Lee Ellen Shoemaker, aka The Tunnel Singer, released her debut record, Inner Runes, in 1995. Since then she has released another three albums exploring the use of audio reverberations in song.

All of her records are recorded live and on location at various points where soundwaves behave in complex and peculiar ways. Night Skies, her latest, was recorded in a U-shaped tunnel in Port Townsend, Washington, a mortar magazine built during the first world war.

The effects of the location are astounding. Shoemaker's voice, light and angelic, is carried in a complex network of omnidirectional reverberations. These echoes are carried on for great lengths, often becoming indistinct from the original vocal strains themselves. The mood is ethereal, gothic even, recalling medieval chant or a distinctly liturgical setting.

Shoemaker's ethereal voice is accompanied by a Tibetan singing bowl and moon harp, the sounds from which are also subject to these same reverberations, though their presence is clearly more localised in the performance.

The only thing I found lacking in this recording is in the production work; I would have liked to have seen the omnidirectional soundwaves manifest themselves more dynamically during playback. I felt that the full range of stereophonic sound was underutilized here, as if this massive U-shaped tunnel was no larger than the size of my home speakers.

With its thematic emphasis on transcendence, night skies, inner worlds and astral consciousness, this music is certainly bordering on new age (treading that volatile ground where ambient ends and new age begins), and it might be easy to mistake it for such. In this respect The Tunnel Singer has much in common with the work of Alquimia (vocalisations with strong electronic and ethno-ambient elements) and Jim Cole's haunting overtone singing (another manifestation of vocal ambient music).

But once you bend a careful ear to these strange and enchanting reverberations you'll be caught up in their path, not knowing from whence you came or where you're headed.

Richard di Santo
www.incursion.org