Norwegian vocal artist-multi-vocalist-composer Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer describes herself as a storyteller who uses music to tell stories through sounds. «Welcome to a sonic world created by one single, unprocessed voice / Welcome to a sonic world created in real-time / Welcome to enter a variety of auditive spaces / Welcome to a vocal orchestra», is her introduction to her new album, One Voices, released on International Women’s Day, March 8th.
One Voices is a ten-piece, non-verbal vocal suite consisting of five distinct sonic environments or sound sculptures, each varying in duration. Between these rooms are short transitional passages that serve as a mental reset, allowing the listener to meditate and release their connection to the preceding sound and open their minds to a new auditory experience or mental state. The album was recorded at the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo, a space with 20 seconds of reverb, and at Meyer’s garden studio in Oslo, CasaBlancaStudios, a relatively dry room, between 2021 and 2023.
Meyer explores her seven-octave vocal range through subtle and nuanced timbres with extended techniques, spanning multiple genres and stylistic expressions, from classical vocal tradition to vocal traditions from the Nordic regions, multiphonics, and pure noise music. One Voices offers an entirely analog and acoustic, orchestral and layered vocal universe with ultra-precise vocal articulations, multiphonics, seductive melodic lines, breath textures, and acoustic structures in an intuitive flow. Meyer employs tactile sounds produced within the oral cavity and on the palate, suggests an ocean of voices that sound as if surrounding the listener, investigates vocal white noises, imagines new liturgical music, articulates enduring sorrow, and reflects on light and darkness, calmness and energy, dreams and wishes.
Meyer sounds like a modern-day shaman who casts healing and harmonious spells on attentive listeners and asks them to expand their consciousness to the vulnerability of our natural environments, the physical and mental ones. A most beautiful and moving work.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer (vocals)
