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Her 1997 debut album "Dissected"
has positioned MEIRA ASHER as a deeply original new artist.
Press and public alike have welcomed her both as an important
singer/musician and as an emblematic figure which represents
an uncompromising, politically-aware, peace-seeking generation
of Israeli musicians, whose voice is all too rarely heard abroad.
MEIRA ASHER's
new album "Spears Into Hooks" will come as a shock
to those who got to know her in her previous, mostly acoustic
and percussive musical incarnation. While her experience as a
singer, drummer, and specialist of West African and Indian traditional
music will always remain the foundation on which she has built
her identity (1) , MEIRA has been
studying and mastering a number of sophisticated, cutting-edge
composition techniques which are currently used in electronic
music (in both senses of the term: 'serious' as well as dance-derived
varieties of electronica), and has harnessed them to her unique
musical vision.
"Spears Into Hooks" presents
itself in the shape of an electronic opera, which will appeal
simultaneously to the young fan of The Aphex Twin and to the
more mature admirer of Penderecki. There exists no musical category
to describe the music on this album. A free-association test
performed on a panel of initial (and initiated) listeners has
shown a recurrence of the following words, in no particular order:
Industrial Drill'n'Bass, Captain Beefheart, Autechre, Public
Image Limited, London's neo-noise scene based around Harder Faster
Louder, Kurt Weill/Lotte Lenya, Post-Illbient, Avant-Rock meets
Electro Dub Infection, Ligeti, R'n'N (Rhyme and Noise), German
Expressionism, Bulgarian mourning ceremonies... more seriously:
the sound of "Spears Into Hooks" is absolutely unique,
and it will hit you hard in the stomach. Numerous layers of textures
and innovative, bold sound-processing were used throughout the
album in order to create dramatic aural images which speak directly
to the subconscious and reinforce the more verbal aspect of MEIRA's
message.
"All spears bent into hooks for the
animals we become, to be hung in our traditional slaughter-houses"
says MEIRA, in a sinister distortion of the biblical phrase
which appears both in the books of Isaiah and Micah: "and
they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more". Whereas the
texts on "Dissected" dealt with a variety of subjects,
this album is entirely devoted to the socio-political crisis
in Israel/Palestine, taken as a model for the ethnic / religious
/ geopolitical conflicts around the globe and throughout history.
Like many Middle-Eastern intellectuals, writers and poets (2), MEIRA ASHER believes that there
is no other route but to try to achieve peaceful coexistence
between the two people who live in that land, but that real mutual
understanding will only have a chance to appear if all the nightmares
that haunt the collective minds of both people are mercilessly
exposed, bravely dealt with, and honestly taken into account
by all parties concerned.
Hence the confontation between the characters
and situations which inhabit "Spears Into Hooks". Like
some kind of possessed digital-age shaman, MEIRA crawls
into the skin of a shahid (Islamic suicide commando), then sneaks
into the body of an inmate in an Israeli political prison or
into the sick mind of the demented commander of a concentration
/ holiday camp. One minute she's a vengeful God bent on punishing
the human race for their cruelty and stupidity, the next she's
an anonymous, universal refugee woman trying to save her baby,
in Rwanda, in Nazi Germany, in Kosovo or wherever and whenever
men and women persecute other men and women. MEIRA further
says: "This project is a warning alarm. It portrays the
individual as a victim of a repetitive, brutal and addictive
reality, a reality which generates chronical diseases that settle
in everyone: cowardice and apathy".
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Meira Asher
MEIRA ASHER chose to record
"Spears Into Hooks" mostly in Ljubljana, Slovenia,
a place already associated with powerful and provocative music
(Laibach), the capital of a small country which lies at the crossroads
between the Latin, Slavic and Germanic worlds, but which is at
the same time sufficiently removed from the subject matter of
the album. A couple of tracks were recorded in London, in collaboration
with young electro-distorsion-noise maverick produced 2nd Gen.
The basis for one track was recorded in Brussels with the Macedonian
Gypsy brass band Koçani Orkestar. The elaborate mixing
process has been entrusted to the experienced and creative hands
& ears of pk (aka Paul Kendall), a master of noises and textures
who for a number of years has been Mute Records' house engineer/producer,
and has worked with the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Barry Adamson,
Depeche Mode, Wire and many more.
(1)
Meira Asher has studied traditional percussion and dance in Ghana
and the Ivory Coast. She has learned Dhrupad vocal techniques
and tabla playing with master musicians in North India. She's
worked in musicotherapy for autistic children and has taught
percussion in several Israeli universities and music schools.
(2)
"(...some Israeli politicians and writers) have asked
us, Palestinian writers, to give up our former writings and to
turn towards a peaceful future. Like many others, Jews and Arabs,
I believe that it is just the opposite attitude which can serve
the interests of the peace process and the reconciliation between
our two people (...) Today more than ever, there's an urgent
need to translate in Hebrew those of our writings which relate
the tragedies of the Palestinian people; it is just as urgent
to publicize among us the works of our Jewish colleagues who
express their moral rectitude and the conscience of a people
whose history is characterized by racial persecutions : how could
they then persecute another people ?". Emile Habibi
- from "La terre des deux promesses (The Land Of Two Promises)"
by E.Habibi & Y.Kaniuk
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