Hearing Solar Winds [Import]

David Hykes (Artist), The Harmonic Choir (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 1, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Ocora France
• ASIN: B000027IGS
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,272 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Rainbow Voice

2. Multiplying Voices at the Heart of the Body of Sound

3. Arc Descents

4. Gravity Waves

5. Lens by Lens

6. Telescoping

7. Two Poles; Ascent

8. Ascending and Descending

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eerie, beautiful and interesting, June 12, 2000

By 

Paul Carr (Silver Spring, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

I have several of David Hykes' recordings, but if I could only keep one, this would be it. Hykes is a composer fascinated by the deep connection between music and human spirituality. He's also a pioneer in bringing certain extended vocal techniques to western music. The amazing sounds on this excellent recording are all produced by the human voice, and Hykes' compositions bring these sounds together into a coherent and engaging whole. Highly recommended.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journeys out of the body, December 31, 2000

By 

Yves Latorte - See all my reviews

Beginning in 1975 David Hykes developed his chant of wordless multiple tones with a small choir of friends and peaked with this recording in 1982. No other Hykes recording since touches the purity and structural soundness of this one, which, though nothing like it existed before, sounds like a tradition already centuries old. Though inspired by the central Asian overtone or diphonic cultures none of them sound like this. One to seven voices carve ringing echoes in a 12th century French abbey, so complex in there interaction that other composite images appear high above them at times like holy apparitions. This group use only their voices and the immense space of a stone cathedral, to make a moving, one-of-a-kind passage through soul time. Hykes' solos find the heart like a sapphire laser and illuminate it into surrender, peace. Deep, cavernous, sometimes perilous, at others sublimely beautiful beyond lingual reckoning, this is without doubt their single greatest contribution to the choral arts. The CD version includes the complete sessions which were edited for the Radio France vinyl original, adding nearly 8 minutes. A fantastic acoustic document and essential find for seekers of sonic medicine.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vibrating Voices--Everything is Sound, November 18, 2002

By 

C. Gardner (Washington D.C., D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hearing Solar Winds (Audio CD)

You'll never hear anything like this CD anywhere. Hykes and his group have constructed amazing pieces of music based on the natural overtone sound of the human voice and by necessity, in order to hear the overtones, they sing very long vowel sounds, controlling the harmonics by mouth shape, tongue position, diaphragm control, etc. This CD was recorded in a cathedral which amplifies the overtones and doubles the sound of each voice. The effect--particularly on the track "Arc Descents"--is hair-raising and wonderful. I still can't figure out how their voices are able to descend in sliding tones for a full five minutes!

I saw the Harmonic Choir perform once at the Kitchen in New York. Their singing was beamed by satellite to the abbey in France where they recorded this CD, and sent back (with a slight lag), giving them the acoustics of a space 3000 miles away! It was quite amazing.