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"I’ve anticipated this disc since being blown away by volume one ... mesmerizing immediacy and earthiness, worth the wait." - BBC Music Magazine "They achieve, par excellence, that elusive, essential impression of time travel, opening a window to admit a blast of unrefined medieval air ... all pervasive, yet these earthy voices are invariably extraordinary in their technique, timbre and immersion in both style and text ... I can hardly wait for volume three." - Early Music Today On the second installment in a trilogy devoted to 13th century repertoire performed through the prisms of religious, social and political discourses and with the working practices of cathedral builder Villard de Honnecourt at its core, Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix demonstrate how music was reflecting the changing social environment of the times, notably through the new confraternities, the confréries in Northern France. As a cornerstone of his argument, Schmelzer presents a seven-sectioned devotional cycle by the trouvère Jaikes de Cambrai, which the Belgian conductor likens to contemporary art installations and which he views as reflecting similarities discernible in de Honnecourt’s portfolio. This is interpretative territory which the singers and instrumentalists of Graindelavoix have made their own in recent years, delivering fragments of medieval music with fresh, original colours and intuition.