A Closer Listen
Sometimes an artist introduces us to a sound we haven’t heard before, and sometimes to a place we haven’t visited. On Sphaîra, Sara Persico does both. The album honors the aptly named Experimental Theatre, one of eighteen concrete buildings designed to showcase the Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli. Unfortunately, when civil war broke out, the project was halted, the buildings left to the mercy of the sea. A UNESCO Heritage site, the domed theatre continues to beguile, though entry is guarded, which makes Persico’s access all the more precious. If we cannot see the dome, we can experience it through her artistic vision. Sphaîra is not only a reflection of the present, but a tribute to history and a sonic story of what might have been.
“The Center Cannot Hold” is a perfect title for the opener, which serves as an overture. Birds sing unimpeded while electronic shuffles imitate the approach of the sea. The building, planned as one thing, has become another. One wonders if the ghostly echoes are part of the “whispering effect” or spectral entities caught on tape. On “Brutal Threshold,” metal tools scrape against concrete as Persico’s voice loops, mirroring the hum of the dome. While it appears on Subtext, one recalls the Cold Meat Industries label, as this is dark ambience indeed: not only in timbre, but in background. A voice appears and is cut off before it can be comprehended. The birds continue to sing.
As the album progresses, one senses a tug between the holy and the unholy, an abandoned vision of the future and the present reality. The choral elements tug the heart upward, while industrial distortions weigh it down. Persico attempts to appease the cries of her ghostly companions while adding cries of her own, expressing sympathy with their plight. The building – even in its present state – remains a miracle of modern construction. Persico’s pilgrimage exposes facets that even the original architect, Brazil’s Oscar Niemeyer, would never have imagined. Perhaps the album’s most telling sound is the split second that ends the elusive “Domescape,” as soft static is beheaded by a sudden hit. The civil war severed the trajectory of populace and exhibition center; the expected two million visitors never arrived, the buildings left to weep bitter tears into the sea.
Yet life remains within the rubble and what is not yet rubble. “Kairos” (the word meaning “a propitious moment”) contains an ongoing pulse that beats through the static and distortion. The penultimate track embeds a call to prayer. In “Dust,” even though mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned, there remains some semblance of hope; embers crackle and glow, refusing to fade. (Richard Allen)
Tue Feb 04 00:01:38 GMT 2025