Who Stole the Sky?

Tuvan pop. Yes, Tuvan pop. Ms. Namtchylak doesn’t do the overtone voices (though there are two songs on which a “Caspar David Sacker” does some). We’re treated to songs with pop structures and pleasant arrangements, albeit on exotic instruments (for Western ears) and lyrics in Russian and Tuvan in addition to English. Strangely beautiful and beautifully strange, not to exoticize. And one more touch – healthy doses of electronics, but not the cheese sheen of many East-West pop products. Note that the photos of Ms. N are composed of 0s and 1s. In fact, I’d seen her name in The Wire magazine and thought that I was going to be reviewing some sort of microtonal electronic experiment. What a pleasant surprise! I guess I hadn’t read The Wire closely enough. I also love the loopy photo inside. Recommended!

1. Loping ballad
2. Slow beat with high-pitched vocals; nice high-low mix
3. Rubber band-y boing-boing, blippy synth, and an amusing vocal and lyric
4. Ethereal vocal over pedestrian bassline and synth
5. Here’s the mastermix: throat singing, drum ‘n’ bass, and a disarmingly straightforward vocal recitation of “digital moo-tation”
6. Digital torch song
7. A lovely acoustic piano and voice song
8. Sounding sort of Mediterranean with trilling strings and soaring vocals
9. Back-country sound with raw vocals and acoustic picking
10. Tuvan hoedown for the first five minutes, then a silent gap to 13 minutes remaining followed by some abstract then more loungy jazz down to the 4 minutes mark, at which point a folk song that you imagine is being sung while standing in a meadow commences; maybe a bit too much for one track