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Baudelaire & Piano

by Susanna

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Digipack with booklet comes with exclusive drawings by the American artist Cameron

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    High-bias chrome tape with clear cassette case, frosted labels and innersleeve with panels on uncoated paper. A real gem! Only 70 copies available!

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    AVAILABLE 180 gr Black Vinyl 12" with printed innersleeve. Art by Cameron.

    SOLD OUT Clear vinyl limited to 200 Printed innersleeve and printed inlay with lyrics. Art by Cameron.

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  • Book/Magazine + Digital Album

    Baudelaire & Piano Songbook is an accurate transcribed version of Susanna's album, with poetry by Charles Baudelaire and gorgeous illustrations by Cameron.

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1.
The Dancing Snake My languid darling, how I love To see the silken sheen, When your body stretches and ripples Your shimmering skin! I breathe the tang of the ocean In the deeps of your hair, A shifting mass of blue and brown, A sea itself; and there, Like a sleeping ship that awakens As the morning breezes rise, My dreaming soul casts off and sets Its course for distant skies. Your eyes that speak of nothing, No sweet or bitter end, Are two cold precious jewels Where gold and iron blend. The loose and lovely cadence, The rhythm of your walk, Is like a snake who dances At the end of a stick. (….) And your body bends and stretches Like a slim ship that braves The sea it rolls and pitches, With yards tipping the waves. And when, like the glacier melting To swell a mountain stream, Saliva rises in your mouth And brims your teeth, it seems As if I drank Bohemian wine, Tangy, invasive, tart, A liquid sky that sends a rain Of stardust on my heart!
2.
Longing for Nothingness Sad spirit, once so ready for the fight, Hope, who so often spurred you on your way, Rides you no longer. Have no shame, lie down; Old horse, the stones have lamed your stumbling feet. Let go, my heart, and sleep your brutish sleep. Defeated weary mind, you old marauder, Now neither love nor combat can arouse you; Farewell, the trumpet’s call, the sighing flute! Old pleasures, tempt this brooding heart no longer! The fragrance of the spring is gone for ever. Minute by minute, Time engulfs my soul As snowdrifts swallow up a stiffening corpse; I contemplate the round globe from above And seek no hut to shelter from it all. Come, Avalanche, take me with you in your fall!
3.
The Enemy 05:53
The Enemy My youth was nothing but a darkling storm Shot through at times by brilliant bursts of sun; And in my garden few red fruits remain After the thunder’s ravages and the rain. Now I have reached the time of autumn thoughts When spade and rake are needed to reclaim The flooded land where water has dug out Holes in the earth, gaping as wide as tombs. Who knows if the new flowers that I dream of Will ever find in this poor soil, washed clean Like some bleak strand, their mystic quickening food? — O sorrow, sorrow! Time consumes our life; The enemy who gnaws our hearts unseen Grows tall and waxes strong on our lost blood.
4.
Burial 02:36
Burial If on a dark and sultry night Some charitable Christian soul Should find a rubbish dump and put Your once proud body in a hole, When the chaste stars no longer watch And sleep has weighed their eyelids down, There will the spider weave her webs And the viper bear her spawn; Above your cursed head you will hear Wolves with their long lamenting howls Night after night, throughout the year, And starving witches mumbling spells, Old lechers playing dirty games, And shady ruffians plotting crimes.
5.
Meditation 04:32
Meditation Have patience, O my Sorrow, settle down. You longed for Evening, Evening now is here: A dusky air falls and enfolds the town, To some men bringing peace, to others care. While the dull mortal crowd, sweating beneath The whip of Pleasure and his pitiless sway, Reaps the remorse born of some servile feast, Give me your hand, my Sorrow, come this way, Far from them all. See the dead Years lean out From Heaven’s balconies in faded robes; See, rising from the deep, smiling Regret; The dying Sun asleep beneath an arch; And, like a long shroud trailing from the East, Hear, love, that footfall… hear Night’s soft approach.
6.
Obsession 03:11
Obsession Great woods, your winds oppress me like the heft Of great cathedral organs; and our hearts, Shaken with dying groans, are echo chambers, Vaults where your De profundis still vibrates. I hate you, Ocean! All your bounding tumults I find within: the bitter laughter of A man defeated, all his sobs and insults, I hear resounding in the sea’s vast laugh. How you would please me, Night, without those stars Whose light speaks in a language that I know! I only seek what’s empty, black and bare. But darkness is itself a canvas where My eyes project a thousand vanished souls Who look at me with a familiar air.
7.
The Vampire You came like the blade of a dagger To my heart that was humbled and sad, As bold as a pack of wild demons, Dressed up for a pageant, and mad; You made in my mortified spirit Your bed and your private domain, -You monster to whom I am shackled As the convict is to his chain, As the drunkard is to his bottle, As the gambler is to his game, As the vermin are to a carcass, -Accursed, accursed be your name! I prayed for the sword to come swiftly With the blow that would render me free, And I asked if perfidious poison Could succour a coward like me. But alas, both the sword and the poison Gave answer and said with disdain: “Base slave, you are deeply unworthy That we ever should shatter your chain; You fool, if our efforts could grant you The freedom from her that you crave, Your kisses would soon give new life to The corpse of your vampire-love!”
8.
The Harmony of Evening Now comes the time when trembling on its stem Each flower diffuses fragrance like a censer; Perfumes and sounds swirl in the evening air; Slow melancholy waltz and dizzy languor. Each flower diffuses fragrance like a censer; The violin trembles like a grieving heart, Slow melancholy waltz and dizzy languor! The sky is spread like an altar of repose. The violin trembles like a grieving heart, A tender heart that hates the vast dark void! The sky is spread like an altar of repose; The sun is drowned in its own thickening blood. A tender heart that hates the vast dark void Gathers each gleaming vestige of the past; The sun is drowned in its own thickening blood…. Your memory shines in me like a monstrance.
9.
A Pagan’s Prayer Ah, do not dampen down those flames, But heat this frozen heart in me, Pleasure, you torturer of souls! Diva! supplicem exhaudi Goddess, a presence in the air, And in our buried lives a blaze, Hear the despairing voice that sings A brazen anthem in your praise. Voluptuous pleasure, be my queen, Put on your siren’s mask again, Fashioned of velvet and of flesh; Pour heavy sleep into my glass Of mystic wine, O formless ghost Of multiform voluptuousness.
10.
The Ghost 03:50
The Ghost With bestial angelic eyes I shall return and make no noise, And slip into your quiet room And glide towards you in the gloom; My dusky love, I shall bestow Moon-cold kisses on your brow, With coiled caresses writhing round Like snakes that haunt a burial ground. Morning will not reveal my face, You’ll wake to find an empty place, Though when night comes I shall be there. Others endeavour to possess Your life and youth through tenderness - Not me: I choose to rule by fear.

about

Susanna 'Baudelaire & Piano' OUT NOW

Critic's Choice Financial Times 4 / 5 stars

“...cool and clear and a perfect welcome to autumn.”4/5 The Guardian

“…it lingers on like a vivid dream.” MOJO 4/5



What would French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) have made of the events of 2020? An artist who took his disgust with life to the streets, who constantly shook his fist at authority, and a literary enfant terrible who suffered from disease most of his life. His poetry has been set to music by everyone from Claude Debussy to Ali Akbar Khan, and his uncompromising life and art influenced the music of The Doors, Bob Dylan and Scott Walker. Now his abject, decadent verse is the backbone of the latest release by Norwegian vocalist/composer Susanna.

Susanna’s 2019 album Garden of Earthly Delights (with her group the Brotherhood of Our Lady) featured musical interpretations of the surreal medieval paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. Baudelaire & Piano – recorded at Atlantis Studio in Stockholm – is a tribute to another of her artistic heroes and mentors.

This is a record made in isolation, stripped back to just her expressive, soulful voice and skeletal, trancelike piano playing. The light touch allows the extraordinary qualities of Baudelaire’s writing to shine through. ‘I wanted to approach this material in an almost dogmatic way,’ she says, ‘to present the songs in a naked, stripped-down form, alone at the piano. These poems have so many layers and contain such rich expanding emotions to me.’

Like much of Baudelaire’s work, Susanna’s music probes the limits of desire, and confronts the simultaneous wonder and meaningless of existence. He is often considered one of the first modern poets, whose urban observations frequently dipped into fantasy, sensuality, fevered imagings and eerie horror. Susanna’s selection of ten texts from his masterwork The Flowers of Evil (translated by Anthony Mortimer) cover the full spectrum of Baudelaire’s conflicted expression.

Here you’ll find a creepy cast of witches, pagans, wolves, perverts, thugs, ghosts, vampires and demons. The songs struggle with lust and saintliness, angels and demons, tenderness and sadism, and the relentless march of time, the destroyer. Beauty with an edge of strangeness. Sin as a swallowing abyss. In Susanna’s haunting settings and performance, the poetry of Baudelaire has found its ideal transmitter.

credits

released September 11, 2020

Susanna vocals, piano and whistling

Music composed by Susanna
Poetry by Charles Baudelaire from Les Fleurs du Mal
Translation by Anthony Mortimer, published by Alma Books, used with permission
Produced by Deathprod and Susanna

Recorded by Janne Hansson at Atlantis Studio Stockholm
Mixed and mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus LAB Oslo

Art by Cameron, Garden and Aradia, used with permission by
Cameron Parsons Archives and Ordo Templi Orientis Archives


Cover design by Johanna Blom


SONATACD055
P + C 2020 SUSANNASONATA
All rights reserved
www.susannasonata.com
www.susannamagical.com

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Susanna Oslo, Norway

The Norwegian artist Susanna has released albums as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/Susanna/Susanna Wallumrød since 2004 on labels like Rune Grammofon/ECM/Grappa Musikkforlag and since 2011 on her own label SusannaSonata. Critically acclaimed for both her own songs and her highly personal interpretations of other people's songs. ... more

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