David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir - Current Circulation (1984)

Time for something droning and meditative in the wake of Monday's frenetic electronica.  David Hykes was born in New Mexico in 1953, and formed the Harmonic Choir in 1975 to explore overtone singing.  This was their second album, mostly recorded in St Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, with the brief solo opening track coming from a concert at the Chapel of St John The Divine, also in NYC a few months earlier.

Current Circulation itself is an epic 32-minute, six part work that takes influences from Tibetan Buddhist chant and Mongolian hoomi singing by holding root notes, adding harmonics, and attempting both in one voice and more.  The technical mastery of this type of vocal work speaks for itself, and you can either marvel at the accomplishments of working this into an intricate choral setting, or just let your mind drift in the gradually shifting clouds of pure sound.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Harmonic Meetings

David Hykes And The Harmonic Choir - Harmonic Meetings (1986)

I first came across this amazing album as a rip of the original cassette, posted by superior New Age blog Sounds Of The Dawn.  I've really enjoyed lots of their posts over the last couple of years whenever I want to spend an hour or so winding down with some nice, unobtrusive synthy ambience, but this album is nothing of the sort - which was what made me want to seek it out on CD straight away, which is what I'm sharing here.

David Hykes' background and interests in overtone singing are well covered in his wiki article.  His first album with the Harmonic Choir, Hearing Solar Winds, is well represented on other blogs and is also essential listening, but Harmonic Meetings from three years later is the one for me.  The earlier experiments in pure overtone singing are fleshed out here with occasional percussion and droning tamboura to mindblowing effect.

The sleevenotes sum up Harmonic Meetings as "Harmonic chant with pure overtones, and sacred words from the Abrahamic religions, recorded in the abbey of Le Thoronet, France", and that's exactly what you get for 90 ecstatic, sometimes unsettling minutes.  One of the most utterly unique desert island-worthy albums in my entire collection - although a desert island would be far from the ideal location to listen to an album like this, unless in the dead of night.

Disc 1
Disc 2