The sky, contemplating the crackling flames that dot the night, ephemeral sparks that fade before reaching the universal immensity. All is temporary happiness, and no promise can be kept in the face of our paltry human condition. With hindsight, Perseids is still the large-scale expansion of an artistic state of mind, of a constant search for the slightest movement in the constellation close to our planet. Having an interest in records that were released several months earlier is not the temperament of an archivist. Under the influence of the immediate, the very existence and potential of a work can be altered at a time when deadlines are becoming shorter and shorter. The driving force of the music industry responds to imperatives whose methodology is to consider as obsolete any work that exceeds a certain period of time. SomeSurprises - a project by Natasha El-Sergany - published by Doom Trip Records reaches us even beyond its release earlier this year, propelling us into a citadel from which we can observe the world as it is... especially if we raise our eyes to extract ourselves from the earth.
If, at first glance, Perseids were to be summed up as a shoegaze record, that would be a total misunderstanding and irrefutable proof of having skimmed over such a masterpiece. Be Reasonable is precisely there to invite you to take the time you need to listen to every measure, every word, with crescendos akin to heavy rock, but with nuances closer to dream pop. The intention is not to drown you in a deluge of hazy guitars, but to find a refuge. Fascinated by her ability to measure the size of the space that separates us, ultimately bringing us back to a small distance, not knowing what that melancholic colouring was, Natasha El Sergany put to music what was passing through her soul, like the beam of light that pierces the stained glass windows of a mystical place.
There are people whose discretion touches me deeply, but having said that, I can't explain why this non-explicit poetry only emanates from certain artists. Perhaps they have something in them that is cruelly lacking in people who proclaim themselves to be geniuses? The album is interspersed with a few instrumental interludes, where each track has a particular meaning in relation to Hafez's Persian poetry (Snakes and Ladders). Jessika Kenney, a long-time contributor to Eyvind Kang, is back, and her voice sublimates the track Perseids, in the form of a celestial poem. Successive rises in the strings, combined with rumbling guitars, encourage us to unravel the significance of these meteors, which in Islamic tradition were said to represent the fall of demons to earth.
Somesurprises lives up to its name. The beauty of Why I Stay is that it manages to lift us off the ground and then bring us back to the surface with her words, ‘You may wonder why I stay, but I know if I go, I won't come back’. The message is confoundingly clear, everything majestic and anchored like Bodymind, Natasha masters the spiritual symbolism with the material links of which we are made. Constellations of blood, flesh and the seat of the soul. Listen to Ship Circles like a seagoing vessel dropping anchor in the vastness. You'll come away enchanted, for eternity.
