Yeah, you read right. About a month back a rather unusual album dominated the European album charts. The album in question was Chant - Music for Paradise, performed by the monks of the Cistercian abbey of Stift Heilingreiz in Vienna, and in the last couple weeks it has outsold many of your usual popstars and whatnot you’d expect to see in the top ten. Released on May 19th, Chant - Music for Paradise soon conquered the classic charts and threatened the pristine throats of Madonna and the like at the overall charts by penetrating the top ten in the UK, Austria and Germany.

The monks’ unusual success story started when a video of the Cistercian monks, who start their days at the generous time of 5:15 by praying, chanting at their monastery was posted on YouTube. The video soon became a minor internet hit, and when one of the monks sent an application for a contest held by Universal Records, they were soon offered a record contract. This was followed by the setting of a recording studio in their monastery, the recording of a full album, the filming a professional music video and the invasion of the European music charts.

If you’re in any way at all interested in medieval or classical music, you should really take at least a peek at Chant’s work. I’m sure you can enjoy them even if you’re not catholic or religious at all, I know I’m not either and I still did. There are various ways to check them out: you can hear a few songs on their website (player in the up-right corner), download the free song Hymnus ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ here or just kind of watch the original video where it all started embedded after the break. You can order the album on Amazon, here for those stateside (the American version of the CD is titled Chant - Music for the Soul) and here for Europeans. I hid the rather huge tracklisting behind the link.

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