Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker - Songs for Sad Poets Vol. III

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.