Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems

On Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems, Félicia Atkinson and Christina Vantzou channel their friendship and atmospheric artistry into ceremonial focus. Spoken-word environments and orchestral imagination flow like tributaries into a unified stream, resulting in a collection of dreamlike songs and soundscapes anchored in sea, sky, and stone. Through electro-acoustic instrumentation, voice, and environmental sound, Water Poems invites listeners into a subconscious space somewhere between everyday intimacy and the oceanic enigma from which all life unfolds.

Having met in 2009, Atkinson and Vantzou have collaborated intermittently, but a 2019 concert at the Philharmonie in Paris catalyzed this endeavor. Now both living in coastal areas (Félicia by the Channel, Christina by the Mediterranean), the sea naturally became their muse. “The sea was not taken as a monolithic postcard,” Atkinson clarifies, “but more a person, per se; an energy, a mystery, a complex character we face every day, as human beings living by the sea.” In conversation with the land and shoreline, their language and sound-making took on a sacramental character. “A ceremonious feeling, a feeling of being in service, runs deep on this record,” Vantzou notes. “I’ve felt this before, but it’s stronger here in process with Félicia.”

Voice, breath, and aqueous textures mark the tone of Water Poems’ maritime mystery. New in Vantzou’s practice and long a defining feature of Atkinson’s work, their spoken word gains relational intimacy here, addressing one another and the waterfront. The language was collaboratively assembled over two years. With radical innocence, it guides awareness to the hidden buoyancy and subconscious streams coursing through life: “How can a boat float? How can a plane fly? How can a body swim? How can a person dream?”

What began with close-mic’d voices and field recordings grew to include synths, gongs and metallophones, piano, vibraphone, Rhodes, guitars, and Mellotron. The tidal piano of the opening track, “Film Still / The Sea,” draws us into the album’s subconscious waters. Included are field recordings Vantzou captured at Delphi, near the legendary oracle of Pythia—her Greek heritage adding another layer to this ancestral site. Voicing our geological heritage, this track, and Water Poems as a whole, call for coastal conservation and a deepening relationship with our coastlines—part of the album’s proceeds will go to Arion, a non-profit conservation program for the Greek Mediterranean Sea.

Longtime friend and collaborator John Also Bennett contributed electric guitar, lap steel, and voice on “Scorpio Purple Skies,” the album’s cosmic finale. This lush instrumentation serves the album’s sci-fi vistas and ceremonial atmospheres.

Water Poems was recorded at The Old Carpet Factory, an 18th-century mansion on the Greek island of Hydra; the 16th-century Villa Medici in Rome; and Les Dunes, Atkinson’s home studio in Normandy. More than the historic prestige of these sites, it was the palpable history of their landscape that shaped the music. Atkinson says they were drawn to “places with strange magnetisms.” At Villa Medici, “stones and minerals guided the spoken word element,” she notes. “We are both invested in feeling, atmosphere, and sound,” Vantzou adds, “what it evokes and invokes and what it is serving. In our case we are focused on the basic elements: water, air, rock, cosmos… all vital to life.”

Working from the island of Crete, Vantzou completed the final mix exchanging files with Atkinson. Still dialed into the coast, their mixing process was comfortably patient and shaped by vital pauses.

Water Poems echoes what marine biologist Rachel Carson reminds us: “To stand at the edge of the sea… is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.” It ritually celebrates this oceanic feeling as a vital source of serenity and intelligence. In a world scorched by fiery opinion and ecological neglect, Water Poems calls our attention to “the sources of sources.” In doing so, it makes space to reconnect with our elemental, animal instincts and tune in to deeper currents.