Diamanda Galas

The Litanies Of Satan

INTRAVENOUS SOUND OPERATIONS Approach with caution. Not for those of a nervous disposition.

’Glory and praise to thee, Satan, in the most high/ Where thou didst reign; and in deep hell’s obscurity.’ Those lines are taken from Baudelaire’s Litanies Of Satan, one of the lyrical sources for this, Diamanda Galas’s extraordinary debut album from 1982. Working mostly with nothing more than her own voice, she created two sides of extraordinarily powerful music – powerful, that is, in the way that, say, the Moon splitting in two is powerful.

The title track is perhaps the most conventional of the two tracks here, delivered by Galas with what can best be described as the sound of Maria Callas being turned inside out by the demons of hell. It’s 10 minutes of explosively beautiful vocal drama, and it’s brilliant.

The second track is even less conventional. Wild Women With Steak-Knives, taken from Galas’s tragedy-grotesque piece Eyes Without Blood, is “a cold examination of unrepentant monomania” that sounds like the world collapsing into itself for ever. Galas’s voice never settles for a moment, taking the entire range of human sound as merely the starting point for a piece of music whose subtitle The Homicidal Love Song For Solo Scream seems, frankly, like a bit of an understatement. ■■■■■■■■■■