Ethnic Voice Samples

Enigma - Classic Album Selection (2013) [5CD] {Virgin}
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© 2013 Virgin Music / EMI / Universal | 0600753459843
New Age / Electronic / Ethnic Fusion / Dance Pop

Part of Universal's Classic Album Selection series, this multi-part package from the aptly named Spanish ethno-fusion dance-pop provocateurs Enigma features five complete studio albums, including MCMXC a.D. (1990), The Cross of Changes (1993), Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! (1996), Screen Behind the Mirror (1999), and Voyageur (2003).

Noc Na Zamku (2008). This seems to be a live recording (part of the Polish event "Olszty skie Lato Artystyczne 2007") although it overall sounds like a studio work. The album offers eight tracks of intense, fresh, versatile Berliner School, slightly Redshift-oriented sequencing and lush solo voices. The third piece "La Orkestra" accelerates into fourth gear, as the well rendered electronics, beats and rhythms venture into dance/trance territory as TD's "Kiew Mission" kindred vocal samples pass by through the sonic spectrum. Vocal phrases and breathing sounds mingled with holdback electronics slow things down again on "Ambient II". The following piece "Live" is made up of repetitive, mid-tempo paced hypnotic sequencer structures over which trance-like solo voices freely hover, as a dance beat shortly kicks in halfway…

Places of Worship signals trumpeter and composer Arve Henriksen's return to Rune Grammophon and furthers his collaboration with both Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Here his experimentations with sound, space, and texture offer listening environments that reflect various sacred spaces the world over, hence its title. While these tracks are impossible to separate from the influences of Jon Hassell's Fourth World Music explorations or the more murky moodscapes of Nils Petter Molvær, they are also more than a few steps removed from them. Henriksen never separates himself from the environmental information provided by his natural Nordic landscape. The lush, wild, and open physical vistas of its geography provide an inner map for the trumpeter and vocalist that amounts to a deeply focused series of tone poems.

This feast for the ears almost defies classification. Richard Horowitz is probably best known for his award-winning score to the Bernardo Bertolucci movie, The Sheltering Sky. Featured on the album is Tehran singer Sussan Deyhim; her voice is extremely expressive in an "x-tatic" Middle Eastern style, with its distinctive embellishments and phrasing. Horowitz takes recordings of her voice and layers it in subtle yet exotic tapestries and harmonies. This is not the ripoff sampling done so often on ambient dance albums. Deyhim's voice is the center of the compositions, and her artistry is always honored. At times, her combined voices sound like the Manhattan Transfer, but when the title track features 84 recombined samples of her voice, the result is very unique. Although the sound processing is important, the album features many live musicians, including world music expert Jaron Lanier and members of the Moroccan National Radio and Television Orchestra. Majoun offers layers upon veils of mysteries and never stoops to trite Middle Eastern musical clichés. Highly recommended.

Despite being a key participant in the "Left Coast" scene of more avant-leaning music from the American west coast—in particular, part of the Cryptogramophone imprint that, while less active than in its "glory days" during the first years of the new millennium—Alex Cline releases so infrequently as a leader that any new music from the percussionist/composer is worthy of attention. That he has flown so far under the radar, in recent years, that his last Cryptogramophone release, 2013's For People In Sorrow, was largely (and unfairly) overlooked. Thankfully, that's not the case with Oceans of Vows, a sumptuous two-disc set that documents a two-hour suite of music—two parts, each consisting of five movements.

Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin works on at least two levels. First, it's a plea against racism and war, relating, as Sawhney writes in the liner notes, that one's identity is defined only by oneself – that identity is "beyond skin." Second, the music is an extremely accomplished blend of classical, drum'n'bass, jazz, hip-hop, and Indian elements. The album's political statements are seen most clearly in the samples imbedded in the beginning and ending of most tracks. Dealing with nuclear testing and identity, the samples are effective in setting the tone for the songs. The music is quite lush, featuring among other instruments, tablas, pianos, and cellos to equally beautiful effect. The production brings a crystal-clear polish to nearly every element in the mix, whether it's the passionate, intense vocals of the Rizwan Qawwali Group on "Homelands" or the stunning, impossibly gorgeous voice of Swati Natekar on "Nadia." The entire album is bathed in eclectic touches which never fail to maintain a poetic, accessible sense of charm and wonder. Rarely has electronic music been crafted with as much substance and style as it has on Beyond Skin. Sawhney travels back and forth between genres quite effortlessly. The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.