Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker
American Dreams Releases: Songs for Sad Poets, Vol. III
Siavash Amini is a composer from Tehran, Iran. He has worked with the labels Room40, Hallow Ground, American Dreams Records, Opal Tapes, and Umor Rex for more than a decade. He also has collaborated with a wide range of international artists, including Rafael Anton Irisarri, 9T Antiope, Heinali and Zenjungle as well as the poet and scholar Eugene Thacker. He has remixed tracks for Carl Craig, Bernard Szajner, LTO, worriedaboutsatan and the duo Arigto among many others. He has performed at CTM festival, MUTEKes, Silent Night Prague and many other well-known international venues and events. He is a co-founder of “SET experimental art events” and “SETfest” in Tehran, Iran.
Eugene Thacker is the author of several books, including In The Dust Of This Planet and Infinite Resignation. He teaches at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Born and raised in the Seattle area, he currently lives in Brooklyn.
siavashamini.bandcamp.com eugenethacker.com
On Songs for Sad Poets Vol. III, Tehran composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn author Eugene Thacker present lyrics sung by voices, but which are unrecognizable as words – and unintelligible even as voices.
The album is an ongoing collaboration inspired by the tradition of “cursed poets” (poètes maudits), following Amini and Thacker’s 2022 double album for Hallow Ground, Songs for Sad Poets Vol. I. Vol. III pays tribute to Hàn Mặc Tử, who founded Vietnam’s “Chaos” (Loạn) school of poetry; João da Cruz e Sousa, the leading figure of Brazilian Symbolist poetry in the late 1800s; and Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau, an influential figure in the literary tradition of “worldweariness” (Weltschmerz).
Writing for chorus, Thacker’s compressed poetry allows words to undergo sonic transformations. Amini transforms Thacker’s minimalist poetry into spectral and haunting soundscapes. After programming voice synthesis software to perform Thacker’s poems, Amini layered up to forty voices at a time, processing them until their vocal signposts diffuse and dissolve. Song and sound implode and become indistinguishable from each other, at once lyrical and abstract.
Eugene Thacker is the author of several books, including In The Dust Of This Planet and Infinite Resignation. He teaches at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Born and raised in the Seattle area, he currently lives in Brooklyn.
siavashamini.bandcamp.com eugenethacker.com
On Songs for Sad Poets Vol. III, Tehran composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn author Eugene Thacker present lyrics sung by voices, but which are unrecognizable as words – and unintelligible even as voices.
The album is an ongoing collaboration inspired by the tradition of “cursed poets” (poètes maudits), following Amini and Thacker’s 2022 double album for Hallow Ground, Songs for Sad Poets Vol. I. Vol. III pays tribute to Hàn Mặc Tử, who founded Vietnam’s “Chaos” (Loạn) school of poetry; João da Cruz e Sousa, the leading figure of Brazilian Symbolist poetry in the late 1800s; and Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau, an influential figure in the literary tradition of “worldweariness” (Weltschmerz).
Writing for chorus, Thacker’s compressed poetry allows words to undergo sonic transformations. Amini transforms Thacker’s minimalist poetry into spectral and haunting soundscapes. After programming voice synthesis software to perform Thacker’s poems, Amini layered up to forty voices at a time, processing them until their vocal signposts diffuse and dissolve. Song and sound implode and become indistinguishable from each other, at once lyrical and abstract.