PREMIERE | Tadzio, "Not Yours At All"

Tadzio from left; Shaina Kapeluck & Benjamin Schurr; photographed by Bob Boilen.

The complex arts of catharsis are interwoven into much of the aesthetic fabric of sounds, visuals and all other sorts of mediums. These eclectic crafts offer outlets to cope and contend with the magnitude of loss, traumas on all levels of scale and reckon with the material and immaterial aspects of our world that exceed our own immediate comprehension. Indicative of this time honored tradition of human experience and expression is the DC/Philly group Tadzio who are releasing a split with their BLIGHT. Records labelmates Nyxy Nyx to honor a departed friend of both bands with an album in their namesake — Sierra. Presenting a debut listen to the sky shaking mix of classic klezmer with modern mood touches; Tadzio opens up a new chapter in the people's histories of lamentations with the devastating "Not Yours at All".

Tadzio — comprised of Shaina Kapeluck, violist Hannah Burris, keyboardist Ross Lipton and BLIGHT. boss Benjamin Schurr — make music designed to quake you to the central core. “Not Yours at All” starts out with a tinny hook that warbles with vintage transistor radio tones of caution and woe that evolve into a funereal processional of keys, high dramatic strings, chimes and a host of other beguiling and bewildering tones. Kapeluck spells out the finite extents of existence’s fleeting footprints left in the fossils and sand dunes of time with a ghostlike presence and delivery. Shaina’s voice hovers and permeates the track like a spectacular phantasm that glides between dimensions of the known and unknown realms. Tadzio once again delivers a towering sound that shakes the listener with feelings of fright, sorrow, memoriam and bewilderment in their own trademark blending of the baroque and a modern sense of orchestrating cinema classics for the ear. And though motifs of mortality weigh heavily on "Not Yours”; Shaina, Hannah and Benjamin conduct an excercise of observing and emulating the ghost/spirit that exists within the embodiment of the aura within the artwork of the song itself.

Shaina Kapeluck shared some reflections on the memorial catharsis of loss and love that informed "Not Yours at All":

Every recording conjures a ghost. When the needle drops, that person is breathing in the room with me, and their thoughts are in my mind. That said, the ghost of of my own design.

There’s a danger in attaching too much significance to the figure cut into the darkness of the room where you listen. It’s a tricky dialectic, especially once that person is gone. The otherness that happens to you is freeing and there is some not-you agency to lean on and follow and it’s hard to know where exactly it begins.

Tadzio's split EP with Nyxy Nyx Sierra will be available February 2 via BLIGHT. Records on limited edition green cassette and digital.