"This is not ambient music," admonishes a proclamation in the booklet accompanying this release. One wonders why
Diamanda Galás or Mute thought this warning necessary, as Schrei X, presented here in both live and studio versions, is essentially a sequence of Beckettian monologues alternately shrieked, spoken, whispered, cried, or spat out, bearing little resemblance to the gentle waftings of
Kitaro and crowd. In fact, a mere perusal of the titles of the pieces would presumably ward off the innocent ambient fan. Schrei X is one of the sparest of
Galás' albums and possibly loses some effect on disc, where the visual theatricality of her performance (as well as her physical presence) is lost. This plus the fractured nature of the string of short pieces (based on texts found in Job and Thomas Aquinas as well as her own writing) act against any cumulative power that the work might otherwise have. Still, her voice is as powerful, convincing, and just plain scary as ever, and fans of her previous work will want to add this dark offering to their collections. ~ Brian Olewnick