On Danielle De Picciotto’s DELIVERY presented by Cold Lips,
The Social, Little Portland Street, London, Saturday August 3rd 2019
Danielle de Picciotto by Sylvia Steinhaeuser
The delivery comes graced by stars;
Startled electronica, like a cosmos
Providing the context for Danielle de Picciotto’s song words
As she charts a path through the space within human absence
All of the way through dream,
then desire;
These are the signals that she tracks for us,
Having heard
What remains to be found
In the private vibration of man and motive
And all of the mistakes we employ,
And so she achieves through her work a form
Of astral projection, as she fuses, sound, word and image
Across a physical trek towards joy.
She previews her new album tonight at the Little Portland Street Social,
Kissed by the Cold Lips of Kirsty Allison, and Gil De Ray,
Whose counter cultural heat filters through
As they commandeer a room full of poets
To interact with the message that the leader
Of The Love Parade came to play.
Here then is where the word joins the heart,
As De Picciotto star travels;
Against a frame
Of changing projections, all of the art of woman
And man is inferred. This writer, singer, artist, stoker of hope,
Cities, culture, Girl from Tacoma, now resident in Berlin,
Casts sound pearls.
From a handful of husks,
Used as percussion,
To a hand-chime and sound pad,
From which something like David Sylvian’s Blemish
Unfurls,
Danielle captivates
With a Laurie Anderson shimmer,
Probing each felt intention across the palette and world
Of four songs. Each poem arrives, atmosphere arranged
To enchant us, a ghostly violin note becomes cipher, its resonance
Slicing through us so as to expose every wrong.
All we have dealt, or had dealt, each gamble made,
Each decision is poetically questioned and sanctified across air;
In twenty minutes or so, De Picciotto opens a portal
From which daily action moves far beyond earthly care.
‘Our blood is their blood’ she implores, as she contains the world’s victims,
Our obsessions, distractions have removed us, it seems
From the source.
And yet there will always be hope
And this is where she direct us; Self awareness, self knowledge
Will only come when we see that just as we destroy,
We must understand that destruction, in order to rebuild
What was useless; for that is when love truly achieves
And finds force.
The Delivery has arrived tonight,
With the metaphysical letterbox shaking.
Open the missive she gives you and like Pandora,
A cask full of reassures will rise and spiral,
Like smoke from dreams’ bottle,
Or an abandoned aim, finding cause.
The poet Stuart Mckenzie opined that small rooms are the future.
And so they are. In a Small Age, reductive minds build our walls,
But at events like tonight, right in the stomach of London
Size and sustenance gather, shaking bone and cage with love’s call.
Mckenzie’s comic flair saw him take a west end poem journey,
Niall McDevitt summoned day phantoms with fire spun incantation
And drum. The Vagrant Lovers cast trance from some lost LA strip
Via Shoreditch, Paul Sakoilski’s Pasolini,
Along with new Hackney names,
Each sound stunned.
But all attendant and there to honour the moment
In which Danielle’s work unveiled shadow,
And the methods with which light can meld.
De Picciotto questions through sound how to survive each transgression
And in doing so smoothes the tangle and corrupted glow we once held.
Across a miasma of stars and an electronic sea she is sailing,
The craft of the heart setting futures, with each of them made
Through dream’s spell.
Investigate. Yield.
The Cold Lips kiss will inform you.
It remains the connection
From which those imprisoned
Will learn to escape each day’s cell.
David Erdos, August 4th 2019
Danielle de Picciotto. Pic: David Erdos
Niall McDevitt and David Erdos. Pic: Phoenix Bay
Julie Goldsmith, Niall McDevitt and David Erdos. Pic: Phoenix Bay
Danielle de Picciotto. Pic: Phoenix Bay
Pic: Phoenix Bay