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mimesis : what is mimesis ?
Plato, unlike his compatriot Aristotle, didn't much go for Mimesis, the notion that all art is imitation. Poets, painters and the like, he argued, were "two steps removed from ultimate truth", undermining human stability at best, downright depressing people at worst.
Were he around today, though, Plato would most likely love the latest addition to Psy Harmonics' catalogue, however irksome its title.
For starters Mimesis doesn't reference life as we know it, exploring instead a wondrous, mysterious afterlife imagined by The Church front-man Steve Kilbey, set to (in Kilbey's words) a "lush, evocative, pulsing, living, electronic, organic, dreamlike" bed of ambience courtesy of production wiz Simon Polinski, double bassist David Abiuso, pianist Colin Berwick and the wild experimentation they shared for 18 months.
Chances are, after a long, stressful day pressing index finger to forehead, Mimesis would be just the thing to help Plato chill out.
On so many levels, Mimesis is without precedent. It's a 79-minute art house flick without pictures, a complex jigsaw piece you'll never, ever finish, and the greatest dream you've never had. It's Gustav Holst's The Planets, Mozart, John Taverner and countless other composers cut, morphed, squeezed and pureed until tiny snippets of their work took on whole new dimensions. It is, depending on your mood, a trip record, a heavenly bliss-out, or a disturbing plug into the subconscious's subconscious.
Connection, disconnection, love, loss, life, afterlife, all get a going over in a work that – like mercury – it's impossible to fully grasp, but fun trying.
Not bad for a story loosely focused around two deceased strangers, sitting around in a caravan, with strange yarns to tell.
mimesis: the creative process
Think of Mimesis as a giant blank canvas upon which four disparate, highly talented artists threw everything they had.
At its most bare, the project involved sought after producer/engineer Simon Polinski and his long-time friend, double bassist David Abiuso, jamming ideas formed over four years apart. Fresh from London, Abiuso spoke excitedly of looping minute fragments from classical pieces; intriguing notes he'd long wished composers had explored further.
Curious, Polinski sent him into "the cupboard", a floor-to-ceiling collection of vinyl in his home studio, most of it dusty op-shop bargains long since deleted. Before long Gustav Holst, Mozart, choral composer John Taverner and scores more had snippets of their works fed through Polinski's peculiar blender. As Abiuso puts it: "Polinski's extracts aren't straight out quotes. They're put through a filter, pitch-shifted, time-shifted, chopped, cut, squeezed, tracked and turned on their head."
Mimesis's seeds were being sewn.
Enter Colin Berwick, a Scottish pianist and guitarist with an experimental bent and a resume as long as your arm, a stint with Celtic rockers Big Country a highlight. Berwick had a "pile of melodies locked away" in his head, just waiting for a key. In Mimesis he found it. Like kids in a lolly-shop, the trio would play until midnight, Berwick recalls, "squeezing weird sounds out of anything we could hit or make vibrate." Then, inspired, Polinski would see in the dawn mixing the results.
Mimesis was gestating.
The final puzzle piece, however, Steve Kilbey, was 1000 kilometers away. Years before, The Church front man, painter and poet expressed an interest in contributing lyrics to Polinski's ambient alter ego, Helsius Dome. Mimesis fitted the bill. And so, for a year or more, advanced tracks were mailed to and from Sydney. Kilbey's blog best sums it up: "Polinski and pals provide evocative, pulsing, living, electronic, organic, dreamlike music while I associate, tap straight it and let it out. JLK (Kilbey's brother, John) dos backing vox, then Poli and men fuck with it big-time with all the latest AND oldest tricks in the book."
The result, he attests, is the "greatest ever work I've been involved in." Ever-modest Polinski concurs. Play it and you'll see why.
mimesis: track descriptions
1. "What are you doing in my holiday?"
Mimesis opens somewhere in the afterlife, with a mature gentleman enjoying a "long, deserved" and idyllic caravan holiday "in a meadow, behind some trees, near the sea". It's a place where glorious dreams - like food, water and sunshine - are bountiful. One day, the man's peace is disturbed by a younger man; shy and unsettled. After a stilted introduction, the stranger proceeds to tell of his own passing and the people, places and "futures" he subsequently experienced. The scene is set: two men in a caravan; each on their own journeys through death; each with stories to tell.
2. "Just Get Me Out of Here"
Kuala Lumpur. Ambassador Hotel. 1983. Earth. At least it seems that way, until our narrator, the older man has trouble calling home via the operator from room 1313 on the 13th floor. After all, Asian hotels don't list 13th floors. Is the massive blast of energy he recalls, with "blinding stars oozing out from a flaming centre … everything going backwards" in his sight, actually the moment of his own death. A plane crash is hinted at, or something even worse? Indeed, could the "funeral of a friend" actually be his own. Whatever the explanation, he's trapped in a purgatory of sorts, desperate to escape. The tranquil bliss of the caravan seems a long way off. But then a blessed place is suddenly promised, a place without time and space where everyone sees all, knows all and is known.
3. "Mary-Lee, where are you?"
In She's in the Garden, two young lovers seem to be playing a childlike game of hide and seek. "She's in the garden," voices whisper and yet our hapless hero searches in vain. For while, yes, his soul mate is in the garden, that garden is in another dimension, another "future", in much the same way that the young man's life is now aeons from his widow's. No wonder he's having such a tough time. A track which touches a key theme in Mimesis: that love traverses life and souls one day reunite, but not without a long, sometimes difficult search.
4. "Memory is white, just like the future will be white…"
Briefly, we're back at the caravan, where the holiday is now being shared, but words have become few. The surroundings have morphed into a world dominated by white: waves, instruments, consoles, paintings, and patterns - the list goes on. All is quiet, but it's not all heavenly. Here, the earth's pulse can be felt, so too a "white cosmic light". And yet our storytellers somehow doubt both. And just what is the machine that appears out of nowhere, transmitting white static? It's troublesome. It makes things like the garden that much harder to find.
5. "What's her name? Who's to blame? Not me!"
Mimesis' most ambiguous track. You've heard of all over the shop, well, this is all over the warehouse; a stream of consciousness rant replete with little bongs, rhyming songs, trips to Wollongong and friends from Hong Kong. And that's just for starters. But there's menace under the lyrical acrobatics; snippets from a time (the not-too-distant future, perhaps?) when the "end-of-the-world" looms and people consult mystics to pinpoint exactly when. Reassuringly, through contacts on the "other side" our younger narrator finally sends a message to his girl. "I'm preparing a beautiful place for you my love. It's always summer. I've seen Matthews, he sends his regards."
Exactly who Matthews is uncertain: the older man, an old mutual friend? But then, knowing often spoils the fun of wondering.
6. "Every day, drive to work, along the avenues…"
Caravan once more, exact time unclear, place equally so. The older man recounts his stint at the "Continuity Department", an Orwellian sounding, earth-bound job, you'd think, until you discover that walls there "admitted people" and that life expectancy was 1000 years: quite an innings. But it pales against eternity, which the narrator insists is nigh. Then he drops a bombshell. His young guest, with whom he has reluctantly shared a holiday, isn't recorded in a special register sequestered from the department years before; a record of every soul ever created. "No one's ever fucking heard of you, man ... it's as if you've never existed," he quizzes.
And so we arrive at the crux of Mimesis: exactly how real is anyone, in this world, or in the worlds beyond? Are we only as real as "the rain" or "the night"?
Just don't expect a neat, simple tied-in-a-bow conclusion. That would be fanciful. Suddenly one of the men, no longer can you tell which, recounts being lured by a shady government agent masquerading as a CD retailer into a "special listening booth." There, while a mesmeric piano motif goes round and round, underpinned by chants the narrator swears are his own, the mysterious woman defines Mimesis the word. Define for yourself Mimesis the work.
www.psy-harmonics.com.au
www.myspace.com/mimesistheband
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