Sainkho Namtchylak
Like A Bird Or Spirit, Not A Face

THE REVIEW

For me, it's a mystery this petite singer of Mongolian origins. A pure chance encounter with her art.

A great vocal experimenter, a scholar of the most suggestive applications of the voice as a true organic instrument. Master of "Overtone Singing," her voice buzzes, growls, completely changes tone, doubles, beast and child. A living voice that loves to explore, never shying away from new musical challenges.

Vocal experimentation always well-rooted in a sort of meta-ethnic sound. It flies from Mongolia and lands on the North African sands, climbs skeletal blues scales, floats on ambient carpets, dances with electronics, reaching to hover over a mystical Bristol. Supreme master of a great musical atlas that she explores with great curiosity, turns the page to discover new maps on which to play with her wild vocal cords.

Not songs but circular shamanic rites unconsciously born of a psychedelic primitivism, hypnosis induced by the repetitiveness of the instruments and indecipherable vocalities. A meeting between archaic soul and the search for modern spirituality.

I may be half-mad, but in some musical fragments, the journey without return that Tim Buckley embarked on with "Lorca" came to mind. The power of great music that manages to unite points light-years apart in our minds, burning boundaries.

An album of great charm because it's outside my usual world, different but worthy of great attention. Give it a chance, it truly deserves it.