3. Karlheinz StockhausenStimmung
I don’t know how that came into my life. I had a couple of close friends at college. We were all deeply interested in music and recording, so this record arrived somehow. This record is very calm, deeply meditative. If you allow yourself a moment of stillness, it’s very, very accessible. Some of the Stockhausen that I’d heard, like ‘Gesang der Jünglinge’ or ‘Hymnen’, I appreciate now but it wasn’t that accessible. I couldn’t sit down and bathe in it.
I think this was the original recording that I must have heard, because again it was about early ’70s to mid-’70s. I’m very familiar now with the Sing Circle version, with Gregory Rose directing. This was an earlier version I must have heard then. I was so young, but still very passionate about music, that it made me open-minded to the work of Stockhausen in a way that I thought, ‘Oh, he’s not just making intellectual, difficult pieces that I find hard to listen to; he’s made this.’ It’s very droney, and drones feed of course into my work with Nous Alpha, particularly the first record.
It’s all based on a B flat drone that comes out of the speakers that you can’t really hear as the audience but the singers hear it. It’s also for singers and microphones, so it’s a crucial part of the sound of the piece. The close-mic’d vocal is obviously something I’ve been in love with my whole life and something that I’ve worked with a great deal in my day job in recording alternative pop music. The close-mic’d vocal is such a special thing and so different from the normal classical vocal, which you hear, like, 20 metres away in the concert hall or whatever. And it’s very witty as well, it’s so worth the 45 minutes investment.
