BY GUSTAV RASMUSSEN AND THORBEN SEIERØUSTAV, GHOST COAST CHOIR
We’d like to welcome Gustav and Thorben on their first co-written story in CutCommon. Ghost Coast Choir is a Scandinavian neoclassical duo whose self-titled album takes inspiration from modern day lyricists, writers, and poets (David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Simon Armitage) in a bid to revitalise the choral sound for a contemporary audience.
About 10 years ago, waiting in the take-off lounge of some airport, we started talking about choral music.
A friend of ours had recommended some modern choral music to listen to en route to the festival we were flying out to, and we were immediately smitten by the luscious sound and the beautiful melodies and harmonies. The music was clearly rooted in the classics, but had a distinctly modern aesthetic. We started diving into this beautiful sonic world.
Coming from a background in indie-rock and experimental/jazz music, we started out enjoying the inspiration from a completely different style. But quite quickly, the ideas started flowing on our vision for new choral music.
Developing ideas
We didn’t grow up with choral music. In fact, neither of us have ever sung with a choir. However, the sound of a “classical” choir or the Christian choral form is pretty deeply ingrained in us, all the same. From singing songs together at school or on special occasions, singing Christmas carols, or hearing Haydn’s Hallelujah chorus or a Bach chorale, all this actually feels like a part of our culture. But we never really connected with it consciously until quite recently.
It wasn’t until the plane trip that we got sucked in. Initially, we discovered the melodic and diatonic-with-a-twist harmonic world of Eric Whitacre, then got into composers Morton Lauridsen, Eriks Esenvalds and Ola Gjeilo and then on to Thomas Jennefelt, Arvo Pärt, Knut Nystedt. Essentially, the sound of human voices singing together in that medium or style really spoke to us but, of course, the journey of discovering new (or old) music is never-ending.
About a year after that flight, we were booked to play a huge concert at Roskilde Festival, one of Northern Europe’s largest rock festivals. It was a collaborative event with 10 indie-rock bands from Copenhagen, and we decided to try our hands at composing an a cappella choral piece to start off the concert.
The whole experience was pretty thrilling, and especially the combination of rock-stage and classical choir seemed to be different and so appealing.
On the one hand, we were discovering this brilliant sonic world. On the other, we were longing for lyrics that we could understand and relate to as a person living today
We got deeper into it a few years later at Haldern Pop Festival in Germany, where we were invited to work with the choir Cantus Domus. We reworked our a cappella piece and added some more arrangements. After hearing the music come to life through 30-40 singers, there was no turning back: we simply had to start working on a new musical project with the choir at centre-stage.
So, over the course of a few years, the idea had formed itself and we started planning. Being used to recording everything in the studio ourselves on a whim or a burst of inspiration, setting up a recording with a classical choir was quite a stretch. Writing songs, doing the vocal arrangements, and then the whole logistical side of things took quite some time, not least because of the level of preparedness. We were used to being able to record and record until we got what we wanted. But here, we were coordinating the musical efforts of 16 people who had to get it done in a day or two – together – and once it was recorded there was nothing, we could do to change it.
So, it had to be right.
The missing sound
Even though it all started with a love for the classical choir sound, we knew from the outset that we wanted to take that sound in a different direction. On the one hand, we were discovering this brilliant sonic world. On the other, we were longing for lyrics that we could understand and relate to as a person living today. The lyrics have always been a huge part of our love for music: finding meaning and relatability in what people were singing about, what stories they were telling, be it Neil Young, Radiohead or Nina Simone.
Classical, choral music is of course rooted in the church both physically and metaphorically, and so the subject matter is Christianity and even today often composed and sung in Latin, a language that no one has spoken for several hundred years (think Kyrie Eleison). For our vision, it was a bit too “Oxford University”. Instead, we thought about choral music that can deal with climate change, ecological destruction, or the difficulties in being in a relationship on a more direct day-to-day level; specifically, choral music that wants to engage with the world of now – spiritual, ethereal, but also immediate and down to earth. That’s what we wanted to do.
We thought about choral music that can deal with climate change, ecological destruction, or the difficulties in being in a relationship
Adding to that, we had what could best be described as a sonic Venn diagram in our heads – a cross-section of musical ideas that we felt the voices could both inhabit and interact with: monumental post-rock with a pensive feel like My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and slow, minimalistic ambient music like Nils Frahm or William Basinski. The reflective quality seems to be common for a lot of interesting music coming out these days, and we felt like there was a musical overlap here that we hadn’t heard before. Playing with the tenderness of the human voice versus the unfeelingness of electronics seemed to fit right into this intersection – human meets machine.
On a practical note, we experimented with guitar pedals, granular synthesis, cutting up and sampling the recorded vocals, creating a vocal synth with a four-track tape recorder, doing tape loops on an old reel-to-reel, and adding the odd instrument. When we write it out it does seem a bit like the sounds come from such different worlds, but for us, they are totally connected and complement each other.
You could say they have overlapping intentions like grandiosity, magnificence, transcendency, reflection, tactility. Put it like that, and it almost sounds spiritual.
Music for a new time and a new audience
Even though many classical composers have been dead for many years, the vast array of splendid contemporary composers clearly show that the genre isn’t dead or museum-like at all. So, asking how we are revitalising choral music is a bit of a non sequitur in that one can’t revive something that’s already alive.
What we’re doing, however, is offering a new vision of what and to whom choral music can communicate. We take sounds and thriving genres that resonate, and combine them, creating a new musical landscape. With it, we can hopefully reach across the aisle to make people tune into genres they never thought they would, but now do so because they’re able to listen – and really hear it – with a new sense of understanding.
In that respect, we are creating choral music for people that don’t (yet) know they like choral music.
Images supplied.
