Music To Listen To 2: Angelli, by Sasha Lazard

Reading Madjock's "Song of the Week" series, I was reminded of my Music To Listen To series, which got to a grand total of ... er... Number 1. Which was promptly dissed my DJ Fly because I made a fatal error on the music front.

Whatever. Get over it. Things Gonna Change still rocks, no matter who plays it...

Anyway, on with number 2

Some background. There was I a few years ago. Single. Feeling sorry for myself. A week off work because I had some holiday to use up, but nothing doing as I had no woman, no friends, couldn#t be asked going "darn sarth" etc, etc.

Result: A week watching Sky Movies. Lots of them. Even the shitty day time ones.

Well, one of them, "Cowboys and Angels", was as shitty as the rest. It was about... well, a modern day Texan or whatever cowboy who ... well.... meets an angel. Like I said, shitty.

But... It had a sublime motif running through it. Not a full track, just background music repeated a few times. Kind of operatic, but not classical opera. More like a soprano singing in another language (Italian, I thought at the time, although I wasn't sure even though I speak a bit), over a modern beat.

Sounded pretty good, so I watched all the way through to the credits (not advised! - definitely wished I had it on DVD so's I could fast-forward), and found out some details of the composer (not the singer).

Internet research revealed... nothing. Nada. Zip. Couldn't believe it.

However, I kept coming back to it every few months, and eventually found a post on a newsgroup where someone was selling not-generally-available film music via CD, and had this track on one of them. Got the CD... sounded pretty good. Then, by coincidence, I found out that the singer was Sasha Lazard, and she was releasing an album The Myth Of Red shortly thereafter.

Ordered it, and the new re-mixed version of the single, "Angelli" (Angels) is just fucking beautiful. Starting with a chilled-out cello section, it seques into Sasha's trained operated voice overlaying a slow modern beat.

(Incidentally, this was my intro to so-called "cross-over" music - classical + modern, principally opera-light vocals over a modern background - and the delights of Emma Shapplin, Sarah Brightman, Filippa Giordano and other not-so-beautiful artists, including Thomas Otten, who bizarrely sounds like he sang the theme music from Blackadder II, but can be quite good regardless).

Haunting. Enchanting. Magical. And dare I say it, angelic. It really is the most beautiful piece of music in my collection, only beating "Evenstar" by a smidgen.

Summary: Every time it comes on, my soul recharges a little bit...

Labels: cross-over, music, opera

posted by Blakey UK @ 6:25 pm