Gorecki
A trip hop single built on a sample from Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, UK number 30.
Lamb, from Lamb (1997)
Rhodes and Barlow wrote it in 1996, and it came out as a single on March 17, 1997, peaking at 30 in the UK. It samples the second movement of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, whose soprano text is a prayer to the Virgin Mary; the 1992 Upshaw and Zinman recording reached 6 on the UK album chart and sold over a million. Rhodes told Entertainment Voice that the symphony was so deeply moving that she really wanted to use that influence in a song. Arctic Reviews calls it austere piano and curiously ethereal vocals, the words devotional, and a love song, perhaps one of the last great ones, placing it 95th on its list of the best songs of the 90s. We found no sourced account of what the lyric means, and no video details.
The 12-inch had the Kruder and Dorfmeister mix, and a Global Communication remix at 9:46 was a promo. Chicane covered it in November 2017, and Wikipedia lists uses in Moulin Rouge!, a Guinness advertisement and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. It is Lamb's most-played song on setlist.fm, at 127 plays, and at Birmingham in October 2014 it was the final encore, the sublime "Gorecki" continuing to pack a punch way beyond mere nostalgia, Record Collector wrote. We do not know which version our upload is.
On stage
- 2014-10-30, Institute, Birmingham Final encore.
Covers and versions
- Chicane (2017) Released November 24, 2017.
Sources
- Gorecki (song), Wikipedia
- Lou Rhodes of Lamb on philosophy, negative space and The Secret of Letting Go, Entertainment Voice (2019-05-26)
- 100 greatest songs of the 90s: 95, Lamb, Gorecki, Arctic Reviews (2021-01-14)
- Lamb live review, Record Collector