The contents of this album are exactly what one would expect to find when reading the name of the group (let's call it a "collective"): this could immediately exclude a good portion of potential listeners. It cannot be denied that the contents of "BooCheeMish" are indeed something unconventional or "pop." Yet, historically, the collective The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices has also attracted attention in the rock scene, even at more "alternative" levels (let's say in the modern sense of the definition), there must be reasons for this, and we can find them in attempts at minimalist avant-garde research experimented by various musicians. In this immersion in Bulgarian folk tradition, satisfaction is found in minimal acoustic accompaniments with string instruments and percussion, and where tomorrow plays the central, imposing role of voices and choirs where each performer stands out by mastering their peculiar singing technique.
The genesis of this production comes from afar. The interest of 4AD Records dates back to long ago, even to the late eighties when founder Ivo Watts-Russell was introduced to the listening by Peter Murphy and immediately took action to publish two LPs as an "anthology." For the first time after thirty years, today the choir returned to the studio to record new material, and the operation took place again under the aegis of 4AD (although the album is distributed by Prophecy Recordings). As an exceptional performer and author, we have another of the "big names" of the British label, namely Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance: "Pora Sotunda" (the single that anticipated the album's release), "Mani Yanni," "Unison," "Shandai Ya" are tracks in which her great merit - it must be said - lies precisely in collaborating with the choir and not in any way trying to denature its original form. The four tracks mentioned are perfectly embedded in the overall album, and when listening to it all at once, these do not constitute any strange "leap" and it would have been a truly unforgivable crime.
"Le Mystère De Voix Bulgares" is a project that was actually born in the distant '50s as a Bulgarian State female choir that worked for recordings and broadcasting of popular songs on the radio and later on television. It was the Swiss producer Marcel Cellier who first introduced the choir to international levels, which then in 1990 was even awarded a Grammy Award. Curiously, the choir is known in Italy thanks to the popular group Elio e le Storie Tese, which reprised a piece in a famous song from the album "Italian, Rum Casusu Cikti": the parodic depiction of an international espionage case with the clandestine import of "Ramaya" by Afric Simone in Bulgaria. On that occasion, there was a truly mythical meeting in Munich between Rocco Tanica and the choir director Dora Hristova, accompanied by the political officer. In any case, the "Bulgarian voices" had already been mythical for years: Elio e le Storie Tese arrived at them because they were inspired by the devotion of Frank Zappa, who was just one of the many enthusiasts over the years of these chilling vocalisms, which, more than ancestral, I would define as almost "ecclesiastical," of a monarchal rituality that evidently has its roots in the Middle Ages. I won't tear my hair out as in the case of "Tana" by the Albanian collective Saz'iso (Glitterbeat), but it's worth taking this Balkan tour.
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