Tuvan traditional music has won itself a special place in the music world. First of all, it is characterised by highly developed art of throat-singing. It is easy to see the relation of it to throatsinging used in Tibetan Buddhism, while some scholars point that this manner of sound creation dates back to the first attempts of mankind to speak. It is these attempts that have become extinct in most of the world but still live on as geografically limited heritage which only regains its legacy in the past few years. It is not that throatsinging survived only in Tuva. In the surrounding Siberian and Central Asian regions and even in Africa there are similar techniques.
However, from large concert halls to remote pastures, throatsinging was a symbol of Tuvan identity from the first half of 20th century at the very latest. But Tuvans boast not only the widespread ability to throatsing. It is also a highly developed art which includes at least 3 major genres (sygyt, khoomei, and kargyraa) and several common subgenres, as well as popular personal styles that become nationally popular due to the modern media like tapes or radio waves, that confer every new development of this art onto the nomadic farmers or local artists throughout the mountanous republic much faster than a celebrated singer is able himself.
This record mixes Tuvan traditional songs and contemporary ways of rhythmic organisation, that are rooted in house, chillout, and ambient music.
This intense deep german album takes its name from one lied which Schubert wrote in 1817. The theme of the song, which is the theme of the second movement of the quartet, is a death knell that accompanies the song about the terror and comfort of death:
