Belenzuka Fallen from the Sky

The two pairs of singers on this uncompromising recording – one male and one female – come from south-eastern Serbia and are specialists in the rural style of singing dubbed izvika, a term related to the word for shouting or yelling. The style is not marked by wide variation, with melodic content restricted to a handful of neighbouring pitches that are practically identical in each song. The performance style is impassive and emotionally detached, while for much of a verse the two vocalists will sing the same, or almost the same, note. So in some respects this is an ethnographic recording, a work of rescue musicology. The English-language notes that accompany it are, however, far from rigorous in their scholarship, being little more than a romantic encomium of village life. The Serbian notes are more informative, if equally romantic, and explain that the intention is to showcase a few individuals and their songs.

The most fascinating aspect of the music is the unearthly shimmer of harmonics generated by the chains of seconds and the almost coincident pitch of the vocal drone. The title of the album, Belenzuka Fallen from the Sky, refers to a bracelet fallen from the heavens, which somehow sums up the lapidary, beautiful but alien sound.