11. Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal ChoirLe Mystère Des Voix Bulgares

This came completely out of nowhere while Ivo and I were making my first album, Should The World Fail To Fall Apart in 1986. A friend gave me a cassette of The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir and it was so extraordinary – I remember hearing it for the first time and just sitting motionless. You can’t engage with it like you would with pop or rock, it’s primal, almost sacred. The tuning, those harmonics, the way they shift from tenderness to raw invocation, it’s like listening to the earth breathe. These women weren’t singing, they were channelling – it was a kind of pagan gospel. So I passed it onto Ivo as, of course, it had to come out on 4AD records. Very special.