Clouds of War the new album by Israeli music promoter and musician Yishai Sweartz and Berlin based Avant Garde musician Mona Mur tells the story of Yishai's grandfather Moshe Sznecki's transformation from an Orthodox Jewish kid in Byelorussia into a Partisan fighter against the Nazi's, who slaughtered his family and friends. The lyrics for this album are taken from excerpts from Moshe's diaries written between 1946-1988 as he journeyed into a peaceful life in Israel.
The album opens with By Morning, It Started a slow narration of the start of a pogrom, set against ambient atmospherics, unsettling scary and dark as the Nazi holocaust has begun, the Germans are slaughtering their neighbours, they don't know if there's anywhere to run too.
Meet Again has a synth pop feel to the insistent music, this duet of doom for those who will never Meet Again, those who were lucky enough to flee, joining the resistance, or escaping the onslaught, with those who remained consigned to the awful fate before them in the ghetto's or camps.
Clouds Of War-Schmerz has the dreaded drumbeat of war, in a Towering Inferno for the destruction before them, the narration makes clear the horrors on the horizon. The way Mona enunciates Schmerz sends shivers through me, fear of all the death around you.
Blink Of An Eye all that you hold dear evaporates, how do you find like-minded souls to repel the invaders, many of whom you considered friends not that long ago, voices of angels hoping against hope for a way to survive.
Komm In Mein Boot-You'll Die At Sea has a nursey rhyme feel to this slowly enunciated tale of the fate of many fleeing persecution, synths slowly pull you through the murky waters, where you hope and pray that you don't die alone.
Orlowski asks about if you have any loyalty to anyone or to any cause, Orlowski was a KGB general who became a partisan in the resistance, this tale of his losing an arm and leg yet surviving and continuing to help the battle against true evil.
Noch Bist Du Da features additional vocals from Anja Huwe from X-Mal Deutchsland dark fear becoming all encompassing, hoping you may hear birdsong again rather than the sounds of the dungeon and the camps.
Animals In A Cage tells the story of what happened in the ghetto, the nightmares of what was witnessed, the need for any pleasure to alleviate all the horror, reminding me of the tales my mum and grandmother told of being in the air raid shelters in London in the blitz.
Moshe's Song is looking back sixty years into the past at how you've survived, yet the horrors are still clear, nightmares you can never erase. Those wounds can never be healed, it is just the code of the woods.
Not Welcome In The Forest gives an explanation of why those who already lived in the forest might resent the arrival of Jewish partisans, the danger there presence gave to them, so the Ukrainian and Polish Partisans didn't always want to join forces, still as my family found out, you could live in Latvia and end up in a camp in Kiev so the cause was common.
Mama's Words is the harrowing tale of why his parents and the rest of his family didn't escape the Shoah, the desperation of committing infanticide to try to save yourself, learning at 16 of the total inhumanity of man to other men, the ambient textures adding cadence to chilling words.
Piano Outro is elegiac, full of tears for those that witnessed the horror and perished and those unfortunate enough to witness the horror, having it playing back in there minds during there years of survival of such a tragedy, hoping no one ever has to suffer such horror.
The album concludes as the war did with Hiroshima Intro that feels like the whooshing sound that may have come before the atomic bomb reduced everything to dust, the annihilation of the mushroom clouds enveloping everything as a Koto strives to survive, while this makes me want to walk to my local peace park and stand by the memorial to the victims of Hiroshima praying for a peaceful world that can live without fighting constant wars.
Find out more at https://www.soleilmoon.com/shop/yishai-sweartz-mona-mur-clouds-of-war/ https://www.facebook.com/cloudsofwarmusic https://www.facebook.com/yishai.sweartz https://www.facebook.com/monamur.official
