61 minutes, 6 seconds

Helium Vola
Helium Vola

Helium Vola is principally the project of Ernst Horn, a onetime member of the medieval-revival band Qntal. The two projects are very similar in approach: Take traditional music from the middle ages and update it with modern electronic instrumentation, changing the phrasing and cadence to give the songs new life.

Now, this isn't necessarily new--Dead Can Dance, for one, used to do the same thing, perhaps most memorably with "Saltarello," from their 1990 album Aion. But with Qntal, Horn added a skewed, experimental, avant-garde sound to the stately old songs. It was beautiful, but weird, and a little scary. (Check out the first two Qntal albums to see what I mean.)

He tones that down a little here, but this disc, his debut as Helium Vola, retains an experimental spirit--the songs may be old and hallowed, but nothing is sacred to Horn, and he twists and bends them with abandon. For example, "Omnis Mundi Creatura," by the 12th-century French theologian and poet Alain de Lille, becomes a stomping electro anthem. And "Do Tagte Ez" veers from heavy metal to classical and back again.

Sprinkled throughout the disc are the unmistakable sounds of submarine sonar equipment. And fittingly so: The album is dedicated to the Russian sailors who died aboard the Kursk submarine when it sank in Arctic waters in 2000. So there's an elegiac sadness that hangs over the songs, but probably among the most beautiful sadness you'll ever hear. Yet it ends on an optimistic note: the traditional song "Selig," a hymn to spring and rebirth. Helium Vola's version is insistently energetic and pretty, and it makes for an intensely emotional release point for all the songs that came before it.

A remarkable album that deserves a wider audience.

Also today:

61:05 DavaNtage, Unholy
61:04 His Divine Grace, His Divine Grace
61:04 Skinny Puppy, VIVIsectVI
61:02 Karin Höghielm, Apocryphal
61:01 Moon Far Away, Sator
61:01 Vidna Obmana, Gathering in Frozen Beauty
61:01 VNV Nation, Praise the Fallen
61:00 Skinny Puppy, Rabies
60:59 Mortal Constraint, The Legend of Deformation
60:57 Harold Budd & Hector Zazou, Glyph