The Moon's Secrets (Monochords)

by Bird Radio

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	1.	Dark glasses for the sun, darker than the night 07:00		buy track
	2.	A single road won’t get to the future 04:45		buy track

about

Returning to the island of Samos during the summer of 1979, where he had spent long periods of exile throughout his life, Greek poet Yannis Ritsos composed a remarkable collection of 336 single-line poems, written at a rate of about 10 a day: the Monochords, each line an essential observation of a moment; a personal archive of time past, present and future.

In London in 2020, during a period of Covid confinement, artist and filmmaker Chiara Ambrosio began responding to Ritsos’ words through linocut images: an experiment in entering the space opened by each poem, rendering it in line and shape; a daily ritual that accompanied her along a strange year of exile from life.

The Moon's Secret is Bird Radio's musical response to the book - both poems and linocuts - with bells, guitar, voice and aulos-inspired double pipes. "I was inspired by the time-stopping deep-breath poetry of Yannis Ritsos resonating through Chiara Ambrosio's perfectly tuned linocuts, like vibrating Chladni plates, published and printed so beautifully by Prototype. I simply stepped inside the linocuts and played from inside of them, which was easy to do as the universe that Ritsos and Ambrosio create is so tangible and enchanting".

‘Yannis Ritsos composed monochorda, single-line poems, as antidotes to the concocted complexities silencing truth. Chiara Ambrosio’s linocuts, beautifully intermingled with Ritsos’s words, add their own ascetic harmony to his monochorda, thus boosting their pertinence to our dissonant age.’ – Yanis Varoufakis

The book is available here directly from Prototype Publishing: prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/monochords/

credits

released May 4, 2023

Music - Bird Radio
Album cover - Chiara Ambrosio
Track titles - Yannis Ritsos (from Monochords)

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Bird Radio London, UK

Singer, songwriter, flautist and performer creating solo stage shows and collaborations with musicians, poets, theatre productions and filmmakers.

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