Tautumeitas

Tautumeitas are a Latvian women's vocal sextet, with half the members with very capable sidelines in violin and accordion. They started out with a dedication to learning and reproducing the choral tradition of the countryside, but have since moved towards a less purist approach. For this album they have chosen songs that deal with aspects of a woman's life and experience in the northern forests, from domestic and amorous to mystical and ritualistic. As the melodies themselves tend towards the straightforward, being simple, repetitive chants, much of the interest here lies in the harmonies applied to them, and the instrumental settings that enfold them.

Echoes of batucada and mambo rub shoulders with ambient electronics, and emotions range from the restrained mourning of ‘Bārainīte’ to the excitement of ‘Raganu Nakts’, with headlong percussion supporting the slow movement of thrilling vocal harmonies. The complicated braid of the arrangements, the cunningly disruptive basslines and the vocal precision of the sextet are at their most creative, perhaps, in the canonic Ouroboros of ‘Vainagu Deja’, but the standout is ‘Sastdīne’, with ostinato violin and the weave of voices that increases in complexity until it breaks into a rolling dance movement, before making a sudden return to the opening and fading into silence.