gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (11/03/84)
If you listen to enough of the high-tech wizardry tum- bling out of your radio/walkman/stereo nowadays, it may be forgiveably easy to lose sight of the "physical" part of making music. Unless you're a bit unusual, the chances are you don't do amy more than the most rudimentary tuneless bellowing in the shower. Almost none of the music you hear on amy AOR station is about as much a disembodied music as you can imagine: the drummer is a microchip, the violins are too, and there never was a real physical space in which any of the banging, whizzing, and whirring really happened. In and of itself, there's nothing really so wrong with this as a means to an end. But there is some less obvious, more damaging baggage that accompanies our familiarity with tech- nology. The first is what I call the "That rock looks _j_u_s_t _l_i_k_e a radio" problem. There is this tendency to identify what we cannot easily recognize or place in a strictly artificial context. That should come as no surprise, given the enormous range of sonic capabilities that technology offers us. The second version of the extra baggage is more problematic: the notion that the easy availability of some means of making sound may deter us from investigation the _m_o_t_i_v_e behind our interest in it in the first place. Our common image of the bespectacled computer scientist whose sole interest lies in making things faster without a clear understanding of why should serve to remind us of that prob- lem in its full glory. David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir occupy a most peculiar position with respect to these problems, and the breathtak- ing beauty of their work may actually run the risk of diverting us from the more subtle subversions of our view of music as a physical process that they intend. Simply put, they have created a music based on a hybrid of a familiar and an unfamiliar tradition: the traditional struc- tures of Gregorian chant, and the technique of "throat sing- ing", wherein the singer may produce _m_o_r_e _t_h_a_n _o_n_e _n_o_t_e _a_t _a _t_i_m_e. During their performance at Cornell in the autumn of last year, it was nearly impossible to make the visual con- nection between much of what you heard, and what you saw. Out of the mouths of regular people came thes sound of flutes, choirs of invisible horns and strings, and the uncomfortable illusion of a sort of sonic cloning-the sense that there were roughly three times as may voices as one could account for. The immediate response on my part was to think that what I head heard was a sort of technological conjuring trick. The Harmonic Choir has just released _C_u_r_r_e_n_t _C_i_r_c_u_l_a_t_i_o_n, which marks the second major portion of their continuing interest in harmonic singing. Their first album _H_e_a_r_i_n_g _S_o_l_a_r _W_i_n_d_s was the only American album available on the Ocora Records "Music of the World" series. This current release is on a domestic American label, and its relatively greater availability to American listeners is welcomed. Like its predecessor, this album is essentially a showcase for the physical practice of harmonic singing, organized around a sequence of effects (usually one or two per section of the performance). This recording finds David Hykes and company more interested in the structure of their pieces than merely a technical exposition--the actual sections themselves flow together with an ease which is very like the seeming ease of the choir's performance. The quality of the recording itself does much to frame and enhance the work--in its own way, it is a fine example of technology in the _s_e_r_v_i_c_e _o_f something. The album is an out- standing example of the fidelity and range offered by digi- tal recording, and the spectacular German Teldec pressing does much to highlight this. Unlike their previous album, the harmonic choir is close miked in a different acoustic environment. The combination of ambiance and miking produces the effect of making you concentrate more closely on the identifiably "human" qualities of performance. At every point in the recording, it is very clear that you are hear- ing a human voice at work. This regular presence of the fam- iliar makes the vocal conjuring both more accessible (since it is easier to make the relation between each individual voice and its harmonic second), and more exotic (confronted with the raw material is such an explicit way, the range of the choir's capabilities are all the more astounding). Their first album suggested such a distance and reverberant space that the effect and its sonic presence in space were diffi- cult to differentiate to any great extent. _C_u_r_r_e_n_t _C_i_r_c_u_l_a_t_i_o_n is one of those listening experiences that owes its profound beauty in part on being _r_e_a_l_l_y out- side the range of what we normally recognize, and yet done with what seems to the technophile to be the most primitive equipment. If you have any capacity for wonder left in your adult body, I would suggest you find a copy of this, and begin a regular program of listening and excercise. The capacity for mystery is like any other physical potential: if you don't use it, you lose it.