SIROM / シロム / THE LIQUIFIED THRONE OF SIMPLICITY / CD

スロベニアのフォーク・ミュージックが、ドン・チェリーやアート・アンサンブル・オブ・シカゴのようなスピリチュアル・ジャズ・サウンドと融合したら?! スロベニアのスピリチュアル・チェンバー・フォークユニット、Siromの2022年作!

バルカン半島の最も西に位置し、オーストリア、イタリアとも国境を接するスロベニア。西洋と東洋が交錯してきたこの地において、民族的なフォークロアと現代的なチェンバーミュージックを結び付けたのが、弦楽器やパーカッション、創作楽器を使ったアンサンブル・トリオ、「シロム」だ。新作は、ドン・チェリーやアート・アンサンブル・オブ・シカゴのようなスピリチュアル・ジャズとも匹敵するような、内的宇宙が無限に拡張されていくようなディープな音楽性を獲得している。ECM系のリスナーにもぜひ聴いていただきたい内容。



The Slovenian "imaginary folk" trio's most epic and transportive album yet. Powered by acoustic and often handmade instruments, these expansive compositions echo the borderless, collective spirit of groups like Don Cherry's Organic Music Society and Art Ensemble of Chicago. Drawing on this geography of contemplation and psychic energy, from a country previously swallowed up by Yugoslavia and before that, reaching back centuries, the Roman, Byzantine and Austro-Hungarian Empires, the Slovenian trio of Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin conjure up an extended album of intuitive transcendence and reflection on the unique sounding The Liquified Throne of Simplicity. Finding a home once more with Glitterbeat Records' adventurous, experimental, mostly instrumental, platform tak:til, and following on from the debut I Can Be A Clay Snapper (GB 051CD/LP, 2017), and the equally acclaimed A Universe That Roasts Blossoms For A Horse (GB 079CD/LP, 2019), Sirom's fourth such inventive and illusionary album incorporates some aspects of the former whilst expanding the inventory of eclectic instruments and obscured sounds. For the first time the trio also ignore the time constraints of a standard vinyl record to fashion longer, more fully developed entrancing and hypnotizing peregrinations. This new, amended, approach results in 80 minutes of abstract and rustic folklore, dream-realism, explorative intensity and cathartic ritual. And within that array of realms there's evocations of Jon Hassell's Fourth World experiments, visions of Samarkand, the esoteric mysteries of Tibet, an unplugged faUSt, and pastoral hurdy-gurdy churned Medieval Europe. These off-the-beaten-track performances converge history and geography with untethered fantasies and ambiguous atmospheres; all of which are made even more so fantastical, and even symbolic, by both the poetic, allegorical fabled track titles and the softly surreal illustrative artwork by the small village-based painter Marko Jakse, whose signature magical, if solemn, characters and landscapes adorn the album's cover and inlay. Music, in part, as a therapy The Liquified Throne of Simplicity offers a portal to other musical, sonic worlds: an escape route out of the on-going pandemic and its demoralizing, mentally draining effects and the crisis it has sparked in Slovenia, with certain far right groups especially taking advantage to ramp up the discourse of nationalism. By instinct, and in parts by coincidence, Sirom once more entrance with their vague undulations and illusionary echoes of places, settings, time and escapism on another highly magical album.