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The harmony and the ecstasy

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When the voices enter, it is immediately apparent that bass Jerzy Koslowski has a dry clean voice perfectly suited to the declamatory style of this music. In contrast, Deborah Kayser's contralto has an entrancing quality – dark and almost husky with passionately dramatic projection.

A processional rhythm is established by the bass drum. The shell of the drum is played with a bundle of rushes, also on the cymbal.

The third section introduces Anne Norman's shakuhachi, with a restatement of the first texture on bowed crotales, and the disturbing sound of rushes now brushed against the bass drum skin.

The Fallen Woman, by 9th CE Constantinople abbess Kassia, is sung to this day in the Eastern church as part of Easter week. Jouissance arrangement comprises a duet between Nick Tsavios (contrabass) and Deborah Kayser. It begins with a brief solo introduction from Tsavios, almost Bach-like in its structure and movement. Deborah Kayser then sings the text of the "woman fallen into many sins" with grit and passion – she has a wonderfully dirty low range well suited to expressing the sobbing, heart-wrenched depths of pain and passion, both for the eponymous fallen woman's sin and for the forthcoming death of Christ the sin-bearer.

Meanwhile the contrabass has settled into an understated, sustained slow ground which occasionally growls to the fore - something of a Tsavios trademark.

The melody constantly plays back and forth between major and minor modes, the long, complex, melismatic melody performed to maximise the drama suggested by the text, which we have in English, helpful for those of us who don't speak Byzantine Greek. A small sample of Antonia Tripolitis' translation:

Woe to me, she says, for night holds for me the ecstasy of intemperance, gloomy and moonless, a desire for sin.

The Gothic has nothing on this. Add a few bats, a little blood and you have a vampire movie.

Even without translation, the emotional intent is clearly and purely portrayed.

Unlike Catherine Southall-Casey, a previous singer with Jouissance, Kayser never sings like a displaced angel – her tones are always rich in the harmonics of the earth and human passions, as the the piece diminishes to its sleep-like end.

Fallen Woman is a composition much loved in Greek tradition, not only for its beauty but for the story associated with it.

According to this tale, the Byzantine Emperor Theophilis, from a line-up of hundreds of women, picked Kassia as a lover, as was the tradition in those days. As he chose her, he said to her light-heartedly, "Women are the source of all evil." She replied, "But they are also the source of all life." He was incensed by the astonishing affront of a woman talking back to the Emperor. In fear of her life, Kassia fled to an abbey.
The Emperor still loved her, however, and visited her from time to time. Once, while she was in the middle of composing Fallen Woman, he visited her. She fled into the garden and would not see him. He wrote two lines on her unfinished manuscript, and she retained them in her finished composition.

The third piece, Akathistos Fragments, is the result of Jouissance's deconstruction of the Akathistos Hymn, a 6th CE chant in praise of the Virgin Mary.

Once again this piece opens with atmospheric percussion, bells and gongs establishing a repeating rhythmic motif.

The defining musical characteristic of this piece is that of subtle unison pairings between instrument and voice. Bass and contrabass lead off, the contrabass bowed in its midrange to provide a transhuman voicing to the Koslowski's bass. This transcendence of the merely human seems to me peculiarly appropriate to settings of Byzantine religious texts, with their own divinity barely tethered to earth. In fact this trio of texts is beautifully chosen to show the widest range of such texts, starting with the divine tied to sexuality, then to suffering, then to glory.

Kayser and Norman form the next unison line. As with the bass/contrabass pairing, the shakuhachi merely provides a resonance behind the voice. While undramatic, this is playing of a high order of skill and precision, not to mention sensitivity of accompaniment. Most vocal pitching was done against only the tonic ground of the contrabass, again an impressive technical feat.

This music is also suited to the comtemplative yet ecstatic nature of the text:

Rejoice, O peak above the reach of human thought
Rejoice O Depth even beyond the sight of angels.

The music demands, or at least invites, a sustained and meditative thread of attention. The resonance of the music envelopes the listener, almost as if it lights the path towards some trance of ecstatic contemplation or a quiet religious ecstasy.

As a kind of harmonic development, Kayser takes a sustained note in parallel with the contrabass while the bass declaims. Some inexact pitching in this most demanding kind of singing did not much mar the beauty of the performance.

The piece ends with a quiet coda of universal unison.

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The company you keep

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In just over 980 words, the writer gives us a thoughtful and inviting introduction to the group in question, Battles, marks out his territory, provides an historical context, describes the types of genre into which the group’s music may or may not fall, allows an insight into the processes that go into producing the music, hints at the unexpected in terms of the musical direction, and quotes the group’s founding member just enough to intrigue the reader and demonstrate that the man is articulate and presentable.

Goodness, but I’m gushing! But, what am I to do? A good review is a good review. Let’s try again…
No, still no joy. I took another read only to find another impressive feature, the open-endedness of the closing quote: “I think it opens up expectations or closes them down,” says Williams about signing to Warp. “If you put a perfectly honed garage band on the premiere garage rock label, you know what's going to happen. But when you stick us on this label known for putting out electronic bands such as Boards of Canada or Aphex Twin, it confuses things a little bit. In a good way. Both for expectations of what we are, and also what Warp is. It just gives you room to grow.”

What am I to do? Read the piece and find me wrong, if you can. This piece demonstrates what a little care with language and expression as well as with information can do when you are writing even about something as personal and “other” as music.

Read Sean Rabin's original review in The Australian.

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