Jocelyn Pook – Untold Things

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Jocelyn Pook, Music review, Soundtrack, Untold Things, World music

Frankly weird, a mash-up, but definitely haunting

I had never heard of Jocelyn Pook, till a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video of a piece of `sacred style’ Western choral singing composed by her, very much in Early Music polyphony mode (which I love)

Alas, this was a while ago and I can no longer find that particular clip

However I also love the strange atonal, dissonant singing and ululations of Arabic music. And it turns out that Ms Pook, best known for film and TV sound tracks, (Eyes Wide Shut, by all accounts propelled her to a wider audience) works with a fusion of Western classical, and strands of world music which clearly pull in threads from the Balkans, the Middle East, India, and she also incorporates more modern, electronic techniques – reverb, sampled sounds. And then there is a rich and sumptuous vein of high romantic and lyrical use of Western classical strings, lush and emotional.

And, on this particular album  some up-beat, tabla driven rhythmic numbers, which invite the listener to groove, move and sway

This shouldn’t really work, somehow it does! Personally I found the more dance upbeat numbers were not quite as alluring as the other tracks, missing the stranger, more unusual quality of the other, intensely emotional tracks.

The YouTube embed is of Requiem aeternam, a track from another Pook album Flood
Untold Things Amazon UK
Untold Things Amazon USA

 

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Jocelyn Pook – Flood

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Africa, Early music, Flood, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, Music review, sacred music, Soundtrack, World music review

The weird, wonderful, Puckish Ms. Pook

Jocelyn Pook’s fascination with both the sacred early music traditions of Christianity, and the music of northern Africa, the nomadic tradition and Islamic influence, easily puts a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.

From the beginning track where ethereal female voices sing a choral Requiescat, she moves into something which opens out the horizons on the second track, with a vista of sandy deserts and nomadic camel riders, except that the strange beat, the synthesised soundscape behind the ululating female voices, suggest an almost other world, futuristic planet.

The fourth track, Oppenheimer, where the narrative voice at the beginning makes reference to Hindu devotional texts, Vishnu the destroyer, is apocalyptic. There is a harsh, windy soundscape which sounds like the end of the world has happened, through which weave and interweave prayerful music from Christianity and equally devotionally intense music of Arabic influence. It is almost like some final, terrible battle between major faiths, and at the end of things is harshness, and the beauty which mankind created (music) left to remind us of the devotion and the savagery of faiths.

Another track starts with the urban voices of children at play, and weaves the rich voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Winds Southerly with the small soprano female choir singing a Pie Jesu. Pook clashes worlds together in an utterly new, hypnotic way

I don’t know who is responsible for the primary female vocals on most of the tracks, the floated voice, but it is sublime!
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon UK
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon USA