Following numerous false-starts and delays, the twenty-fourth – and last ever – issue in FatCat Records’ long-running and much-loved Split 12” Series finally arrives on the 25th anniversary of the Brighton-based label. It features acclaimed Canadian singer/composer Ian William Craig and, occupying the flipside, Kago – the alias of Estonian poet/singer/writer Lauri Sommer.
Though the name Kago was taken from the leader of a group of alien travellers in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Breakfast Of Champions, and means “travelling chair” in older Japanese, Lauri lives something of a reclusive, hermetic existence even within his own country, living alone on his farm surrounded by forest. He has rarely travelled or performed outside of Estonia, and his music speaks deeply of the land it springs from. A member of the Seto ethnic grouping (a tiny, indigenous Finno-Ugric ethnic and linguistic minority in the far south-eastern corner of Estonia and north-western Russia), whose rural lives were united and regulated by the power of song, Lauri’s membership of male village choir Ütsiotsõ attempts to keep the Seto’s polyphonic choral tradition alive. As Kago, his songs are freer, yet remain heavily rooted in those now decaying cultural traditions, often based on a long repetition of simple vocal phrases.
Of the track, Tetermats 2, Kago writes: “I composed this melody – which sounds bit like an old Estonian runic verse – to the beats made by hitting the stop/start button on an old cassette dictaphone machine. My four-year-old daughter Liidi had just learned how to keep the rhythm of the song, as she sang along. And since she grew up with both of her parents singing her songs composed of made-up words, the vagueness of the lyrics was not a problem for her. These words, a Southern Estonian folk poetry from the tiny parish of Halliste, could be described as a kind of village Dadaism or nonsense rhyme. . . The word ‘Tetermats’ has no fixed meaning. . . it could be person´s name – since the singer says hello to him and at the end is mentioned as a “fine fellow” so I guess he´s kind of a shape-shifter.”
Of the video, FatCat’s Dave Howell writes: “I made the video myself on a visit to Estonia back in early Spring 2018, using an iphone to film Lauri Sommer (Kago) singing in the marshes that border his childhood home in an old Soviet housing block in Viljandi. The intercut stills are shots of his childhood photos and from inside his mother’s flat.”
