Ice Ice Baby!! Chansons Des Meres Froides-Hector Zazou-This Is A Voyage--

Cold As Ice, you know...

This is a fitting album for Winter and us Northern Hemispherians. Songs from the Cold Seas, a concept album by the late French producer Hector Zazou is an album I like to listen to when I need to mellow out a bit and relax. Zazou created an album with vocalists and updated musical styles from the Northern areas of our planet. Most of the singers are female, though not exclusively so. Canada, Norway, England, Wales, Scotland, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and America are represented here, and additionally the Sami people who inhabit the northerly parts of Scandinavia, the Yakut of Siberia, and the Ainu people of Hokkaido.

Though the singers are at the forefront of all the recordings, the reason I return to this album again and again is because of Zazou. There is something truly amazing about the sonic timbre of this album. There is a crisp and pristine clarity to the recordings that fits in line with the Northern theme. The music makes my ears tingle.

With Laughing Face and Gleaming Hands

The arrangements are also traditional but often with unusual injections of instrumentations. And the whole concept is unusual--plus it must have cost a mint to record this. I have to salute the company that gave this project the green light. As much as I enjoy a good pop hook, or a mile a minute punk raveup, I also enjoy hearing unique and unusual recordings like this.

Of course, a further attraction are the great artists who collaborated with Zazou on this project. From Finland we have the stellar vocal quartet Vartiina. On Annukka Sunren Neito I feel like I am being transported back to some ritual from 500 years ago. Bjork is Iceland's representative, and she trades off with a clarinet on a religious theme with Visur Vatnsenda-rosu. Excellent. John Cale and Suzanne Cale duet on The Long Voyage a song whose lyrics are based upon the poem Silhouettes by Oscar Wilde. Actually one of the more lighthearted moments on this album. The bass clarinet riff gives a certain levity to the proceedings.



There are a lot of interesting moments on this album. One of the most notable is Adventures In The Scandinavian Skin Trade which is a hip hop take on a Sami joik (chant) which uses traditional instrumentation like mouth harps and Siberian Tambours. The Yakut Song has amazing plaintive ululating vocals by Lioudmila Khandi. Another highlight is the Scottish segment Oran Na Maighdean Mhara, with Scottish pipes and the powerful vocals of Catherine-Ann MacPhee. The Inuit Song of The Water with its raspy breathy rhythmic vocals is another mind blower that closes the album on a high note.

Also included here are Siouxie (The Lighthouse), Lena Willemark (Havet Stomar), and Tokiko Kato (Yaisa Maneena). Though the albums journey takes us across the entire northern globe and multiple continents, the theme holds together well, and blends traditional with the modern. The only complaint I could have is the sameness of tempo on the album and that you could argue that some of the music has a mystical "Riverdance" aspect to it. I think that a lot of this was not accidental, and I don't really want to quibble about an album not being other than what it was meant to be. Overall, I find Songs From The Cold Seas to be a pretty standout and highly artistic work. I can only imagine how difficult this must have been to put this project together. And he pulled it off. There are spiritual and naturalistic elements to these recordings that put this a cut above and beyond your average musical endeavor.