Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When musicians say their sound is uncategorisable, they usually mean that they don\u2019t want to be categorised. In their minds\u2019 eyes, their songs are singular creations fluttering around the richly varied world of music. Capturing these effusions and attaching a genre name to them is a deathly act of taxonomy, like pinning a rare butterfly to a board. But contrary to musicianly pride, most songs are all too easily sorted into types.Some, however, are not. Japanese auteur Eiko Ishibashi\u2019s songs are among those to evade the swishes of the net. We can hear different elements in them, a jumble of orchestral pop, prog, folk, jazz-rock, modern classical and the upbeat 1980s Japanese sound known as city pop. But pinning it down to a single label is challenging. No sooner might the classifier settle on prog-pop, citing Ishibashi\u2019s teenage love of Genesis\u2019s Foxtrot, than another song or project flutters free from the net and the chase begins anew.Antigone is named after the ancient Greek heroine of Sophocles\u2019s play, an independent-minded daughter who does what she wants, with tragic results. It is the 50-year-old\u2019s first collection of songs since 2018\u2019s The Dream My Bones Dream, in which she explored her father\u2019s upbringing in occupied Manchuria in the 1940s, a tragic episode in Chinese and Japanese history. (During the gap between albums, Ishibashi composed film scores for the director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.)Among the musicians joining her on Antigone is her main collaborator and romantic partner, Jim O\u2019Rourke, another freethinking figure with a distinguished discography of his own. Initially conceived in the style of Julee Cruise, the dreamy torch singer whose voice adorned David Lynch\u2019s films, the music is captivating and unpredictable. Ishibashi sings in a languid, breathy voice. The lyrics are mostly in Japanese with a sprinkling of English.\u201cOctober\u201d lifts off with a grand orchestral swell before heading into an idiosyncratic version of psychedelia. Ishibashi\u2019s hazy vocals are accompanied by samples of staticky American babble between astronauts and mission control. \u201cThe Model\u201d has a shimmering, 1970s cosmic music feel. \u201cNothing As\u201d is a whispery ballad with a beguiling slow-motion tempo, sung in English, while \u201cMona Lisa\u201d is sophisticated and sensual. Like the titular painting\u2019s enigmatic smile, whose meaning belongs to either the sitter, the painter or the viewer, the song draws us in even as it eludes our grasp.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606 \u2018Antigone\u2019 is released by Drag City<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When musicians say their sound is uncategorisable, they usually mean that they don\u2019t want to be categorised. In their minds\u2019 eyes, their songs are singular creations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-256638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256640,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256638\/revisions\/256640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}