Unique/Odd Voices

Just discovered Israeli singer-songwriter Asaf Avidan.



Not sure what I make of the music.

His stuff seems unremarkable to me. I still mourn Ofra Haza.



Im Nin'alu has never been given sufficient credit for boosting the amazing electo/world cross-pollination that was happening in the late 1980s. There was a time when I thought music was ready for the next step. Then cunts everywhere voted for britpop and watched their heroes shake hands with Tony Blair.

That's pretty impressive. Is she using the AMS Harmonizer? How's the sweep/glide start at around 1:17 done?

Not certain, Ofra was a very secretive woman. Most likely an Eventide Harmoniser. The kit is ancient now, yet the sound it produced still sounds futuristic more than a quarter of a century later.

The original track is on the album Yemenite Songs and is a better song in conventional terms, but technically unremarkable. The stunning remix is from 1988 and everyone from Thomas Dolby to Stock, Aitkin and Waterman were involved at different periods.

As an aside, I've given up trying to persuade any mainstream publisher to fund a history of music technology and the 1980s, though I'm well qualified to write it. Already many of the most important people involved are dead (like Ofra herself), or not long for this world.  As long as the Luddites in charge of music publishing think three chords and an electric guitar is still important, that's how it's going to be.

Have you thought about a Beeb documentary? The one about John Cooper Clarke from a year or two ago wasn't bad (Evidently... John Cooper Clarke).

BBC is not for me.

Getting back on topic, the remarkable thing about Ofra was how she reinvented herself.  I think this is the earliest version she did of Im Nin'alu:



Over the the next decade or so there were many different arrangements, culminating in the electrofragment-remix above, which is the still the best and strangest version for me, though there were various bland remixes after her infection and death, notably without the pitch shifting which is the 1988 version's most distinctive feature.

Ofra had a strange and beguiling voice and it's a great shame, if understandable, that she tried to have a semi-mainstream pop career after her Western breakthrough.

I'd pick Jimmy Somerville from Bronski Beat...

This lady has a rather unique voice. A so called soprano sfogalto, she has trained at a vocal technique that is almost disturbing at times. Caught her live in 93, quite a show. Not least because the stage was flooded with candles, and she had blood all over her bare breasts.

Kate, unique, not odd.

Blixa Bargeld