Seal Djiril's Hymn

Bok starts his liner notes by telling the listener "two kinds of song are important to me: one is a tool to understand the world, one is the world itself". This is an intriguing introduction for an album whose first half is a fantastical and haunting story about seals who become men, sung in a language of Bok's own invention. Though these are Bok's original compositions, they owe much to the tradition of sea shanties which Bok often encountered in his career as a maritime worker. The record's second half is made up primarily of traditional songs, with arrangements by Bok. Adding her voice is frequent collaborator Ann Mayo Muir.