The 1963 Nobel Prize for Literature went to George Seferis of Greece, who died in 1971. The Greek ensemble Sigmatropic has created 22 musical pieces through which are woven sixteen haikus and other writings by Seferis. These are sung by a wide variety of guests from the European and North American continents, including Robert Wyatt, Alejandro Escovedo, Mark Mulcahy, Cat Power, Howe Gelb, Carla Torgerson and Steve Wynn.
Led by multi-instrumentalist and producer Akis Boyatzis, Sigmatropic mixes folk instrumentation, occasional rock propulsion and modernist atmospherics into a series of settings that relate to each other like a series of vignettes. While the singers ostensibly take center stage, the set is linked by the fluid movements of the music, with guests appearing and disappearing like leaves on a stream.
Wyatt opens the disc, singing a line that sounds like his own (as he’s managed to do with cover material throughout his career): “Bells were heard/And messengers arrived/I wasn’t expecting them”. From there, things become magically hypnotic as the first haiku is sung by Laetitia Sadier, shot through with alluring background vocals and thorny edged, Eno-like melodic filigree.
Other high points (and repeated listening reveal an ever-undulating landscape of slowly revealed surprises) include the employment of highly contrasting timbres; small-voiced acoustic instruments coexist with darker sounds, and production impulses move between the carefree, the spiritual, and the foreboding.
One of the delights of this album is that I was never waiting or looking for it. It just appeared, with a quiet grace that matches the simple architecture of a haiku.