I bought this album quite a while ago, but never had the chance to sit with it properly until this week. It’s a well-done mix of clarinet and experimental electronic music composed by David Rothenberg and Bernhard Wöstheinrich, taking their cues from some famous authors, including my personal favorite, Jorge Luis Borges.
Siavash Amini, an Iranian sound artist and composer, collaborates on this album with author and poet Eugene Thacker on Songs for Sad Poets, though I hear no vocals on this disc. What is on offer, however, are incredibly bleak soundscapes that range from engaging dark ambient music which settles well in headphones to abrasive post-Industrial music which tears at the eardrums in a most pleasant way. From the pair’s Bandcamp site for this release:
The collection of eight pieces draws its inspiration from the legacy of the so-called cursed poets (»poètes maudits«) as well as the German-language tradition of song cycles and expands the structure of the classic art song through a process of lyric abstraction. Amini is no stranger to interdisciplinary collaboration, as seen in »A Mimesis of Nothingness,« his 2020 collaboration with photographer Nooshin Shafiee, also released through the Swiss Hallow Ground label. But whereas in Amini’s previous collaborations music and other media are set in dialogue, with »Songs for Sad Poets«, Thacker’s poems and Amini’s soundscapes are deeply enmeshed with each other. In fact, none of the words printed in the record’s booklet are being said out loud on this double LP, but rather made tangible through the use of sound. Poetry and music do not so much correspond with each other as they conspire together—as songs without words, words without song.
I’m impressed at the direction Amini is going. He’ll be making a profound impact on sound art for years to come.