Sissi Rada
Sissi Rada, Berlin by Greece’s Anastasia Sissy Makropoulou just released her adventurous album debut Pragma via Inner Ear Records, gifting us with the wildly imaginitive CGI effects for her single “Sunday” courtesy of Schnellebuntebilder. Made using Microsoft Kinect 2 that was later edited & programmed in VVVV, developed via Cinema4D and VVVV and finalized in After Effects; all worlds both digital & tangible collide to the Sissi Rada array of strings & pop vocal song.
The weekend feelings of a harp strummed “Sunday” spent taking in the joys of the day are contrasted with the harsh realities that prevail on the following Monday. Indulgences of amour, television binge watching, inspired ping-pong matches & more are recounted like a classic fairy tale where the ephemeral energy & air of Sunday is coupled with the brooding sound shift that paints the sobering & somber awakenings that combine weekend escapist romanticism with the praxis of weekly schedules. Read our interview with Sissi Rada, aka Anastasia Sissy Makropoulou after the following celestial harp chord plunks of “Sunday”.
Describe the pragmatism & exploration of intuition, international reverberations, pop personas & more from Pragma, and how you have built upon your debut Personae.
Personae is an album that got inspired by real personalities such as Richard Wagner, Judy Garland, my best friend, the jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and a greek weird band. Pragma on the contrary is an album inspired by objects and symbols. “Pragma” in greek means object. However, many different languages have words in their vocabulary that originate from this root. Anyone would understand something by hearing or reading that word. Maybe not the same, but something. I like to play with this element that speaks for multi-culture. Literally and symbolically. There’s a lot of pragmatism when I write in the way that there is always an objective cause. A theme that I concentrate in. That helps not to lose your way. And then all the rest, the wrapping of the object, comes intuitively. There is so much inspiration out there. If you are open, you won’t go wrong.
Tell us more about working with Max Trieder, along with the synergy involved with contributions from Camerata Athens Quartet, Sergiu Nastaza, Niklas Lutterbach, Florian Bitzer, Sebastian Meyer & Constanze Trieder; how did the cumulation of these talents impact the overall finished album of Pragma?
I met Max 6 years ago at the University for music in Detmold, Germany. He was studying Tonmeister, I was studying harp. I was looking for someone to record some solo classical pieces and so I wrote an e-mail to the department. He was the one to answer. When I saw him somehow I thought that he must be different than the others and would understand my “other” project, that I didn’t trust myself to show to anyone. You see in such institutions such as the Music Conservatories, it’s rare that a student has a direct connection to the modern world. We all practice all day alone in rooms with painstaking stamina in order to reproduce a musical piece that was composed, in the best case, 100 years ago. Then your professor listens to it and points to you where you forgot, or ignored, or were just unable to do what this composer wanted 100 years ago. I must admit that I love this sick way of life, and that I still practice like this, but at the end of the day, I need to connect with today. So that’s what I was doing back then. I trusted Max and showed him my songs and asked him if he would be interested in producing them. He said yes. He also added that I should play them live. I remember I said “but then we need a band… would you like to make a band with me?” and he said yes. It was a very happy moment. Butterflies on the heels. Since then we collaborated in many different projects and produced two albums. In the Layout process of the new album, strings, flutes and brasses were programmed, so it was a logical step to replace thesesounds by real acoustic instruments. Camerata Athens Quartet, Sergiu Nastaza, Niklas Lutterbach, Florian Bitzer, Sebastian Meyer and Constanze Trieder did a great job bringing our tracks to life! They also delivered some improvised parts for “sousourada”. We decided the first seconds of the album (“lapislazuli”) to be fully acoustic and to have an almost “jingle”-like character for the introduction. For “Your Laptop” Max asked Niklas, who is really great in creating soundscapes with the guitar and a bunch of pedals, to add something to the first Verse. We were really lucky for their input.
How have your own extensive academics in music informed your own approaches & mindsets when you are involved in your own creative process?
Most of the times, it’s while I am practicing classical pieces on the harp that an idea captures my interest. This instrument is so generous. And yet so unused. Unfortunately we harpists enjoy a limited literature, since the instrument was always accessible to the elite. Few people were playing it, few people were composing for it. This has a bad and a good side. The bad is that harpists very ofter seem to have more inexperienced ears than other musicians, like pianists for example. On the other hand, the fact that this instrument is so unexposed, it makes it more fertile than any other. Especially in the pop world. An oil well. You can play the simplest riff and it sounds fresh. I am not sure if I would have composed the same pieces if I played another instrument. Or if I would compose at all. And then some other times writing is the trigger. I used to write since I was very young, poems, thoughts… Then I started writing columns about music in various blogs. Over the years it has become part of my everyday process, whether it’s lyrics, or a prose, or an article.
With an album that delves deep into the universal psychic consciousness, what sorts of pressing issues do you think that world needs to sort out?
Wow! does it delve into the universal psychic consciousness? Concentration. That’s what we are striving for. Music and literature is a cause to concentrate. And this album is sincere towards both these causes.
2017 meditations?
Concentrate, stop fidgeting and make happy thoughts. President Obama visited Athens a few days ago and gave a paradigmatic speech: People are less violent today than ever in the history of mankind. Now that’s a happy thought! If it’s pragmatic, I don’t know…
Sissi Rada’s album Pragma is available now from Inner Ear Records.
