EXOTIC AURAL DESIGNS

In this feature, The Times’ pop-music writers spotlight out-of-the-way albums of special merit.

Album: “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares.” Various artists. 4AD (import).

History: Ivo Watts-Russell, the ingenious man behind England’s 4AD Records (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, et al.), heard a tape of this music in 1985 and immediately fell in love with the sound of these Bulgarian women. He found the source for the ‘50s-era recordings: independent French producer Marcel Cellier, who had made them over a 15-year period. But Watts-Russell was never able to find out more than a couple of the singers’ names, nor the origins of the songs (most or all are probably traditional). Oddly enough, neither Watts-Russell nor Cellier mentions in the liner notes a quite similar American album, “Music of Bulgaria” by the Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic, recorded when that group visited Paris in 1955. That LP has enjoyed a quiet but passionate cult status since the late ‘60s and is still available on Nonesuch Records.

Sound: There are moments in music--in Mozart’s operas, for instance, or Duke Ellington’s band during the Cotton Club days--when the sounds seem so heavenly and strange as to not be of this Earth. This Bulgarian music offers several such delights. “Le Mystere” is even more bizarrely beautiful than “Music of Bulgaria.” All 13 tracks on “Le Mystere” are vocal, they’re less hurried, and only three have instrumental backing--and even that is subtle. The emphasis falls on some of the loveliest singing ever recorded, overflowing with a one-of-a-kind delicacy and passion. In his notes, Cellier calls these chants and melodies a “magical synthesis” of Byzantine and Thracian roots “encountering Occidental harmonies,” reflecting the tortured history of the land itself. The songs draw aural designs as exotic and awe-inspiring as an intricate tapestry, and are performed with astounding breath control and note accuracy; these peasant women do things that practically expand the limits of the human voice. It’s easy to see why Watts-Russell was overwhelmed by these sounds. They are to “folk” or “international” music what the work of his star artist, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, is to “pop” music--something that transcends categories and expectations, something naively angelic.