QNTAL’s fifth album Silver Swan is - in the musical perception – a wanderer between the worlds. On the one hand, there are songs, composed in the well known mediaeval-archaic way, which ambient congenially Syrah’s pleasing chant in terms of rhythm and instruments – on the other hand there are also some pieces so much spherical and full of surreal beauty, with a quiet, gentle sonority on an epic surface of sounds, that let you drift up and away from the everyday life in dreamful spheres while you are listening.
Gracile and charming are the melodies, just like (look at the title of the album!) the swans on the lake. You can find this image most imposingly realized at the title track (on the last position of the album) Silver Swan. It’s an English madrigal from the beginning of the 17th century, composed by Orlando Gibbons. It starts with a long “sinfonia”, which is also in the end. It sounds like an epic, instrumental ocean of sounds, with big gestures, smoothly legato. Both singing parts (by the way: Syrah’s voice here sounds like Enya’s), woven in a carpet of sound, are framing classically the “ritornell” in the middle.
The songs Falling Star, Von Den Elben and Winter are sounding similarly quiet. Falling Star lives completely on Syrah’s voice; the instrumental accompaniment only accentuates here and there with some strings or mystical-appearing samples and mostly consists of extensive synthesized chords.
In the end the voice is duplicated by an echoic- and hall-effect and thenceforward the song has the charm of a real summer night’s shower of falling stars. Von den Elben is written in Middle High German and narrates apparently a sad story. It’s with his length of over 6 minutes the longest track of the album. Interrupted again and again by instrumental interludes, wherein the ancient instruments haven’t the main part (they only accentuate), but rather the synthesized sounds. It sounds to me a little bit like a soundtrack for a movie. Winter is much more measured and plain, sung again in Middle Age German, accompanied by piano, flute and electronic sound-gimmicks with samples in the background. Music for meditation.
Lingua Mendax, 292 and The Whyle are much more animated and earthbound. They have all together a dance-like character, sparkling through a sweeping rhythm – but first of all the ancient instruments are in the foreground, whereby the archaic medieval antipole of the music is confronted with the meditative tracks, interspersed with synthesised soundpuzzles.
Somewhere between these poles oscillate the songs Monsieur’s Departure, Levis, Altas Undaz and Amis Raynaut. Monsieur’s Departure is not, as expected, in French. It’s in English and btw. the first track of this album. On a short intro follow dulcet strophes with catchy melodies, accompanied by ancient instruments, intermitted by an interlude with an onomatopoetic chant. Levis is in Latin, a constant rhythm dominates this song, sometimes you hear strings, flute or plucking instruments accentuating, all laid by a bordun underneath. The singing is well-articulated and much attuned to the rhythm. In Altas Undaz the strophes are performed passionate, sometimes with little melisms, sounding oriental, the chorus is in two voices and has a dancing-like character. Amis Raynaut is in ancient French, starts with a blurred voice singing, which becomes clearer and clearer and is finally accompanied by a rhythm group. This song is also dominated by the voice. Merely the instrumental parts have plucking instruments in the foreground, which play around the melody with virtuosity.

Less superficial abutted on the archaic measures of the mediaeval music expand the multi-instrumentalist Michael Popp, singer Sigrid Hausen (Syrah) and Philipp Groth (responsible for the electronic and synthesized sound experiments) with Silver Swan into other spheres (and this word hits the mark), because some piece on this album seems to be from far beyond of this world. Very quiet, meditative and floating in an ocean of sound you can dream yourself away only to come back to earth in the next moment, when danceable and buoyant melodies elate you. It’s a really beautiful album. Nothing is bulky, all is floating.
My personal favorites are The Whyle, Silver Swan and Falling Star.

It remains to say, that this album will be offered in a DVD-box-sized Limited Edition, with a 32-sided booklet, congenially illustrated by Brian Froud (production designer of movies like “Labyrinth” or “The Dark Crystal”) and a bonus-CD with a video clip and a gallery.