Incanto Liturgica I

"After the Clouds"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Once, at work, we were talking about how all bagpipe music was terrible.  I pointed out that, no, everyone just thinks all bagpipe music is terrible because 99% of the time, the only time you hear a bagpipe is when it’s accompanied by other bagpipes.  Few instruments will sound their best without a little counterpoint.  I was then challenged to play some “good” bagpipe music.  Easy, I said.  I then proceeded to play several things from my collection, concentrating mostly on Skyedance, of course.¹  People expressed surprise that I could so easily come up with such a “random” category of music.

I said: oh, I can pretty much come up with anything.  Give me a category—any category.²  One of my co-workers, being a complete smartass, said “okay, how about Gregorian chants?”

But, you see, this is child’s play, because Enigma is a thing.  The Germans, in fact, are quite enamored of setting Gregorian chants to hip-hop beats: in addition to Enigma, there’s E Nomine, and the a-bit-too-on-the-nose Gregorian.  Not to mention geographically nearby Era (from France), and the inevitable host of Enigma soundalikes, such as Bella Sonus (from the US).  But it was the distinctly non-Enigma stylings of Candian-bred Delerium that actually led to the mix that would enable me to play even more (and an even wider variety of) Gregorian chant music than I could do for bagpipes.

You may remember our initial introduction to Delerium from Shadowfall Equinox III, where I pointed out that they were really hard to pin down in terms of style.  I reiterated that when we saw them again on Apparently World, which you may already realize is a pretty big jump, stylistically.  But it was their track “Remembrance” that demonstrated to me that they too, could do the Gregorian chant thing, with arguably even more style and panache than their predecessors.  And so this became the mix starter: a track with elements of dark ambient, worldmusic, trip-hop, and, yes, that same bizarre combination of Gregorian chant set to hip-hop beat that Enigma first made famous.

The great thing about even just the bands I’ve mentioned, who all concentrate on Gregorian chants, is the wide variety of styles they bring.  For Enigma, I went with the über-classic “Mea Culpa”—with its long fade-in, it makes a great volume opener—and that track has an ambient, new age feel to it.  E Nomine’s “Das Abendmahl” has more of an industrial, techno energy to it.  Meanwhile, “Reborn” by Era has almost a poppy ambience, and even has intelligible English lyrics.  Then we have “Arcane Voices” by Amethystium, which is a Norwegian project with similar aspirations to those of Delerium.  This track is perhaps halfway between “Mea Culpa” and “Remembrance”: it has some ethereal qualities, but overall a neoclassical vibe with touches of dreampop and trip-hop.

But, hey: while Gregorian is great, and it was undeniably the inspiration for this mix, there really is no need to limit ourselves to only one kind of chant.  Most cultures have some form of this musical style, and it often carries a religious aspect.  “Incanto” in Latin means “I chant”; in Italian, it’s come to mean something closer to incantation: a spell, an enchantment.  “Liturgy,” of course, indicates a public service of worship; it’s often associated with the Catholic church, especailly the sacrament of the communion, but it can really mean any worship service, in any religion.

Of course, that Latin chanting that is common in Catholic services can be pretty cool when set to music too.  For the purest form of this, I went back to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack to The Da Vinci Code,³ and then to the ever-dependable Dead Can Dance’s remarkable album Aion,⁴ which also has a bit of a Gregorian chant feel to it if we’re being honest.  I also threw in Bulgaria’s Irfan singing in what might be Latin—it’s really hard to tell with those guys—on “Invocatio II,” and I even put all three of those right in a row for you.  As we get further and further from the standard Latin liturgical style, you get Enya’s “Cursum Perficio” later in the volume; that’s definitely Latin, and it’s definitely a chant, but it retains far less of the religious air than something like “Salvete Virgines” has.  (Also, it contains the phrase “post nubila,” which translates to our volume title.)  Going back to Dead Can Dance, “Dawn of the Iconoclast” restores the religious overtones, but I doubt it’s actually Latin, and meanwhile Adieumus’s “Cantus Inaequalis” is definitely not Latin—it’s not anything, even ... just wordless vocalizations as specified by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.  But it certainly sounds Latinesque (the obviously Latin title helps with that mental impression), and it sounds a bit religious.  (I put all three of those right in a row for ya too.)

Our next set of three comes from the ethnomusicologists: Deep Forest’s second album features Roma chants from Hungaria, such as those found in “Marta’s Song”; Baka Beyond continues to concentrate on the chants of the Baka people from Cameroon (who inspired their name); and David Parsons, possibly most famous for his recordings of Indonesian gamelan music takes advantage of his track “Tjampuhan” to combine gamelan with what sounds like some traditional Tibetan music and possibly Tuvan throat singing.

From there we springboard to some Middle-Eastern-inspired tunes.  While the Arabic style of vocalization known as maqam is not exactly chanting, it shares many traits with it, including some religious associations (in this case Islamic rather than Catholic).  Conjure One is a project of Rhys Fulber, formerly of Delerium (the music industry can be quite incestuous); the vocals here are provided by Chemda Khalili.⁵  Shiva in Exile is another of those prolific Germans;⁶ some rando on the Internet said that the words of “Breathing” are in Kannada (a south Indian language), but who know if that’s correct or not?⁷  It is very pretty, though, and exhibits that same maqam style of “Damascus.”

Incanto Liturgica I
[ After the Clouds ]

“Mea Culpa” by Enigma, off MCMXC a.D.
“Arcane Voices” by Amethystium, off Odonata
“Invocatio II” by Irfan, off Seraphim
“The End of Words” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Salvete Virgines” by Hans Zimmer, off The Da Vinci Code [Soundtrack]
“Remembrance” by Delerium, off Karma
“Envelop” by Julianna Barwick, off The Magic Place
“Tjampuhan” by David Parsons, off Ngaio Gamelan
“Marta's Song” by Deep Forest, off Boheme
“Call of the Forest [reprise]” by Baka Beyond, off Rhythm Tree
“Damascus” by Conjure One, off Conjure One
“Breathing” by Shiva In Exile, off Ethnic
“Dawn of the Iconoclast” by Dead Can Dance, off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
“Cantus Inaequalis” by Adiemus, off Songs of Sanctuary
“Cursum Perficio” by Enya, off Watermark
“Prayer” by Era, off Reborn
“Das Abendmahl” by E Nomine [Single]
“Adventus Sortis” by Australis, off The Gates of Reality

Total:  18 tracks,  78:02

This is another tough volume to talk about anything “unexpected” in terms of tracks, but I’ll take a stab at it.  We’ve seen Australis before, on similar mixes,⁸ and their track “Adventus Sortis” is actually quite reminiscent of Delerium’s “Remembrance” and Amethystium’s “Arcane Voices,” at least musically.  But you may be surprised to hear it here, since it includes barely any chanting.  But it is there, for just a few seconds, at two points in the song.  Plus it’s really cool, and it makes a good closer, so here it is.

But the only real deviation I took was the inclusion of Julianna Barwick, whose technique of looping and layering her own wordless vocals dozens of times over (and adding not much else) creates some amazing soundscapes.  Typically her work is a bit dreamy and ambient, but I really thought “Envelop” had a bit of a sacred air, and, while of course it’s not actually chanting, it’s hard to argue that Barwick (whose approach towards music was influenced by many years of church choir) isn’t singing some sort of liturgy here.  Plus it helps tie together the initial Gregorian-heavy tunes with the world tour that follows it.

Next time, we’ll revisit the intersection of childlike and creepy.

Incanto Liturgica II ⇒

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1 We’ve heard from Skyedance on Numeric Driftwood and Apparently World.

2 I believe I had already warned them of the two things I would not play: country and opera.

3 We first had a track from that album on Phantasma Chorale I.

4 For a fuller description of how much I adore this album, see Smokelit Flashback II.

5 Fun fact: Chemda is “the girl” in the Keith and the Girl comedy podcast.  She got range, y’all.

6 We originally met Shiva in Exile on Shadowfall Equinox, but expanded on him in Apparently World.

7 Presumably someone from south India.

8 Such as Shadowfall Equinox IV, Mystical Memoriam I, and Candy Apple Shimmer I.