The Dark Tenor

You kind of get the sense from the Dark Tenor that anything other than 100% effort simply will not do. The marketing campaign is elaborate, slick and edgy, drawing in who-knows-what kind of audience and the voice and music matches it. The build up has been going on for some time; he's accumulated over 30,000 likes on Facebook before he even had a bar of music available for purchase. This is exciting stuff. The mysterious, masked Dark Tenor is signed to a major label, doing new things and creating larger than life arrangements and interpretations of classics we've always known but seldom recognise on his debut album Symphony of Light…

It's a bold concept; take Pink Floyd's iconic Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest, 1973) and reinterpret it in a big band jazz setting. With upwards of forty million copies sold, every note, every nuance of Floyd's eighth album is so firmly entrenched in the minds of the band's legion devotees that to tamper with the work in any way is to leave oneself open to facile criticism. French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, however, is nothing if not adventurous. Lê has already demonstrated on Purple: Celebrating Jimi Hendrix (ACT Music, 2007) and Songs of Freedom (ACT Music, 2012)—his tribute to classic pop and rock songs of the 1960s and 1970s—that he can breathe new life into old material without being overly reverential.

"Dark Side of the Moon A Cappella" is an all-vocal version of Pink Floyd's magnum opus "Dark Side of the Moon." No instruments were used in the recording of this unique version of the album. Eight singers and one "vocal percussionist" (similar to a beatboxer) recreate the original work in its entirety. Dark Side of the Moon A Cappella has been nominated for Best Pop/Rock Album in the 2006 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards (CARAs).