Seven voices

'Seven Voices' is a collaborative piece by Isobel Anderson and Joel Cathcart: a vocal song cycle embedded in a gently disorientating mesh of local field recordings, accompanied by a series of large paintings on cardboard. The work is a 'non-opera'; its haiku-like texts describe seven archetypal yet anonymous characters: the monarch, the lover, the child, the magician, the fugitive, the addict and the hermit, hinting at possible connections without insisting on a particular narrative.
A test run for this project was part of 'VISUAL SOUND' , March 2011 in PS².

Song cycle

m o n a r c h

new growth clings to older hills
a thicket of urges
spreading from your hand
the ivy veins along your arm

l o v e r

waiting for you to arrive
a silenced bell
and the hum of distant cars
other futures, other wounds

c h i l d

I will always be your child
at a distance

m a g i c i a n

all of me in one place
is just too much for anyone
don’t look for me whole
find me scattered

f u g i t i v e

I can spare you this moment
before I leave
the salt taste of your burnt fields and broken fences
half truths and fierce familiar lies
hounds on the scent

a d d i c t

a slim tracery of scars
raw singing riverbeds
a storyboard thirst
counting all the steps to the end

h e r m i t

(in absentia)
to wither untethered in the nameless sun
secret orbit in fields of choice
a loose note flung from the silent choir

Joel Cathkart is a musician, poet and visual artist. his particular interests include interdisciplinary collaboration, unusual ensemble configurations, improvisatory schemes, no-budget audio montage, instrument re/design and alternative performance spaces.

Isobel Anderson is a vocalist, songwriter, and installation artist. Isobel’s work combines song, sound and spoken word within a variety of contexts to explore our use and understanding of stories and the voice.