BLOGGER: shark batter records
LOCATION: scottish borders & brooklyn, new york
WEBSITE: sharkbatter.com
MYSPACE: myspace.com/sharkbatterrecords
The world premiere of Kono Michi's 9 Death Haiku album is at the Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space, New York, on Thursday May 21st. $20 discount tickets on sale at concertartists.org.
Line-up:
Kono Michi: vocals & violin
Annaliesa Place: violin
Jessica Troy: viola
Eric Stephenson: cello
Peter Seymour: upright bass
Satoshi Takeishi: percussion
The album is on sale now at the major online stores. The CD will be fully released later in the year but a limited number of copies will be available at the concert.
rogerSIMIAN's Review of the Album
Now, I'm a somewhat scruffy and gruff-voiced Scotsman of a certain age but I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when I first listened to Kono Michi's 9 Death Haiku LP. I don't think it was much to do with the fact this is an album about mortality. It was more related to that range of almost unbearable emotion which you can never quite utter in words, but which certain composers occasionally capture in their music. Throughout this record Michi's voice and instrumentation produce wonderful tones, melodies, harmonies, discordances which are frequently allowed to soar up into the ozone like flapping, dragon-red kites, but always remain tethered to the earth by the inventive noises and rhythms of percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.
I think my shameless shedding of tears also had something to do with the fact I couldn't imagine anybody else but Kono Michi being able to both write and perform anything quite like these nine songs. This is not so much to do with her family history. Yes, she is the daughter of a Polish-American documentary maker and a Japanese amateur musician. And of course her parents' influence is explicitly there in the music - from the use of the traditional Japanese melody, Sakura , to the field-recording style mash-up of European folk and other popular styles, including fragments of Gershwin and Kurt Weill-like decadent waltzes. But it is Michi's own diversity of musical background which has resulted in this work being so finely balanced between full-on classical excellence of playing and an uncompromising alternative pop /indie sensibility.
Kono Michi began learning to play the violin as a three year old growing up in Orange County, California, and later went on to study in Cleveland and at New York's Juilliard conservatory. She has since travelled the World as a concert violinist, playing with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, The Silk Road Ensemble, Los Angeles Piano Quartet and ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra), as well as recording with David Sylvian and on various Hollywood film soundtracks.
But all the while Michi was discovering for herself the raw excitement of rock and popular musics. Dancing around to Joan Jett's I Love Rock 'n' Roll as a toddler seemed as vital and important as her more formal studies. And so it was easy to appreciate the punk or goth her older sister introduced her to in her teens, or to happily freak out to mixed tapes jammed full of Captain Beefheart, Cocteau Twins, Dolly Parton, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Camper Van Beethoven. I don't think I'm wrong in imagining that all of these influences are gumboed up together in the 9 Death Haiku LP.
But the only real, steady reference point I can think of for this album is that it mines similar terrain to the Velvet Underground or, more specifically, Nico's Frozen Warnings . I don't mean that there's any great sonic similarity as such. But there was a particular electricity produced when John Cale's experimental classical training was bumping and grinding up against his new friends' more earthy, down at heel, love of Western popular forms. And I can feel that same electricity crackling through Kono Michi's debut album.
By the time of the trippy final track, with its John Adams influenced minimalist orchestral layers and Zen refrain "My one wish is to live in the Capital of Non-Action" I can't help feeling, as a listener, that I've tasted a most delicious vintage of Death Song, and I want to experience it all again immediately.
rS
LOCATION: scottish borders & brooklyn, new york
WEBSITE: sharkbatter.com
MYSPACE: myspace.com/sharkbatterrecords
The world premiere of Kono Michi's 9 Death Haiku album is at the Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space, New York, on Thursday May 21st. $20 discount tickets on sale at concertartists.org.
Line-up:
Kono Michi: vocals & violin
Annaliesa Place: violin
Jessica Troy: viola
Eric Stephenson: cello
Peter Seymour: upright bass
Satoshi Takeishi: percussion
The album is on sale now at the major online stores. The CD will be fully released later in the year but a limited number of copies will be available at the concert.
rogerSIMIAN's Review of the Album
Now, I'm a somewhat scruffy and gruff-voiced Scotsman of a certain age but I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when I first listened to Kono Michi's 9 Death Haiku LP. I don't think it was much to do with the fact this is an album about mortality. It was more related to that range of almost unbearable emotion which you can never quite utter in words, but which certain composers occasionally capture in their music. Throughout this record Michi's voice and instrumentation produce wonderful tones, melodies, harmonies, discordances which are frequently allowed to soar up into the ozone like flapping, dragon-red kites, but always remain tethered to the earth by the inventive noises and rhythms of percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.
I think my shameless shedding of tears also had something to do with the fact I couldn't imagine anybody else but Kono Michi being able to both write and perform anything quite like these nine songs. This is not so much to do with her family history. Yes, she is the daughter of a Polish-American documentary maker and a Japanese amateur musician. And of course her parents' influence is explicitly there in the music - from the use of the traditional Japanese melody, Sakura , to the field-recording style mash-up of European folk and other popular styles, including fragments of Gershwin and Kurt Weill-like decadent waltzes. But it is Michi's own diversity of musical background which has resulted in this work being so finely balanced between full-on classical excellence of playing and an uncompromising alternative pop /indie sensibility.
Kono Michi began learning to play the violin as a three year old growing up in Orange County, California, and later went on to study in Cleveland and at New York's Juilliard conservatory. She has since travelled the World as a concert violinist, playing with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, The Silk Road Ensemble, Los Angeles Piano Quartet and ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra), as well as recording with David Sylvian and on various Hollywood film soundtracks.
But all the while Michi was discovering for herself the raw excitement of rock and popular musics. Dancing around to Joan Jett's I Love Rock 'n' Roll as a toddler seemed as vital and important as her more formal studies. And so it was easy to appreciate the punk or goth her older sister introduced her to in her teens, or to happily freak out to mixed tapes jammed full of Captain Beefheart, Cocteau Twins, Dolly Parton, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Camper Van Beethoven. I don't think I'm wrong in imagining that all of these influences are gumboed up together in the 9 Death Haiku LP.
But the only real, steady reference point I can think of for this album is that it mines similar terrain to the Velvet Underground or, more specifically, Nico's Frozen Warnings . I don't mean that there's any great sonic similarity as such. But there was a particular electricity produced when John Cale's experimental classical training was bumping and grinding up against his new friends' more earthy, down at heel, love of Western popular forms. And I can feel that same electricity crackling through Kono Michi's debut album.
By the time of the trippy final track, with its John Adams influenced minimalist orchestral layers and Zen refrain "My one wish is to live in the Capital of Non-Action" I can't help feeling, as a listener, that I've tasted a most delicious vintage of Death Song, and I want to experience it all again immediately.
rS
