Akira Rabelais — Spellewauerynsherde
The bizarrely titled Spellewauerynsherde is a quite remarkable record, totally unclassifiable it is more like a piece of historical sound art than a work of contemporary music. The whole album is built upon
traditional Icelandic accapella lament songs recorded in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
The tapes of these recordings were forgotten about and left on some shelf for thirty years before being rediscovered. This may sound a little silly but the darkly enchanting sounds of the female voices contained on this disk are some of the most haunting I have ever heard. Rabelais feeds the tapes through his software and his own very artful and accomplished compositional sense into seven tracks of staggeringly otherworldly music.
All the tracks have very mysterious sounding titles which add to the mystique of the music. First piece Wyclif Gen.ii.7 has the Icelandic laments almost completely unprocessed although at times it sounds like the words are running in reverse creating a slippery intangible atmosphere that is instantly attention grabbing. Things begin to get more interesting on Glower Conf.ii.20 where the more direct accapella singing is joined by a multitude of angelic sounding overdubs courteously of Rabelais software. The sounds are ghostly and seem to swirl around in 360 degrees like spectres floating about some great cathedral. Promp.Parv.518/20 is a more processed and unearthly collage of voices and effects. The reverberating tones of the female voice slowed down pitch shifted and reversed to create an almost speaking in tongues effect. Prolonged listening allows the trance inducing effects of the music to take hold, each syllable of the voice hanging in the wind before falling into a cavern of reverb and lost souls. Deathly, uneasy but also somehow reassuring this music is almost like a near death experience, all disembodied voices from the light at the end of the tunnel.
Caxton Golden Leg 208b/2 is the longest of the seven tracks and also my favourite. Here the laments are woven into a vast flowing tapestry of ambient sound, where only faint hints of whole words emerge occasionally from the miasma of reverb and echo. Turn the lights off and listen to this on the edge of sleep and you may convince yourself you’ve died.
After a short passage of unprocessed lament where these recordings show their naked beauty we enter into the untitled sixth track which is the most tight and immediate of the seven. This one is a perfect combination of the ghostly processing and naked song. Absolutely gorgeous tones and textures flow from the tip of every word and inflection. It’s so difficult to describe the sound of these obscure compositions but I guess a pretty good one would be heavenly. I once listened to this while walking around London’s west end, the sounds of the traffic shut out and only these voices from another place for company, the effect was quite startling and is one of those rare gift that good music can give to a listener if your lucky.