The Mystery Of The Bulgarian Voices Feat. Lisa Gerrard: BooCheeMish Hybrid Stereo SACD

The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, also known as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, are releasing their first studio album in over 20 years. For several pieces on »BooCheeMish«, the renowned Bulgarian choir worked with Lisa Gerrard (co-founder of Dead Can Dance), who, like herself, was also temporarily under contract with the English cult label 4AD Records. This brings together singers from two camps whose voices are among the most distinctive in the music scene.
Most of the songs on "BooCheeMish" were composed, arranged and produced by Petar Dundakov. Some were written entirely by him, but some are based on traditional folkloric songs and dances, which he supplemented with his own ideas. Gerrard's contributions were co-authored with Jules Maxwell, who has been working with her for several years. The singer, who is also known for the soundtracks of films such as »Gladiator« or »Insider«, has repeatedly cited the choir as a significant artistic influence after coming across his music in the early 1980s.
Thanks to a successful fusion of Bulgarian folklore with traditional music from other cultures, the album preserves the unique characteristics of the voices, vocal styles and techniques of the individual choir members, even in the company of various acoustic string and percussion instruments such as gadulka or kaval or diverse rhythm generators (djembe, kanjira, riq) up to modern beatboxing.
The debut album »Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares« offered »world music before this term even existed« (The Guardian) when it was first released in 1975, in the form of contemporary arranged Bulgarian folk songs, performed by the »Women's Choir of the State Radio and Television of the State of Bulgaria«. This unadulterated unique music – timeless melodies with goosebump-inducing, magnificent harmonies, created by the throaty press vocals of the ensemble – was originally discovered and recorded during several trips by the Swiss musicologist and producer Marcel Cellier in the formerly culturally isolated Eastern Bloc country.
The magic of the ensemble, whose music was once described as a "marriage of the avant-garde with the Middle Ages", stems from the fact that it reflects Bulgaria's historic singing tradition in all its diversity and at the same time sounds captivatingly modern and original, due to the unmistakably choral structure – multi-part a cappella arrangements in which the voices together take on unusual timbres, as if they were not human Origin. Hristova describes them as "natural, pervasive organs, made for the wild, to communicate across fields and from one hilltop to another. The sound is generated in the larynx, with the chest serving as a resonance chamber. To do this, you need strong breathing pressure; whoever sings in this way must be very strong."
Among the admirers of the choir were prominent musicians such as Paul Simon, Sandy Denny, Frank Zappa, members of Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Grateful Dead. However, like many groups that do not move in the world of conventional Western pop and rock, the choir turned out to be a small part of the choir.l were almost forgotten. It took more than ten years for the 4AD label to reissue the album, reaching an entirely new audience that was already enchanted by the unparalleled, otherworldly voices of singers Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance), who were already under contract there. In 1988, a second album was released via 4AD, which even won a Grammy in the USA as "best traditional folk recording".
Under the direction of conductor and musicologist Dora Hristova, the choir has performed over 1,250 outside Bulgaria since the late 1980s, including in some of the world's most famous concert halls. Its members have also been asked or sampled by musically very different acts such as Kate Bush, U2 and Drake. With the retirement of producer Marcel Celler, however, the stream of new recordings of the choir dried up, so that the choir threatened to fall into oblivion a second time.
Incidentally, a piece by the choir is included on one of the "Golden Record" data disks on board the two Voyager probes, which were launched into space in 1977 with selected music and images that are supposed to represent life and culture on Earth. This is further proof that, since their inception, The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices have been creating music that spectacularly transcends cultural, national and spatial boundaries.
After more than 20 years, The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, also known as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, are releasing a studio album. For several pieces on BooCheeMish, the renowned Bulgarian choir worked with Lisa Gerrard, the co-founder of Dead Can Dance. This brings together singers from two camps whose voices are among the most distinctive in the music scene.
Thanks to a successful fusion of Bulgarian folklore with traditional music from other cultures, the album preserves the unique characteristics of the voices, vocal styles and techniques of the individual choir members, even in the company of various acoustic string and percussion instruments such as gadulka or kaval or diverse rhythm generators (djembe, kanjira, riq) up to modern beatboxing.
The limited edition of the hybrid SACD comes with a remastering by Andreas Torkler and Dieter Denzer, which is tailored to audiophile systems: Less compression, better stereo image and significantly better audibility of the vocals clearly set themselves apart from the normal CD on the DSD file mastered in 24 bit/96 khz.
"Instead of the brittle charm of their early albums, the women's rooms shine only with a perfectly staged sound, spatially well-staggered representation of their virtuosity." - Stereoplay, July 2018

Features:

• Super Audio CD
• SACD Stereo SACD Layer
• This Hybrid SACD contains a 'Red Book' Stereo CD Layer which is playable on most conventional CD Players!

Selections:

1. Mome Malenko
2. Pora Sotunda
3. Rano Ranila
4. Mani Yanni
5. Yove
6. Sluntse
7. Unison
8. Zableyalo Agne
9. Tropanitsa
10. Ganka
11. Shandai Ya
12. Stanka