Current Musical Obsession: Scala & Kolacny Brothers

In the middle of my having many other things to do tonight, I got obsessed with finding a piece of music that I couldn't get out of my head. I had other things to put in my head, so I really needed the space.

A week or so ago I watched the trailer, online, for the upcoming film "The Social Network", the David Fincher directed/Aaron Sorkin written/ Jesse Eisenberg starring story of the creation of Facebook. It's an extraordinary trailer, for reasons that don't necessarily having anything to do with the film. What gives you goosebumps is the opening bit, which is a mix of a slow-to-frenzied stream of images and a haunting and, frankly, badass piece of music. You quickly realize you're listening to a cover of Radiohead's "Creep", but done by some kind of choir. It's both amazing and beautiful, and is completely captivating. The track is mixed in throughout the remainder of the trailer, when we get to the actual footage of the film.

Tonight that track came back into my mind-pod and started playing on continuous repeat, so I turned to the web to hunt down where I could find this song. Turns out the track is done by a band known as Scala & Kolacny Brothers. And what is that band? It's a Belgian all-women's choir (?) conducted by Stijn Kolacny with piano accompaniment by his brother, Steven Kolacny. The group has done whole albums of rock/pop cover songs, and it's their 2002 album "On The Rocks" where this Radiohead track originated (along with covers for Nirvana, Garbage, Wheatus, the Police and more).

The album that, of course, you can't buy on download from either iTunes or Amazon.

I did, however, go ahead and (just now) buy their 2007 CD "One-Winged Angel" on iTunes, another cover compilation (with some originals) that gives their angelic treatment to songs from Depeche Mode ("Somebody"), Bjork ("Joga"), Placebo ("The Bitter End"), Kylie Minogue ("I Believe in You"), The Cure ("Friday I'm in Love"), Marilyn Manson ("The Beautiful People"), Gordon Lightfoot (!) ("If You Could Read My Mind") and others, including more Radiohead ("Fake Plastic Trees"). Looking forward to diving into it.

Is this one of those bands that everyone else knew about but me? I'm finding it hard to imagine that. So if you're going to come at me claiming to have been down with an obscure Belgian girl choir for years, I'm going to make you provide some verification on that. Oh, I'll have questions ready, people...

For those of you not familiar, check out the "Creep" track over the aforementioned "The Social Network" trailer. Hope the film lives up to the promise the emotional weight of this trailer makes.