Björk - "Hidden Place [feat. Tagaq]". Tanya "Tagaq" Gillis is a native of the small Inuit town of Iqaluktuutiaq Nunavut, located on southern Victoria Island, Canada. While studying visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art, she became enraptured by the world of music and began exploring traditional Inuit throat singing. This sort differs from Tuvan throat singing in that it does not rely on harmonics so much as the percussive and resonant qualities of the thoracic, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and oral cavities. Inuit women in the past would use their throats and bodies to recreate the sounds of nature and incorporate them into a game whereby one singer would create a vocal pattern and her opponent would be required to match the pattern in rhythm, timbre, and pitch directly after the former had finished. The latter would then improvise a new pattern which the former would repeat, and they would volley back in forth in this manner. The first contestant to smile, laugh, or fumble on a pattern would lose.

Tagaq is not content with simply engaging in games and recreating a vocal museum of anthropology. During college, she had been exposed to electronica, dance, and rave music and sought to blend them with the traditional techniques of her heritage. When Björk heard Tagaq's voice on a documentary about Iceland, she immediately flew her to New York to record with her and just after employed her talents on 2001's Vespertine Tour. Tagaq was a perfect addition to the ensemble, as Björk [and by association, Vespertine] was deeply concerned with internalization, passion, love, carnal exploration, the primal excretions [both physical and vocal] of the human body.

Tagaq's solo at the beginning of this live recording from London gives us an idea of how vast the spectrum of the human voice is and how rich the palette from which Björk may draw for the new album. Just how the noises will be incorporated remains [as with many of Björk's dealings] a mystery.

P.S. Keep an ear out for the amazing swells at 0:58 and 1:03!