Norwegian experimental, all-female vocal ensemble Trondheim Voices created a completely improvised vocal soundtrack, with live electronic processing of the voices and with sound design by Asle Karstad, for Mexican-Spanish director Horacio Alcalá’s Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves), which tells about the inhabitants of the fictional island of Magdala. Alcalá said that «Their harmonies form the true beginning, the foundation from which the entire narrative develops. This music is a primordial force, as if the voices existed before the film itself, with the magical realism story emerging organically from their resonance».

Sobre las Olas represents Trondheim Voices’ first, and most ambitious cinematic venture. The five voices – Sissel Vera Pettersen (the artistic director of the ensemble), Tone Åse, Torunn Sævik, Anita Kaasbøll, and Ingrid Lode, augmented with loops and effects (developed by sound engineer Asle Karstad with programmer Arnvid Lau Karstad, who have collaborated with the ensemble before) – serve as the emotional, dramatic backbone of the film’s magic realism story. The ethereal, hymn-like singing adds a spiritual dimension to the story, where reality and fantasy merge.

Even without watching the film, Sobre las Olas stands in its own right as a welcome extension of Trondheim Voices’ imaginary, real-time organic usage of voices, new technology, space, and time. The fourteen short pieces flow naturally and tell a seductive story. They may guide us into Alcalá’s mysterious, fictional story, but their haunting, sensual essence relates even deeper into our inner, existential desires, fears, and motivations.

Eyal Hareuveni

Sissel Vera Pettersen (vocals, live electronic processing), Tone Åse (vocals, live electronic processing), Torunn Sævik (vocals, live electronic processing), Anita Kaasbøll (vocals, live electronic processing), Ingrid Lode (vocals, live electronic processing), Asle Karstad (sound design)