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Sigmatropic - "Sixteen Haiku & Other Stories" - 2003 Tongue Master Records
by: currybet Friday 27 February 2004
"Sixteen Haiku & Other Stories" is a collection of poems by George Seferis, translated from their original Greek into English, set to music, and then performed by a guest cast some of the great, good & obscure from the alternate music scene of Western Europe & America.
The album only came to my attention because it was released by Tongue Master Records, who earlier in the year had released the Mark Eitzel album "The Ugly American", which I previously reviewed - A1154882 - but I am glad it did. Akis Boyatzis is the force behind Sigmatropic, who put this album together as a complimentary version to a project that had already delivered a totally Greek language version of this material. Carla Torgerson helped with the translations, and Theodore Vlassopulos formed the bridge between the Greek music industry and the Western Indie world. The poet upon whose work the album is based, George Seferis, was born at the turn of the last century, and was a Nobel Prize for Literature winner. Some of his work explored a way of rendering the Japanese tradition of the Haiku into a European framework. On this album 5 longer works are featured alongside the titular 16 Haikus The music is a mix of acoustic instruments alongside a very electronic approach. Sounds are twirled backwards and forwards, rhythm tracks are cut and pasted to make them into 'something other', ambiences come to play prominent parts in arrangements. Effect treatments scatter vocals, guitar and drums to the four winds and back again. As you'd expect, the vocal approaches and contributions vary greatly. Robert Wyatt delivers his lines with the high-pitched awkward phrasing you would expect from him. Laetitia Sadier can't resist adding 'li-la-la' to her Haiku, but the end result is all the better for it. Mark Mulcahy's take on Haiku Three is swathed in an arrangement which initially echoes "It Doesn't Matter" from Depeche Mode's 1984 'Some Great Reward' album, then settles into a groove that takes it into altogether more exotic climes. Carla Torgerson provides a track that would not have disgrace Siouxsie Sioux had she been involved in the project whilst Edith Frost gets to wrestle with some fantastic twang guitar on Haiku Eight, simultaneously harmonising delicately with herself. Mark Eitzel suffocates the humour out of the haiku he is given with a halting whispered vocal performance. Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) benefits from one of the better musical arrangements, and delivers her poem in her trademark dead-pan beauty of a voice. Lee Ranaldo's desperate take on Haiku Twelve ('Unprofitable Boat Line') is a highlight, his vocal complementing the discordant string sounds, both of which contrast with the otherwise understated electronica backing track. His second contribution, Haiku Sixteen, is more restrained, with a beautiful guitar melody, accompanying some of the most beautiful lyrics on the album: "You always write The ink diminishes The sea multiplies" John Grant from The Czars makes one of the most tuneful renditions of the poems, on another highlight of the album, "Haiku 14(b)". On "Dead Sea" James Sclavunos comes across like a demented, distorted, circus-master. It's a tour-de-force vocal performance, matched by the distorted guitar harmonics, piano melody buried in the mix, and percussive rhythmic track - one which just begs to be sampled. "Water Warm" gives the opportunity for Pinkie Maclure to deliver a pained vocal, set against one of the more beautiful and rarer down-tempo accompaniments. In fact the latter tracks on the album seem to benefit form the fact that the longer poetic pieces appear to have encouraged more experimentation with the form of the music to go with them, rather than what sometimes seems like a rush to cram lots of loops into a two minute track earlier in the album. "This Human Body" for example, has time to expand its theme to include a melancholy cello motif, that the snappier Haikus are deprived of. I found this to be one of the most rewarding CDs I've purchased in the last couple of years. Rewarding because although I stumbled upon it be chance I really enjoyed it. Rewarding because I found it to be an artistic endeavour I thought was worthy of support. It seems inevitable with this kind of varied collaboration and cultural cross-fertilisation project that the results would be slightly mixed - but on the whole I found it rewarding because much of the music and poetic intent on this album is simply beautiful. Perhaps the last word is best left to poet Seferis himself. On Haiku Four, some 32 years after his death, you hear his translated words: "Could that be the voice? of our dead friends? or could that be the phonograph?" Related Links Tongue Master http://www.tonguemaster.co.uk/... Akis Boyatzis Interview http://www.tonguemaster.co.uk/moreinfo1.htm... Sigmatropic http://www.sigmatropic.gr... [There are some mp3 downloads on their website] George Seferis http://greece.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/1...
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