Bulgarian Voices

The Swan song of the French musical magician Hector Zazou is a project together with the exceptional Bulgarian voices of ‘Eva Quartet’ (part of the world famous choir ‘Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares’) with the special participation of musicians from different genres and fields of music…

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (translated as "The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices") is a compilation album of modern arrangements of Bulgarian folk songs featuring, among others, the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir, with soloists Yanka Rupkina, Kalinka Valcheva and Stefka Sabotinova; and the Filip Kutev Ensemble.
The album was the result of fifteen years of work by Swiss ethnomusicologist and producer Marcel Cellier and was released in 1975 on his small Disques Cellier label. Some of the recordings he made himself; others were taken from the archives of Radio Sofia.

As with most of the Rough Guide music releases, this one casts a wide net, hauling in innovative folk groups like Musikas and Taraf de Haiduks, edgier jazz from Ferus Mustafov and Ivo Papasov, and new musical excursions by bands like Zsarotnok. The set also includes well-known vocal groups like the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices ensemble and Trio Bulgarka. There are some surprises, too. Apparatschik offers a folk-punk sound somewhere between the Pogues and Spike Jones…..

"It was in the 18th century that the seraglio first excited Western European imagination, not least as a result of the Arabian Nights, which, first published in Europe in 1704, owed its immense and immediate popularity to its combination of the most daring intellectuality and consummate sensuality. With YEHUDI (the Ottoman word for Jew), L'Orient Imaginaire seeks to revive the centuries-old tradition of Jewish music at the court of Constantinople.
THE ANCIENT ORIENT, a land of vivid fantasies, fairy tales and legends. Throughout time, crusaders, adventurers, poets and lovers have all sought to unlock its languishing mysteries in order to gaze upon such a forbidden and unattainable world. In the end, they could only perceive the vision - the Orient of the imagination.".

Tya (Martin Scherl) is a German keyboardist and programmer with an affinity for the music of aboriginal Australia and access to samples of singers like the Bulgarian Voices, Sarband, and Trinovox. Tya will win you over with his melodies, subdued but funky beats, and complex sonic textures. What makes this music so attractive is Tya's two-pronged strategy of bringing the beats right up to the front, and finding good singers to sample and using the samples well. Notice, for example, the combination of African and European voices on ‘Coming Home’ and the dubwise treatment he applies to the gorgeous choral singers on ‘Mama’.