HUUN HUUR TU PRESS COMMENTARIES
Click Here to go back Huun Huur Tu main page.
Eye for Talent, Huun Huur Tu Press Commentaries, 11/01/01 >>
"The Tuvans will ride into your brain and leave hoofprints up and down your spine."
- THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
"A rustic joyousness and unadulterated expressiveness come out of these musicians."
- JAZZ TIMES
"It is unfamiliar yet very accessible, an other-worldly but deeply spiritual music that is rooted in the sounds of nature."
- THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"When a Tuvan sings praises of mother and country, which is what a Tuvan usually sings, he often does it in three-part harmony. By himself."
- LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Imagine cool, fresh air, high altitudes, the wild open spaces of the steppes, rushing rivers, singing birds, galloping horses, yurts, and a culture that combines Buddhism with shamanism, and then imagine that you hear the sounds of all these elements in the music. With a beat. That's what it sounds like."
- UNION NEWS, (Springfield, Mass.)
"The sound is peculiar, haunting, hypnotic. It is a guttural, sometimes piercing sound of vocal chords burrowing into the flesh of mother nature. It is wind and rushing water and crumbling earth, it is called throat singing and masters of the technique are headed our way..."
- THE GAZETTE (Montreal - Feb.99)
"The members of Huun-Huur-Tu are perhaps the best known practitioners (of throat singing) and accompany themselves on all manner of strange and wonderful instruments... The resulting sound is as compelling as a wild gallop across the steppes."
- THE OREGONIAN (Portland OR - Feb.19, 99)
"Throat-singing Cowpokes... Who are the real cowboys? If you ask a typical Tuvan, they'd tell you that cowboys are from the Wild, Wild East. East? From the tiny central Asian republic of Tuva comes a quartet of the world's most renowned musical renegades... The group is also Tuva's unofficial cultural ambassador, sharing with the world the unusual musical traditions from their small patch of land nestled between Siberia and Mongolia..."
- METRO TIMES (Detroit MI - Feb.3, 99)
"The juxtaposition of [Angelite]’s ecstatic, deeply felt wailing and the bottomless pitch of the Throat Singers..., produces so wonderful a sound that their pairing seems inevitable."
- BACKBEAT(Denver westworld.com - Nov. 97)
"In the case of Huun-Huur-Tu...the art of imitation is rooted in a centuries-old world view of music as an offering, as opposed to the commercial vehicle catering to the least common denominator we've come to expect. The end result is a strange, beautiful tapestry of sound and rhythm that taps into something more real, more authentic, than anything you'll likely find on the American musical landscape."
- TUCSON WEEKLY (Jan. 97)
"...Between verse come sounds that seem unlikely for either voice or string. They are high and whistling, like bird calls. Sometimes they are croaking, down toward the nether reaches of detectable pitch. Sometimes they have a pulsing, rolling quality sustained for lung-aching duration, sounds that seem to capture the essence of ever-flowing water and ever-blowing wind."
- THE WASHINGTON POST (Jan. 96)
"Huun-Huur-Tu presents the style in the context of wonderfully tuneful songs..., using instruments (igil, byzaanchi) reminiscent of banjo and fiddle. But the combination of low growling and highpitched harmonics, along with the less-than-commonplace khomuz and dazhaanning khavy make these songs particularly jawdropping."
- CMJ NEW MUSIC REPORT (Feb. 95)