Edition size unknown

This exceedingly rare recording is the poet's only full-length solo vinyl LP and features short tracks with titles like "Dada Lama”, "The Incest Song”, "A Hum for Stevie Winwood”, "Historical Implications of Turnips” and "Bill Bissett’s Lullaby.” Most are available to listen to on Youtube. 

A somehow still sealed copy is available for purchase here, for $1000. 

The price would seem to be inflated (you could amass a pretty substantial collection of bp Nichol books for this amount), but Discogs lists a thousand dollars as the lowest price this record has sold for. The highest is $2,759.99. 

"bpnichol was an accomplished and eccentric artist who recorded this break-through album of sound poetry in 1968 on Allied Records. Produced by Jack Boswell, the highly prized recording, entitled "Motherlove", was his first and only solo LP recording. Amongst collectors, it is considered to be the holy grail of experimental concrete sound poetry. The whimsical illustrations utilized "developer or translation poems', another bpnichol innovation. He also released two albums with The Four Horsemen, with Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton and Steve McCaffery. bpnichol died in 1988 at the age of 44.” 

- Robert Williston