At the top of the insert for ISON, the debut full-length from Iranian-born Netherlands-based singer and multi-platform artist Sevdaliza, there’s a modified quote from a love letter that author Franz Kafka wrote to Czech journalist Milena Jesenská: “In this life, you are the knife with which I explore myself.” Though not Sevdaliza’s own words (and Kafka originally wrote “love” not “life”), the quote encapsulates the artist’s way of being both grandiose and explosive with simple, compact phrases. And while Kafka’s tortured correspondence certainly makes for an appropriate window into the mindset of ISON, a more fitting manifesto for Sevdaliza’s work might be: “I am the knife by which you explore life”—the “you” being us, the audience.
Some artists, it seems, have an irrepressible drive to ride the razor’s edge, to go places the world isn’t necessarily ready or willing to explore. For that type of artist, creation alone isn’t enough. ISON establishes Sevdaliza as an artist-provocateur with a sense of global mission. Provocative in the most generous sense, ISON’s messages both jar and invite. Sevdaliza is also blessed with a huckster’s knack for hyping her efforts via high-minded concepts. The album cover, for instance, frames Sevdaliza as mother to herself, to her past lives, and to the album’s 16 songs.
Originally on track towards a career as a basketball player, Sevdaliza abandoned athletics to pursue art. Like FKA Twigs, it’s clear that music represents just one dimension of her creative being, as she guides its visual and filmic presentations. And when you watch the lavish videos for ISON songs like “Human,” “Marilyn Monroe,” and “That Other Girl,” you might get the impression that the music doesn’t stand up quite as well without the visuals. On ISON, though, Sevdaliza and co-producer Mucky create an aural world so rich in detail and ambience that the music almost functions as a film set all on its own.
ISON is a modern-day trip hop album built on minimal breakbeats and heavy layers of orchestration courtesy of string arranger Mihai Puscoiu. Sevdaliza and Mucky take a rather frugal approach in their choice of sounds, and yet the sum total of the soundscape is massive and enveloping (thanks, in part, to masterful use of reverb). At the center of it all is Sevdaliza’s voice. As an entirely self-taught vocalist, she shows a startling level of agility and command as she switches between the stately inflection of a classic jazz singer backed by strings and the brassy nerve of a digital-age R&B artist flexing and cooing over the beat.
Impressively, she provokes thought and discomfort more with the emotion in her voice than through the stories her songs tell, like an actor emphasizing facial expressions over lines. In her videos, Sevdaliza tends to spell out her central themes (i.e: the conflicted interplay between womanhood and the constraints of motherhood, societal expectations, the male gaze, etc). Search for those subjects in the actual music, however, and they prove to be somewhat elusive, if ever-present. ISON is fraught with the push-pull dynamic between vulnerability and power, confidence and grace—dichotomies that Sevdaliza seeks to challenge.
There are too many eye-popping turns of phrase to list, but for Sevdaliza, even the simple, deadpan phrasing of the line “I am human” bursts with meaning. If there’s one knock on ISON, it’s that it stretches out to an hour-plus, which is a lot to take at the same crawling tempo. While Mucky’s beats can be nimble, some songs barely seem to move. Still, ISON is an album that gets under your skin and lingers in your thoughts. As warm and inviting as it gets at times, Sevdaliza was right not to make it too easy on the listener.
