Mai
Eri Sugai is the latest entry in the heavenly choir that includesEnyaandMiriam StockleyofAdiemus. Like those artists, she multitracks her voice into angelic choruses, soaring over spare but emotional arrangements. Sugai, who is Japanese, applies her native traditions for a music that has that an Asian sense of detail, drawing her lines like fine calligraphy. Sugai also joinsLisa Gerrard, Miriam Stockley, and Azam Ali ofVasin creating her own language. Most ofMai, which means "dance," is sung in a fanciful string of ecstatic nonsense phonemes. But when Sugai uses them in her tribal stomps and gentle lullabies they sound like poetry. On "Honen Bushi" Sugai steps into the background, creating a vocal cloud around the lead voice of Anna Sugar, who sings a traditional song with a tribal beat and chanting chorus, while "Konjaku Monogatari," the only song in Japanese, is like a child's song turned into an expansive meditation. It's startling, at times, how close Sugai sounds to Adiemus, especially on "Aqua," a song that started out as a commercial. Sugai gets that same, keening sound of a Polynesian choir attained by Adiemus's Stockley and Karl Jenkins, but she eshews the pomp and classical pretensions of Adiemus, while also creating a more carefully detailed sound than Enya, with whom she's sure to be compared.--John Diliberto