From Moniek Toebosch to Jaap Blonk, Holland has a tradition of producing outrageous avant vocalists. Bijma, whose past work has been in conjunction with luminaries like Louis Andriessen, Jasper Van't Hof and The Willem Breuker Kollektief can easily go head to head with any of these nutters in the glottal torture department and can be heard doing just that on the Five Voices-Direct Sound CD recorded in conjunction with Carles Santos, David Moss, Anna Homler and Shelley Hirsch that I posted way back when. It's the last name checked artist that Bijma most warrants comparison with though, both sharing a campily playful approach that's highly theatrical and full of giddily over the top coo-to-a-caterwaul stylizations, their ditzy cartoonishness dancing a fandango on the precipice of shtick but never falling over into it and both prone to casting their vocal experiments in often far more tonal settings than many of their contemporaries. In this case, Bijma can be found playing wacky cabaret chanteuse over strains of gypsy jazz, imitating a dialogue between Yoko Ono's fly and David Moss' frog in some cod asiatic fantasia, and even veering into more traditional scat modes opposite massed kalimbas.
She also reminds of Diamanda a bit...
ReplyDeleteThis ia an essential album.
Highly recommended !
~Vdorje