Unsichtbare Chöre
Many years ago, I had a taped copy of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Unsichtbare Chöre (”Invisible Choirs”). For years, I’d forgotten about it, but something reminded me of it a couple of weeks ago, and twice since then it’s come up in conversation.
So I was really surprised to see the new Honda Civic ad (avaiable here with a “making of” film here) yesterday. The commercial features a choir mimicking exactly the various noises of the car driving and the environments it passes through. The vocal techniques used by Honda’s choir, and many of the sounds they make, seem exactly like those from Stockhausen’s work (at least, as I remember it from some ten years ago). These are, for the most part, techniques and sounds which I’ve never heard used in any other music.
The advert is incredible, of course, on a par with Wieden and Kennedy’s earlier Cog ad for the Honda Accord in terms of technical accomplishment and sheer bloody impressiveness. Plus it’s for the Civic, a car which I have a soft spot for as it was my first ever motor. Nice one again, W&K! (And Karlheinz).