An Alternate Reality, Soundtracked: Eiko Ishibashi’s ‘Antigone’

A seven-year vocal comeback wrapped in myth and eerie imagination.

The opening moments of great records possess a rare magic, where a few carefully chosen sounds cast a spell, hinting at the world to come. In those first seconds, an entire mood can take shape, setting the tone for what follows and drawing listeners into a story they didn’t know they needed to hear.

Eiko Ishibashi’s Antigone unfolds with that same sense of quiet intrigue, opening with a woozy string section forming an oblong chord, as if a record is finding its groove, then over the next 40 minutes weaving pop, jazz, and ambient sounds into a world where melodies twist and shift unpredictably. Her first vocal album in seven years, Antigone finds Ishibashi teaming with her band — drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, Norwegian accordionist Kalle Moberg, Ermhoi on backing vocals, Joe Talia on percussion, and (her husband) Jim O’Rourke on Bass VI and synths — to create a sound that moves fluidly between structured songs and more open-ended, exploratory passages.

Using the story of Antigone — a tragedy by Sophocles in which a young woman defies the king’s orders to bury her brother, ultimately facing death for her loyalty — as a starting point, Eiko shapes the album’s themes around defiance and conviction. The classical narrative serves as a loose framework, but the music pushes beyond the myth, blending ancient and modern elements. Described as “a chilling look at our already-alternate reality, coming from inside Eiko Ishibashi’s own head,” Antigone feels both timeless and unsettling, rooted in the tension between tradition and transformation.

“Each album has a different theme. On this album, the word ‘graveyard’ was the theme,” Ishibashi told 15 Questions in a recently published interview. “But the theme that is connected throughout the other albums is the theme of where human beings come from and where they are going … This time I wanted to use words whose meanings clash with each other and morph into something different, or sound different every time you hear them.”

She added that initially, her goal was “to make music that people who listen to the album would not get tired of listening to. Something far removed from everyday life. Like when you look in the mirror and see a different landscape instead of your own, and you can step into it. However, it turned out to be more realistic and heavy than I expected.”

Vinyl is available via Bandcamp and Drag City.