“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” concludes Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942). That’s the starting point for Tom Kazas in his new 4 track EP sisyphus happy which extends his personal mythology started with the Moffs.
Tom is playing with absurdity, the main theme of Camus essay, in any possible way: the lyrics can be seen as an extension of the Myth, personal yet universal. Tom is a restless artist and global citizen. Camus has written this essay about absurdity in a world threatened by fascism and Tom – happens? – to follow up when the same, disguised, threat throw its shadow over Greece and Europe. It’s not a direct manifest against Nazism but rather an effort to explain today’s absurdity through poetry and the necessary way out, that is revolt according to Camus.
Happiness equals revolution: “I revel in the burden that's rolling up and down the hill”
But he doesn’t stop there. Tom is playing with music too throwing the two faces of a coin into a single…EP. He has actually written 2 songs but recorder two versions of each. Not just remixes but reworks.
Revel in the burden and transfusion share the same lyrics.
The first being the “rolling up” and the latter the “down the hill” versions of the same story. The two songs are characterized by the cyclic rhythm and heavy bassline (bass in transfusion reminded me of another Greek and one of the most influential bass players, Mick Carn). The other couple being I should know and depth height is the more pop side of the EP, without being less interesting. Here the impression is of the “outer” (I should know) and “inner” (depth height) self.
In Tom’s words: “Which is the original and which the remodel does not concern Sisyphus. For though it is possible he is in all places at once on that slope, we might rather imagine that these songs place him in the moments between descent and ascent, between then and now.”
As a whole the EP left me with the feeling of a spiral ascension, the same feeling I get when listening to the Wrong Way Up album by John Cale and Brian Eno.
A great pleasure.
www.tomkazas.net
Happiness equals revolution: “I revel in the burden that's rolling up and down the hill”
But he doesn’t stop there. Tom is playing with music too throwing the two faces of a coin into a single…EP. He has actually written 2 songs but recorder two versions of each. Not just remixes but reworks.
Revel in the burden and transfusion share the same lyrics.
The first being the “rolling up” and the latter the “down the hill” versions of the same story. The two songs are characterized by the cyclic rhythm and heavy bassline (bass in transfusion reminded me of another Greek and one of the most influential bass players, Mick Carn). The other couple being I should know and depth height is the more pop side of the EP, without being less interesting. Here the impression is of the “outer” (I should know) and “inner” (depth height) self.
In Tom’s words: “Which is the original and which the remodel does not concern Sisyphus. For though it is possible he is in all places at once on that slope, we might rather imagine that these songs place him in the moments between descent and ascent, between then and now.”
As a whole the EP left me with the feeling of a spiral ascension, the same feeling I get when listening to the Wrong Way Up album by John Cale and Brian Eno.
A great pleasure.
www.tomkazas.net
We gave Sisyphus Happy a bit of a review over at Happy!
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