Ever Orchid

                    Draughtsman, Musician, Film Maker, Performer

                                             Lines and Sounds...

In music, the process is similar. Using several natural or artificial soundscapes as a background or "canvas", notes from real or artificial instruments, abstract poetry, and voice melodies – they all merge in together as drawing tools. In an organic search of mantra textures through the voice, the minimalism is expressed where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. Repetitive harmonic choirs are slowly built into a creccendo until the song reaches its peak, and the drawings also manifest this minimal form, as their lines repeat over and over, where they are a basic structure for an image – until it gives form to a larger mass - like in the song.

A mosaic of voices is slowly built with the melody, as lines are drawn side by side in visual works until the accumulation brings a finished figure. To bring the intention, as an open vortex of inspiration, always connecting with new energies and bringing them into form. The rhythm, the repetition in something that is on the verge to be hypnotic, shamanic, and communicating with something else... Whichever artists the work can be identified with, as influences, references, parameters or whatsoever - there are some who bring examples of pure sound manifested as music, if with the right intention; where melodies can float and happen independently of its creator, can exist as a being apart, without frames, recipes, pre-conceived ideas or predictable forms and ends.

“Until today, I have done four music albums, and one film soundtrack. That Through Which The Sound Comes, the first album, is based on what I ‘thought’ was my intention of how to work with sound as art, back in 2007: using soundscapes as canvases, I would try to ‘compose’ voice, words and instruments in a more ‘free-expression’ way, on an attempt to replicate the action of a creation of a visual painting in the same way as a sound piece.
After this work was concluded, and much voice ‘humming’ came across this ‘free way of composing and playing’ in different parts of the work, while doing the second album.

In Albedo Feature, 2009, something unexpected happened; the humming became the main structure of the song. It felt like the natural and true ‘will’ of the work I have been trying to develop – a humming formed by instinct, mindless feelings, non-thoughts. Also, I believe humming can be considered one of the oldest languages or form of singing since pre-historic times, and played an important role as such. As I speak three languages and I consider them all equally important in my life, and still, they are not the original ‘idioms’ or dialects’ from the lands I came from and lived at, my mind struggles to find a specific language to identify and sing with. I sing in English; Spanish; Portuguese; Latin; I tried even ancient Egyptian. But still, the choice of a more ‘universal’ language was a dilemma. And in Dryad Anthousai, 2010, the third album, another radical change; I decided to… not use lyrics anymore.
As I cannot identify myself with one only language, eliminating words can also be used on the purpose of ignoring what ‘convention’ might expect from a vocal artist: lyrics.

So now, I let the humming take control of the song instead. It started on a few songs only; yet the result in me was enormous. I felt so ‘at home’ just singing without any lyrics format, so I thought, ‘Let me keep this wonderful new door open and explore this better in the next work’.

And there comes Anemonadic in 2011, the fourth & last album so far. As my previous promise to my own voice, it has no words or lyrics. The songs have names though – and the only two songs with words come from ‘O Fortuna’, a piece from the medieval poem Carmina Burana which orchestra and opera was composed and adapted by Carl Orff, and here is my own voice arrangement for this part. The first track, Fatum is the recitation of the literal English translation from Latin; and the second track, O Fortunae, the original Latin poem. All the other 12 tracks are voice and sound only – no words or lyrics at all. We very often listen to songs in foreign languages that we do not know what they are singing or what their words mean – but somehow, we connect with the feelings, melody and intention of that piece in such a way that, at moments, we lose the interest in the song once we understand the original meanings from its words.
Language can be a tool, but also a barrier for expression, comprehension and understanding; as I work my best so far to make these vocals as communicative and expressive as possible to not have to need any words at all, it reminds me of instrumental music - the notes and rhythm played solely by an instrument where it needs no words to be understood, appreciated and connected with. When I used to listen to Chopin as a small child, I remember having the impression that he was ‘speaking words’ with his piano. It was so obvious to me, to ‘read’ complete sentences nonstop from everything he played, and whole stories would come in my mind through his pieces, with tension, suspense, sad endings, and love promises.”

Ever Orchid, January 2011, London