Contemporary classical opera, hyper intense in entirety. Lots of *incredible* sprechgesang, full orchestra, intense rhythms and anger and strife and eeriness... Amazing CD. The concept behind it is cool - it’s inspired by the story of Fama from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who built her house in the center of the earth and can hear all the voices in the world. “...entrances without number, a thousand openings, and no doors to stop up the thresholds... Everything reverberates: echoes voices and repeats what is heard. There is no peace within, no silent place. But nor is there clamour, only the low murmuring of voices, like the waves of the sea...”
But… the lyrics are about a woman who becomes a prostitute to get her dad out of debt. It’s somehow a putting together of inner and outer worlds – the liner notes say: “this composed-out inner hearing of sounds unfolding freely in space”.
Fama was performed at the Donaueschingen Music Festival with a set design where 250 listeners sat in a multidimensional box, whose sides were moved electronically to reflect sound in different ways throughout the performance.

Enjoy, listen to the whole thing :)

1. frenetic chaotic choir, fervent whisperings, full orchestra making loops, repeated rhythms, clanking, blatting. They are saying, i think in latin (translated into german in the liner notes?), stuff roughly like I hear the fire, I hear the rain, I hear the cry of children, i hear in my memories, i hear the silence, i hear the rustle of leaves, i hear breath, i hear the rush of rivers...
2. Instrumental. Playful tense orchestration, sparse and cold feel.
**3. Crazy solo female rambling, hatching frenetic disjointed panicked schemes to go to america. Really intense and tense. The orchestra goes so well with her voice patterns, rhythm and pitches. At the end she recognizes the sound of her own voice / herself, after being lost in confusion. WOW. Wow.
*4. Slow droney voice and electronic-sounding low sounds, probably bass flute and clarinet. Soprano duet. Most chill / least tense track.
*5. Pretty and slow/still. Quiet. Gorgeous. Bass clarinet duet, with a woman speaking/whispering.
*6. 10 minutes of pad-tapping, funky breath sounds, and bizarre lyrics, talking to herself in the mirror.
7. First 1:40 is still and quiet, then all kinds of instruments and voices creep back in, sort of chaotic and trippy, very dissonant, builds the whole time.
8. Combination of sounds in other tracks and the woman chattering intensely.