
20/07/2025
MImesis - Kuala Lumpur 1983
Mimesis is a recording project featuring the poetic words and voice of one of australia's most prominent song writers, Steve Kilbey (The Church) and the music of Simon Polinski (Hesius Dome/Ornament), Colin Berwick & David Abiuso, featuring guests Geoffrey Hales (Rip Van Hippy), Ollie Olsen & John Kilbey.
Mimesis : What is Mimesis ?
Plato, unlike his compatriot Aristotle, didn’t much go for Mimesis, the notion that all art is imitation. Poets, painters and the like, he argued, were ‘two steps removed from ultimate truth’, undermining human stability at best, downright depressing people at worst. Were he around today, though, Plato would most likely love the latest addition to Psy Harmonics catalogue, however irksome its title. For starters Mimesis doesn’t reference life as we know it, exploring instead a wondrous, mysterious afterlife imagined by The Church front-man Steve Kilbey, set to (in Kilbey’s words) a ‘lush, evocative, pulsing, living, electronic, organic, dreamlike’ bed of ambience courtesy of production wiz Simon Polinski, double bassist David Abiuso, pianist Colin Berwick and the wild experimentation they shared for 18 months.
Chances are, after a long, stressful day pressing index
finger to forehead, Mimesis would be just the thing to help Plato chill out.
On so many levels, Mimesis is without precedent. It’s a 79-minute art house flick without pictures, a complex jigsaw piece you’ll never, ever finish, and the greatest dream you’ve never had. It’s Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Mozart, John Taverner and countless other composers cut, morphed, squeezed and pureed until tiny snippets of their work took on whole new dimensions. It is, depending on your mood, a trip record, a heavenly bliss-out, or a disturbing plug into the subconscious’s subconscious Connection, disconnection, love, loss, life, afterlife, all get a going over in a work that – like mercury – it’s impossible to fully grasp, but fun trying. Mimesis is art imitating life
Mimesis - 'art imitating life' was released in 2007
CD / Digital here
https://psy-harmonics.bandcamp.com/album/art-imitating-life
this is my second (completely different) video version to Kuala Lumpur 1983, by Mimesis (Steve Kilbey) from his / their 2007 album Art Imitating Life. Video ...