When I used to work at a Celtic music importer and distributor back in the day, Tower Records would sometimes try to get away with returning CDs we had never actually sold them in the first place. Once they had tricked us into opening the box the last thing they were going to do was to take back any of the CDs, so we could keep them if they wanted to.

That's how I came into possession of one of my personal treasures, “Maestro Jingiz Sadykhov Sings the Songs of Azerbaijan.” It's also how my co-worker Jess came into possession of a CD of Tuvan throat-singing, complete with translated lyrics.

She grabbed the precious object before I could get my hands on it, claimed it for her own, and put it in the CD player. And what came out was one of the weirdest things either of us had ever heard, the bizarre sound of multiple voices coming out of the same man's throat at the same time.

We had a look at the lyrics, and they were equally strange. They were pretty much all about just three themes- how cold it is in Siberia, the superior quality of one's horse, and the fear that such an excellent horse will die in the terrible, terrible cold.

I'm not sure what this particular Tuvan throat-singing piece is actually about, but it sounds strange and very cool either way!