A song from the cd Flood, for solo instrumental / vocal. Duration: 4'. On Flood, we join British composer Jocelyn Pook as witnesses to a catastrophe, transfixed by its totality, muted by its incalculable human toll. Pook's faintly beautiful, profoundly sad music is all that hovers above her ashen, apocalyptic landscapes, one we dare not survey too long, it seems, lest we suffer the fate of Lot's wife. Pook's ability to summon such imagery--via patient, edgy, atmospheric use of voice, strings (viola, violins, cello), and electronics--is what led film director Stanley Kubrick to invite Pook's participation on the original soundtrack for Eyes Wide Shut. First released in 1997, Flood contains two selections that were modified for the film: "Migrations," a hypnotic work with Middle Eastern textures and Persian vocalists, heard during the film's orgy scenes, and "Masked Ball," where Pook achieves an ominous effect by playing the chants of Romanian priests in reverse. The album's most arresting work may be "Oppenheimer," an evolving, multicultural choral requiem prefaced by a reflection on Hindu scripture spoken Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb. It is affectingly reprised in the album's haunting final track. A bleak and somber work, and an utterly absorbing one.

Pook says she was inspired by the end of the millennium as she composed the original material --- not just this millennium, but the one 1000 years ago as well. There was "Y1K" phobia of a sort back then, and Pook has used old and present fears as the basis for some apocalyptic sound-crafting. She combines disparate elements together to striking effect. Most strikingly, a track called "Oppenheimer" combines the recorded chant of a Yemenite Jew with a "real time" performance by Pook and Pappenheim of a Requiem Mass; J.R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, reminisces (almost fondly?) about his creation at the beginning of the track. It's creepy, but beautiful stuff. Even creepier is "Masked Ball," which used to be "Backwards Priests"; it was renamed because this music was used in "Eyes Wide Shut"'s orgy scene. The simple device of chanting male voices run backwards puts me in mind of a Black Mass. Even the beloved English contralto Kathleen Ferrier appears on Flood; phrases from her recording of the English song "Blow the Wind Southerly" are alternated with a "Pie Jesu" sung by Pappenheim. I'm not sure what it represents, but it sounds good. "Goya's Nightmare" is a disturbing stew of vocals, strings, and exotic instrumentation. If you've seen Goya's late paintings, you know how scary they can be, and Pook's music lives up to the title.
For futher information: see above Requiem aeternam.

Requiem for mezzo soprano and tenor, written for the Darshan Singh Buller's 'Requiem' performed by Phoenix Dance Company 2003.
Seven movements:
01. Mall Ambient 3:38
02. Walking in the Mall 4:23
03. Line Walking 6:07
04. The Thief 2:46
05. Family Section 8:51
06. Requiem Aeternam 3:57
07. In Paradisum 2:10

Libera me 2010 for female voices and instruments.