- Audio CD (24 Aug 2004)
- Number of Discs: 2
- Label: Mute
- ASIN: B0002IQB3K
- Other Editions: Audio CD | MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 289,896 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Product details |
Track Listings
| Disc: 1 |
|---|
| 1. Ter Vogormia |
| 2. The Desert {part one} |
| 3. The Desert {part two} |
| 4. Sevda Zinciri |
| 5. Holokaftoma |
| 6. Ter Vogormia {reprise} |
| 7. The Eagle Of Tkhuma |
| 8. Orders From The Dead |
| Disc: 2 |
| 1. Hastayim Yasiyorum |
| 2. San Peqanw sto Karabi |
| 3. Je Rame |
| 4. Epmstola a Los Transezntes |
| 5. Birds Of Death |
| 6. Anoixe |
| 7. Todesfuge |
| 8. Artemis |
| 9. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean |
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is a true masterpiece. Simultaneously released with "La Serpenta Canta", a collection of Diamanda's favourite songs, "Defixiones" is the only album she actually wanted to release. It is a true concept album about a very dark and terrible event that happened in the early 20th century. It took Diamanda six years of research to bring this album together, and she sings in 14 different languages, but that is not a problem, because the 40 page booklet comes with translations and
background information, as well as photographs. The CDs themselves are very beautifully packaged in a hardback book.
The first CD has to be the most unique and impressive. She sings beautifully and never before has her voice shown more emotions that on this CD. She never screams like she used to on some of her previous albums. She also uses a lot of sound effects and other instruments that add more depth and atmosphere. The booklet should be read thoroughly to understand what she is singing about, only then can you appreciate her artistic geniality of the last song on the first CD, which closes the first act of her darkest concept album ever.
The second CD is slightly different. Diamanda performs "Songs of Exile" on the piano only, and it sounds more 'live' because of a cheering audience. The songs here are not directly linked to the subject on the first CD, but they can be referred to it, and they certainly do work as a whole.
All in all, her most impressive work to date, and she deserves some recognition for it.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I grew up with the slogan "kill your idols", but whether I wanted that or not, I became a 100% fan of Diamanda Galas.
Her voice, with a range of 4 (!) octaves, has no comparison in this world, and that exactly is what your chilling spine will tell you when listening to her.
She once said "My voice is an inspiration to my friends and an instrument of torture to my enemies", and this was no bragging at all.
I saw her perform Defixiones live in an old castle in Belgium. She was there for a month, playing three evenings each week, all sold out. People came from Germany, France, England and the Netherlands to see her. As her music doesn't fit in any category (except maybe super avant garde), her audiance didn't eather. Classical music lovers, people from the Jazz-scene, punks, gothics, rich and poor, all kinds of people gathered there.
And I swear to you, within half an hour 80% of them was crying because her litanies of pain and isolation are so powerful...
Her voice, with a range of 4 (!) octaves, has no comparison in this world, and that exactly is what your chilling spine will tell you when listening to her.
She once said "My voice is an inspiration to my friends and an instrument of torture to my enemies", and this was no bragging at all.
I saw her perform Defixiones live in an old castle in Belgium. She was there for a month, playing three evenings each week, all sold out. People came from Germany, France, England and the Netherlands to see her. As her music doesn't fit in any category (except maybe super avant garde), her audiance didn't eather. Classical music lovers, people from the Jazz-scene, punks, gothics, rich and poor, all kinds of people gathered there.
And I swear to you, within half an hour 80% of them was crying because her litanies of pain and isolation are so powerful...
Play this very loud, and don't listen to it in the dark and on your own unless you are quite confident of yourself...
Format:MP3 Download
Diamanda casts her brown pools of granite gaze onto another pile of corpses stacked in dust blow plains of Asia Minor, a genocide that remains silent, overgrown and unexplored.
One of the first European mass killings in the early part of the 20thC. As the Ottoman Empire reeled from the loss of WW1 its christian inhabitants bore the brunt of the Young Turk revenge. The ire was directed at the Armenians in 1915 where 1.5 million people were killed in concentration camps, deportation and mass slayings. Greeks, Syrians and Georgians who also lived within the Ottoman borders became heads on spikes and their wives cleaved in two, victims of the Turks who went into wholesale ethnic cleansing.
Allies of Germany the latter learnt their trade in the first mass wipeout of the 20thC. Although the Herero and Namaqua in 1904 were pushed into the desert, a hall of shame devised by the Germans and copied by the Young Turks. Ther Brits need not feel smug as they delivered the Boer women into special compounds where typhus raged.
After a 6 year research period Diamanda has created a shattering musical monument to an incinerated catastrophe. Reaching the emotional grandeur of her plague mass this blasts the smell of moral decay high into the rooftops. Based on the power of her voice as she recoups the psychic pain of obliteration. The piano breaks into runs of sadness a counter for the voice to glide with angels and demons of the sadness.
The voice rasps as a crow picking on the entrails of the living, tugging them to come and see. This is not as easy as the Aids trilogy, as she delves into ancient texts sung in the rasp cackle, bursting the bowels of belief
of a startling powerful piece of music, that needs time for it to soak in. There are no show tunes, only a slow evocation of a litany for the dead.
Timely, as Hitler based his form of ethnic cleansing on "Who remembers the Armenians?"; subject to a constant eternal return in the head.
One of the first European mass killings in the early part of the 20thC. As the Ottoman Empire reeled from the loss of WW1 its christian inhabitants bore the brunt of the Young Turk revenge. The ire was directed at the Armenians in 1915 where 1.5 million people were killed in concentration camps, deportation and mass slayings. Greeks, Syrians and Georgians who also lived within the Ottoman borders became heads on spikes and their wives cleaved in two, victims of the Turks who went into wholesale ethnic cleansing.
Allies of Germany the latter learnt their trade in the first mass wipeout of the 20thC. Although the Herero and Namaqua in 1904 were pushed into the desert, a hall of shame devised by the Germans and copied by the Young Turks. Ther Brits need not feel smug as they delivered the Boer women into special compounds where typhus raged.
After a 6 year research period Diamanda has created a shattering musical monument to an incinerated catastrophe. Reaching the emotional grandeur of her plague mass this blasts the smell of moral decay high into the rooftops. Based on the power of her voice as she recoups the psychic pain of obliteration. The piano breaks into runs of sadness a counter for the voice to glide with angels and demons of the sadness.
The voice rasps as a crow picking on the entrails of the living, tugging them to come and see. This is not as easy as the Aids trilogy, as she delves into ancient texts sung in the rasp cackle, bursting the bowels of belief
of a startling powerful piece of music, that needs time for it to soak in. There are no show tunes, only a slow evocation of a litany for the dead.
Timely, as Hitler based his form of ethnic cleansing on "Who remembers the Armenians?"; subject to a constant eternal return in the head.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Haunting and dark.
Although I don't quite agree that this is Diamanda's masterpiece (that for me will always be Plague Mass), it is nevertheless one of her most important and impressive... Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2006 by Irene the Athenian
passion and fire
Diamanda strikes another political note this time with the ongoing genocide of Armenians. The songs are passionate and the lyrics are presented mostly in other languages however,... Read more
Published on 2 Jan 2004 by jillian noble
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