Siren (Susumu Hirasawa album)

Siren
Studio album by Susumu Hirasawa
Released August 1, 1996 (1996-08-01)
Recorded

1996

Genre
Length 48:49
Label Nippon Columbia, TESLAKITE
Producer
  • Susumu Hirasawa
  • Yūichi Kenjo (Executive)
Susumu Hirasawa chronology
Sim City
(1995)		 Siren
(1996)		 Technique of Relief
(1998)
Singles from SIREN
  1. "SAIREN *Siren*"
    Released: August 1, 1996 CODA-1012

Siren is the sixth solo album by Susumu Hirasawa.

Overview

As with the previous album Sim City, it was greatly influenced by Hirasawa's trips to Thailand and continues that album's style and concepts.

Starting from fertility goddesses and a "mermaid legend" he heard (possibly Suvannamaccha), Hirasawa investigated legends from around the world to see how much the ideals represented by the country's transsexuals (with whom he spent most of his time in the country with) manifest in their myths, which led him to discover the same frequent pattern of fertility goddesses seducing humans and associations with gender variance or androgyny. He also interpreted such ideas as the Gemini myth and the concept of yin and yang as examples of things possessing attributes of both genders.[1]

The conclusion that Hirasawa derived from his research is that no matter what culture you are from, the balance between masculinity and femininity is a valued concept. If this balance peacefully exists in one human being, they can be likened to a god in that respect, with Thai transsexuals being the ideal example of this.[1]

Although though this relatively abstract idea was the driving concept behind the album, Hirasawa tried to express it in a listener-friendly way through a story and easy to understand lyrics. He intended to evoke a primitive and naturalistic mythology based on harmony and coexistence with nature.[1] For songwriting, Hirasawa elected to use as few English words as possible and avoid pop song-like structure, which imposed quite a bit of restriction on him. The process contained a large amount of experimentation and combination that rendered him more of a listener than a performer.[1]

One of Hirasawa's aims with the album is to create music that will cause everyone who listens to it to be unified in action, which is reflected on the album's title: a play on the double meaning of "siren", which alludes to both the alarm mechanism and the mythological creatures. For Hirasawa, it was fascinating that people synchronize their actions with everyone else when a siren alarm goes off, and he found it similar to the way that men who hear the siren creature's song drop everything to sail in her direction.[2]

Track listing

All tracks written by Susumu Hirasawa. 

No.TitleLength
1."ELECTRIC LIGHT BATHING-1" (電光浴-1 Denkōyoku-1)1:12
2."SAIREN *Siren*" (サイレン *Siren*)5:28
3."On Line Malaysia"  4:46
4."Siren *SEIRĒN*" (Siren *セイレーン*)5:00
5."Nurse Cafe"  4:01
6."Holy Delay"  5:23
7."Gemini"  5:25
8."Day Scanner"  3:39
9."Siam Lights"  5:42
10."ELECTRIC LIGHT BATHING-2" (電光浴-2 Denkōyoku-2)1:25
11."Mermaid Song"  7:03

Personnel

Release history

Date Label(s) Format Catalog Notes
August 1, 1996 Nippon Columbia, Teslakite CD COCA-13571
March 18, 2009 Columbia Music Entertainment HQCD COCP-35524 Digitally remastered, with B-side alternative mixes for bonus tracks.
Digital Download none
February 29, 2012 Chaos Union, Teslakite CD CHTE-0059 Remastered by Masanori Chinzei. Part of Disc 6 of the HALDYN DOME box set, alongside "ELECTRIC LIGHT BATH (default version)".

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Takahasi, Kasiko (2010) [1999]. 改訂DIGITAL復刻版 音楽産業廃棄物 [Music Industrial Wastes Rev.2.4] (PDF) (in Japanese). Hirasawa Side — 卓上のウロボロス [Desktop Ouroboros] (3rd ed.). Fascination. p. 23.
  2. ↑ Inoue, Mako (September 1996). のなかにある女性の声が大事なんです [A Woman's Voice Inside a Man is Important]. Rockin'on Japan (in Japanese). Vol. 119. Rockin'on Holdings.
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