JARBOE

Top 20

Her vision of melody, harmony and arrangement helped to

elevate Swans to legendary status. Since going solo in 1997,
Jarboe has continued to explore the uncharted dimensions
of sound, often in collaboration with other pioneering musicians.
 Navigating with keyboards, guitar,
organ, piano, chimes and the
xylophone, Jarboe narrates her
expeditions with an astounding
vocal range.

A Master of the timbral

relationships between voice and
instrument, she excels in the
speech-song continuum by using
Sprechgesang and non-verbal
expressions such as breathing,
murmurs, sobs, sighs, laughter,
growls, sighs and whispers.

A supernatural element accompanies Jarboe’s missions across

all periods and genres, from the ambient through the baroque
to torch, trance, tribal and the vaguely defined ones like
apocalyptic folk, dark wave, doom metal and post-rock. Its
expression goes both ways, from the lofty to the hellish
extreme.

Her interest in belief systems became overt in the first decade

of the century with the release of the Magick series and the
MahaKali related albums.
 Jarboe is an independent international
performer and autonomous musical pioneer on
the Internet – thelivingjarboe.com has been
online since the 1990s.

Beyond her 25 solo albums, her œuvre includes more than

70 collaborations with musicians and artists from North
America, Europe and Japan, including:
Byla Envie Jesu
Cobalt Oxbow Larsen
Vampillia Lustmord Neurosis
Bill Laswell Helen Money PanSonic
Jim Thirlwell Attila Csihar Lary Seven
Brian Castillo William Faith Steven Severin
Diana Obscura Father Murphy Veil of Thorns
Cedric Victor-DeSouza P. Emerson Williams Wim Van De Hulst

A JARBOE TOP TWENTY - METHODOLOGY

 Excludes releases attributed to Swans.  Includes Jarboe’s earliest solo work and collaborations.
 Drawn from 16 sources (album, EP, single, MP3) representing the period 1986 – 2015.
 Each source was limited to two list entries.  Four albums contributed two list entries each.
 As far as can be determined, Jarboe had a hand in composing the music and/or writing the
lyrics of nineteen songs and is the sole composer of at least six.
 A JARBOE TOP TWENTY
American Dreaming from the DCD album Toward The
Within. Jarboe’s soulful interpretation appears on Tribute
to Dead Can Dance, The Lotus Eaters, of 2004. The
glorious interactions of her vocals over a robust rock
orchestration transform the song into a type of hymn with
both rousing and introspective qualities.

And I Call Myself Hag by Blackmouth, with lyrics by

Jarboe. A sonosphere from 2000 generated by the complex
timbral relationships between various solo and different sets
of processed vocals. Hag conjures disquiet and grief.

Atmospheric Conditions on Sun Falling by Veil of Thorns

is 21-minutes of a swinging-and-swaying ritual around the
centrepiece of Jarboe’s dreamy recital. Further from the
poem, bittersweet harmonies, Middle Eastern wails and
momentary murmurs frame the fervent tribal rhythms.

Blood On Your Hands by Skin from the 1987 album Blood

Women Roses which is Jarboe’s true solo debut album. The
unease of the slow pounding drumbeats resonates with the
hypnotizing chant’s harrowing imagery. This is the prototype
of Jarboe’s sinister nursery rhyme and it curdles all one’s
body fluids.

A Coruscation by Beautiful People Ltd (1992), an eerie

nursery rhyme with words and music by Jarboe. This
handclap driven chant accompanied by harpsichord is a
sing-along about cult mind control with a fierce
hypnotic pull.
Cringe on Neurosis and Jarboe (2003). Words are by
Jarboe whose unearthly vocals navigate a tempest of
churning drones, throbbing riffs, crackling static and
industrial gales. Darkness reaches high density here.

8mmSweetbitter from the J2 collaboration with Justin

Broadrick might sound at first like a long lost classic of the
Human League. To this symphony of synths, buzzing
guitars and electro beats, Jarboe brings melodious
keyboard lines and melancholia in the contralto.

Everything For Maria, the stirring elegy for Maria Callas by

The World of Skin, reports the events following the legendary
diva’s death. The present tense narrative plays out like a
movie dream sequence in starkly contrasting scenes of
greed and plunder, of Maria’s ashes being scattered upon
the Aegean, and of her memories of ovations and receiving
gifts of elegant bouquets.

Ferryman of the Soul (DaksinaKali III). Jarboe performs

the prayer of the pilgrim stuck on the ocean of life, dwarfed
by a rumbling sky and the rushing of mighty waters. The
buoyant beats of Ferryman undulate up to heaven and to
the ends of the earth.

Forever from Anhedoniac of 1998 is perhaps the most

moving of all Jarboe’s compositions. A pipe organ, bass
guitar and warbling sound effect set the mood for tragedy
with a numinous twist. As Jarboe’s weary delivery unfolds in
Sprechstimme and Sprechgesang, a strange ululation
appears at rhythmic intervals as emblem of intervention.
His Last Words on Neurosis & Jarboe is a heartbreaking
elegy for a parent. The recital seems to come over
shortwave radio from a distant place and time. After a
segment of roaring guitars and pounding drums, Jarboe
concludes the lament in the singing voice, drawing a faint
and faraway response from a male vocal.

Mother of Changes on Durga and her Smile entwines a set

of single voices and contralto chorales against a steady
drone with intermittent flare-ups of guitar. This engaging
sonosphere ends in a moving prayer to Kali.

My Tall Man (Live) on Indemnity is a piano/keyboard based

ballad with a glorious arrangement and harpsichord flavour.
Jarboe’s intricate harmonies hold and enchant the listener
to this soulful peak of lyricism enveloped in dreamlike
resignation.

The Long March of Ghosts on Dark Consort is an

ambient sonosphere of trumpet and vocalizing. Following
an antiphon of singing bowls, the voices, synths and chimes
form a high humming canvas for the proud, persistent
trumpet blasts.

One Thousand Years is a mournful hymn alluding to

mysteries of which three different mixes exist across
various vinyl singles and the Blood Women Roses album.
Jarboe composed the music and sings and recites this
mystical masterpiece.
Sea on Alchemic Heart by Vampillia. A funereal build-up of
strings and piano towards a Götterdämmerung of raging
violins and doom metal guitars in a tempest of chants and
coloratura. After the storm, Jarboe’s still, small voice resumes
and completes the crucial second part of the meditation.

Summoning Tigers in Dark Eden from Dark Consort

reveals a predatory landscape shaken by volcanic
tremors. Then spirals of synths arise and a hint of distant
chorales. Next, a rainstorm anoints the savage abode and
suddenly massed angelic voices bathe the domain in
light. Jarboe’s vocals soar over the octaves, bringing to
mind the compositions of Hildegard of Bingen.

The Thunder: Perfect Mind on The End (2006) is

Jarboe and Cedric Victor’s inspired rendition of the
enigmatic Gnostic text found at Nag Hammadi. Synths,
spectral whispers and choirs of angels create raise just
the right ambience for the elegant flow of Jarboe’s
recital.

Tonglen on Alchemic (2009) is a stately orchestral piece of

strings, piano, birdsong sample and dreamy vocalizing that
takes on a baroque texture. Near the end, Jarboe recites the
life-affirming Tonglen meditation, an inspirational breathing
technique.

Under Will on Anhedoniac is a sonospheric masterpiece

with a few spoken phrases by a male vocal. Jarboe’s
wordless lamentation progresses through a series of
chromatic, harmonic and modal shifts in a stately motion
enhanced by the ebb and flow of samples and effects.