Soho Rezanejad

For some ‘artists’* experimental means adding a sitar to the archaic sound of a four-piece beat-group, just to give it that ‘exotic kick, yeah?!’. Far out, maaan. For others it’s the opportunity or means to push boats well out from the shore, to stretch the limits of expression and explore the boundaries of perception, to test the senses (all five and beyond).

This album is definitely in the latter in the sense of non-categorisation, a paradoxical genre defying yet defining series of presentations, recitations and excitations finessed, garnered and harnessed from performances of a tour (remember them …?).

Divining inspirations from each city Soho Rezanejad was in (Copenhagen, Vienna, Helsingør, Munich, Montreal, Toronto, St. Petersburg, Tromsø and Nantes) she channelled and implemented these illuminations in different thought-forms into each set.

On ‘Perform and Surrender’ Rezanejad deploys found sounds, field recordings, dissonant noises, dream-streams of (un)conscious musings, (ch)oral chants, warped folk, snapped-chats, in a disconcerting concert reassembling.

‘Perform’ is a cacophony of collapse, a crashing of context and clashing of concept. A range of unnerving and unsettling sounds painting (funda)mental images that sets the tone for what’s to come.

The opus of ‘Surrender’ begins with the mangled cry of ‘Become part of me’: is this a request, an order, a plea or an offer too good to ignore? However, then the wails of ‘Please don’t go …’ throws confused diffusion into the mix. After an ambient interlude, there’s some birdsong, (s)weeping strings all, ominous piano and an overall feel that amounts to a dystopic ambience. The message? Submit and permit nature’s coded languages.

‘Absence’ is a pagan saga that makes the (he)art take leave of itself. ‘Half the shore’ and ‘Hera’ are spacious, sparse and spectral soundscapes that recall The Durutti Column. The final utterance to the former is the oh-so-obvious-yet-it-almost-always-needs saying ‘Love without trust is like a river without water’. Barren, dry, arid, life is a desert without it.
This is a collection of broken-spoken-song-sounds that certainly makes you think: a textual mapping of psychic territory that jolts, startles, cajoles and consoles that kick-starts the brainwaves and assuages the soul.

Head music for music heads. Passive consumers need not apply.

*names withheld as to not shame the guilty any more than they do themselves.