Helium Vola in the Press (Zillo)

Picture by Zillo Medevial 02/13

In the Zillo article the new album is considered to be both more quiet and etherical than its predecessors - an opinion I personally share, by the way. It is darker, more melancholic and very very beautiful indeed ...

According to Ernst Horn, he put a lot of classical composing work into this album, which is most noticable in the complicated and polyphone vocal melodies of his singers. He did study music, after all, majoring in composition, piano and drums ... and his background can never be truely denied, but is most prominent in his Helium Vola project. I privately think of it as the intellectual love-child of this professional musician.

The Zillo article concentrates on the classification of the album and does not find a satisfactory solution  (but then, i-tunes classified it funnily enough as indie-rock, and it definately is not that).
Then, Ernst Horn talks  about the development of his work, how he loves to experiment with old synthezisers and that he prefers them to the modern plug-ins. These tend to produce conformed sounds, whereas Horn considers the individuality of a sound-scape to be paramount.

The album is generated to a certain pattern in so far as Horn works out the musical arrangement and then sends demos to his singers. The new album features Sabine Lutzenberger (who actually provided the musical arrangement for one of the pieces herself  this time) as the leading voice, along with a brilliant Joel Frederikson in the bass compartement. These two are covincingly backed by Andreas Hirtreiter, Gerlinde Säman and Hannah Wagner.
In my opinion, the latter is utterly bewitching in her solo parts in the Old English ballad "The unquiet grave."

Finally, Ernst Horn talks about his preferances in the medevial scene (which don't run along with the predominant "Humpty-Dumpty"-variations) and about how he contrives the material for his songs from poems and buys booklets about poetry. He doesn't focus on the historical side of his songs but stays with the universal themes of love, death and nature.