Millie Sievert’s world is a complicated one. If it were only that she finds herself in the 21st century after being accidentally caught up in the machinations of a time-traveling music gig in her own Edwardian time and now fronts her rock and roll band in the present day, that would be enough. But like the ripples through time that such a momentous event obviously causes, we find threads to her, her story, and her music heading off in all directions. A conspiracy theorist would have a field day, but for one single fact, it is all true.
And adding to the impossible, or at least improbably, threads that run through time and space, reality and fiction, what was and what might yet come to pass, is her latest album, Where Are You, Brilburne Logue?
As the first in a series of stepping stones through a wealth of research and underground opperations, we initially find that Brilburne Logue is a pseudonym briefly employed by the author, graphic novelist, and magician (and not the rabbit’s out of hats variety) used for a poem he wrote that once graced the cover of the live 1981 Bauhaus album, This Is For When. (Brilburne is also Conrad Veidt’s character in the 1920s silent movie Abend-Nacht-Morgen, and Logue is the surname of the speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush in the more recent The King’s Speech. Make of that what you will.)
And of course, once you find yourself connected to Alan Moore, links to Doctor Who, then Ken Campbell, Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool and their nine-hour stage production of Illuminatus, and on to the likes of The KLF, themselves sonic Timelords in their own right, are never far away. It’s a rabbit hole, for sure, or more likely, a wormhole.
But we are for the music, although such is the strange world of Millie and the gang that you can find yourself traveling far away from what you came to talk about.
Where Are You, Brilburne Logue, is a mercurial affair, as you might expect for someone not subject to the same rules of space and chronology as us, though Echoes of Olympus does begin in some gentle, ambient, almost musical theatre territory as if her own Edwardian tastes have collided with a more contemporary, folktronic vibe…which they undoubtably had.
Terrorisme is Craeft takes the form of a lilting, Gaelic folk sway. The language, be it Celtic or alien, invention or some other coded communication, is itself an additional instrument and an anthemic and emotive one at that, like the early works of Runrig if their Hebridean home had been found in the Spinward Marches of a distant universe.
As always, this is an eclectic affair. Crackling Frequencies is the sound of cutting-edge urban street rap, Moonlit Fields (Baseball on the Moon Zydeco) blends cajun grooves with soulful moves, A Poem For Living (Realm of Art) is a drifting, ambient pop ballad, and the title track is a brooding, bombastic, and beat-driven slice of operatic theatrics.
Millie Sievert and the Radioactive Five always deliver an unpredictable experience, music that spans eras and ideologies, sounds and styles, genres and geographies, and sometimes does all of that within the space of one song. But then what would you expect from someone who has been dragged through time and who understands that, if you so desire, music is, in the modern age, no longer a strict discipline to be learned but a fluid idea that can, through the correct sequence of keystrokes and instructions, be turned to any sonic purpose you see fit?