Untold Things

Flood On Flood, we join British composer Jocelyn Pook as witnesses to a catastrophe, transfixed by its totality, muted by its incalculable human toll. Pook's faintly beautiful, profoundly sad music is all that hovers above her ashen, apocalyptic landscapes, one we dare not survey too l...	The Merchant Of Venice	Eyes Wide Shut: Music From The Motion Picture The late director Stanley Kubrick's masterful pairing of image, song, and symphony has forever imbued an impossibly eclectic body of music with indelible psychic connotations that range from cosmic grandeur (2001's Also Sprach Zarathustra and "The Blue Danube") to cynical irony (...	Invocation	Water Birth This third album by The Tunnel Singer flows into the ambient realm. Meditative, entrancing solo vocals recorded live in the "Cistern Chapel" without electronic processing. The natural 45-second long acoustic reverberation of the space creates an undulating soundscape, evoking im...
White Chalk This carnival ride to the netherworld of the soul is PJ Harvey's most dizzyingly radical work since the raw pulse and grind of her 1993 debut. It's also entirely different. Harvey's created an emotionally fractured Gothic fairytale that rides on her spare, tattered piano playing ...	The Silver Tree Few artists last long in the rarefied terrain occupied by singer Lisa Gerrard over the last quarter-century. She shares a passion with composers like Arvo Pärt in the unrelenting pursuit of the divine. In fact, Gerrard evokes Pärt a few times on The Silver Tree, her first non-c...	Eyes Wide Shut [Blu-ray] Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 01/29/2008	Elysium for the Brave For this, her second solo album, Azam Ali, lead vocalist of Vas and Niyaz, takes her patented polycultural blend of ancient and contemporary influences even farther beyond the stratosphere. That she is now a veteran of numerous film scores, including Children of Dune, Earthsea, ...	Within the Realm of a Dying Sun [Re-Mastered] Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry actually manage to out-shimmer the Cocteau Twins on this 1987 release, which finds their beautiful minimalism adorned with increasingly developed compositional genius. The cascading melodies that grace "Summoning of the Muse" and "Persephone" are ta...

Imaginative, thought provoking compositions
Whimsical, pensive and kissed by a variety of world music samples, Jocelyn Pook's style in this recording reminds me a little of Deep Forest without the programmed beats. As with all her music that I'm familiar with, the tone of "Untold Things" is minor and distinctly laid back, yet pregnant with carefully patterned intent. This isn't mindless, repetitive filler, but intelligently crafted modern chamber music tinged with elements of New Age fusion. It could perhaps do with a little more livening up now and then, as in the intense and interesting track #5, "Take Off Your Veil" and the fun, drummy "Calls, Cries and Clamours," but overall, "Untold Things" provides an intriguing and satisfying listening experience. My favorite pieces are the poignant and hypnotically complimentary #8, "Saints and Sinners" and #11, Saffron, with their mix of harmonized vocals and sampled chants over a simple but affecting piano and psaltery ostinato. Joining Pook's vocals and viola are singers Melanie Pappenheim and Parvin Cox, psaltery player and co-arranger Harvey Brough, along with her customary collection of chamber orchestra strings, select world instruments, modest programmings and assiduously documented samplings. Try also Pook's gently elegant soundtrack for "William Shakespeare's `The Merchant of Venice'" and her much darker, more eclectic album "Flood" (the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut"). For more the way of artful world music fusion, you might enjoy Hans Zimmer's "Millenium" and Paul Winter's "Earthbeat" (the source of the theme song for the "Survivor" reality TV series) as well.

Breathtaking
I've listened to this album countless times and it is still my favorite. The music and vocal virtuosity is simply breathtaking.

unbold thing
Warning: this record is not avant-garde. Comparisons to Penderecki and even Nyman are misleading. The tracks are all quite simple and downtempo with unchallenging celt/world sonorities which call to mind a dark Enya. Pook's comments on backward singing and invented languages as if these techniques were something radical I find a bit embarrassing - added to which they don't actually create much of an impression. In fact the whole project has something of a precious feel given that it is so lacking in real boldness. That wouldn't matter if the music was as emotionally charged as some have claimed, but it isn't. There's a kind of occultish spookiness seeping through, but I can get that from Sisters Of Mercy - in a more exciting and less roundabout way. My main feeling, having bought it was, and still is, `Oh dear, I don't REALLY need yet more worldy ambient stuff, do I?'. I can't guarantee you'll feel the same but there again I can't help wondering why there is currently such a frisson around this artist.

Untold Things
There is a song on this album called "Calls, Cries and Clamors". Well that's about the whole album. Unintelligible "Calls", Weird "Cries" with a background of "Clamor".

SANCTUS ET BENEDICTUS
This,the 3rd CD to be issued under Jocelyn Pook's name,is business as usual.Plenty of sampling of ethnic voices amid music which was composed for various other projects.Anyone who bought her other work will not be disappointed.A first time rounder buying out of curiosity in a sale would find it hard going unless that person was already attuned to Gavin Bryars,Michael Nyman,John Tavener.People who buy the so called Popular Classics would find Britten or Penderecki hard going. Music like this deserves to be listened to.In the end its ultimately rewarding as it can lead to so much more,out there on the fringe of what is now called Classical Crossover.She has a very detailed website on Yahoo's egroups which also covers the work of Audrey Riley,Ann Stephenson,Caroline Lavelle and Sonia Slany