Heavenly Voices 4
The Aether Sanctum
Published online in Australia July 1998
By Anthony Cook
The Heavenly Voices series started a few years ago, intended as an anthology of the best ethereal female vocal music from Europe, the UK and elsewhere. Over four CDs, Hyperium have presented over sixty bands in the context of these compilations, giving relatively well-known acts, obscure artists and newcomers an equal billing. They have built to become a remarkable collection, as well as a powerful tool for those who would wade through the quagmire of girlie-pop shite searching desperately for viable alternatives (as one does).
Heavenly Voices 4 initially seems to have less to recommend it than its predecessor. Number three epitomised much of what was so great about the Heavenly Voices series, and it stands as one of the most impressive style/genre-based compilations to have come out of Europe in recent years. To borrow some sports commentary terminology, it was always going to be a hard act to follow, and on first listen it may seem that Hyperium have failed to repeat their achievement. But perservere. As time passes and the selections on Heavenly Voices 4 become more familiar to the listener, many of them emerge as great songs.
The first such great song is track one, Claire Voyant's Her. A fairly straightforward piece with what might be considered an overly 'obvious' structure, Her nonetheless becomes more and more engrossing with successive listens. Eventually the song proves itself a highlight not only of this CD but of the whole Heavenly Voices series, drawing its strength from its amazingly passionate delivery. Claire Voyant are followed by a band called The Breath of Life, who contribute a track called Kutna Hora. Here evil minor chords and orchestral passages with the emphasis on deep throaty string sounds are joined by delicate soprano vocals. It must be said that the track is characterised by a total lack of subtlety, but perhaps this has been sacrificed deliberately in favour of dark power. Either way, the dark power is definitely there in generous bucket loads, and again you'll be won over the more you hear it.
No instalment of Heavenly Voices would be complete without a contribution from the unrivalled Stoa (speaking as we were of dark power). This time they submit a track called My Inner Labyrinth, which affords fans a sneak preview of their upcoming third CD. The piece which has more or less all the elements Stoa's constantly growing audiences have come to expect, plus a little subtle experimentation with one or two new kinds of chord structures. Songwriter Olaf Parusel has the Midas touch when it comes to dark and stately orchestral arrangements, and the vocals of Connie Levrow, a professional chorister of many years' experience, are positively knee-weakening. Connie trills over an ecstasy of strings, harps, brass and kettledrums before standing aside to let Olaf wind the piece slowly down to a single, poignant woodwind melody with minimal accompaniment. Another day, another musical triumph.
Stoa are in turn followed by La Floa Maldita, whose track Daydreamer combines impressively big-sounding piano and guitar with light, ethereal grooves and pleasantly wafting vocals, before Les Jumeaux's Miracle Road succeeds it with an even more groove-based piece. A side-project of post-classical masters In The Nursery, Les Jumeaux was formed to vent ITN's penchant for more dance-oriented sounds. And this it does. The lushly produced, shimmering keyboards for which ITN are renowned are offset here by a slow hip-hop beat and Enigma-like, semi-spoken vocals. While it must be said that Miracle Road falls a little short of much of the material featured on Les Jumeaux's first CD Feathercut, it is nonetheless a well-produced, well-written piece that stands head and shoulders above peers in its genre, like the aforementioned Enigma. So there.
The compilation seems to go askew toward the middle, beginning with the inescapably awful This Quest by The Dreamside, which shows girlie/folksy goth in its worst and most pointlessly indulgent light. The opening lines "You may find me/Under the Willow tree/I might be dead/Or just thinking" never fail to produce pity and embarassment for the poor sods who wrote them. Then that good old goth guitar kicks in with all the obsessive-compulsive predictability of a Nosferatu remix, and pity is replaced by bewilderment at how The Dreamside got onto this (or any) CD. Its neighbour, Spirit's Skin by XVII Vie, labours on for a few minutes without really getting anywhere then promptly disappears, giving way to Prime Sinister's Air Raid Etiquette. Nice cello in the intro to this one. Pity the singer's so eminently shootable. The sleeve leads us to believe it is none other than Antje from Chandeen. Well, there you go. We're astounded. But don't take my word for it; read this informative excerpt from Antje's heartfelt lyrical outpuring:
"Somethin' terrible's happened/Lights flash in the sky/You run for cover/Cause you don't wanna die ... but pretty soon you begin to hear/A knocking and scratching and a desperately/Someone is outside and you don't know what to do/Because Air Raid etiquette is lost on you"
All sung using tonsils that sound like they could only to belong to the product of an indiscretion involving the vocalist from the Clouds and that chirpy character from Battle of the Planets, or maybe Astro Boy on a particularly wide-mouthed day. Oh how moved we are when we discover during the course of verse two that the person scratching on the (evidently wooden) door of the air-raid shelter is none other than Antje herself. "Hey, can you shoot at stuff through one of these things?" is what I'm betting her protagonist is thinking.
But I digress. The contributions by Ataraxia, Edera and Lida Musik which follow Prime Sinister are none of them without their good points, but things really begin to pick up again with Heather Nova's live delivery of a piece called Throwing Fire at the Sun. Beginning with a plodding bassline and guitar riff vaguely remiscent of the Pretenders' more visceral moments, this track builds via Heather's desperate vocals to a level of psychosis almost worthy of Faith and the Muse's Monica Richards. The vocal contortions occasionally bring to mind Sinead O'Connor, even Björk in her Sugarcubes days (before her 'delightful quirkiness' swelled, overfed, and swallowed up whatever substance she may once have had), and the overall effect (again, given a few listens) is not too far short of enthralling. Vampire State Building also surprise and amaze with a twisted, understated fuzz-guitar epic called 1,000 Dreams. Don't be put off by the band name - even if they have no other good songs, they qualify as an interesting band on the strength of this piece alone. The spooky counterpoint between airy, childlike vocals and clthonic bruising guitars gives this song a brilliant potency, begging comparison with bands like the Cranes who use similar techniques to similarly great effect.
Vampire State Building leave the room in a whorl of distortion, making way for Limborg, whose beautiful piece Exode concludes Heavenly Voices 4. Limborg make a very medieval kind of a sound, utilising many traditional instruments and paying great attention to stylised harmonies to achieve a sense of 'authenticity' (though they are not such purists that they won't allow a drum machine to enter the equation where it seems wise to do so). This is a very impressive track and a fine note for the CD to end on. It almost leaves the impression of Hyperium doffing their hats to the traditional styles of music which they see as antecedent to a lot of what has emerged under the 'Heavenly Voices' banner.
My own recommendation regarding Heavenly Voices is this: if you are interested in the concept, then Volume Three is the best place to start. Order it from Projekt records or Heartland in Melbourne if you can't find it in the shops. After that, if you're still hungry, all of the other volumes are equally worth buying (once you recover from the dent in your budget caused by purchasing so many CDs by bands included on HV3). Having said that, if you've any kind of interest at all in contemporary female vocal music with an ethereal, melancholic or folk/traditional edge, you're going to get something out of the Heavenly Voices experience no matter where you start.
Happy exploring.