I can't speak with anything approaching authority on the migration of many musicians from worlds of jazz and early new age experimentation to the often Westernized reinterpretations of Eastern devotional music, and it would be impossible for a casual listener to discern the "good" and "honest" artists from what is likely a bottomless chasm of worthless profiteers and bandwagon devotees. So I'm left to just pick blindly, and draw my own line between the sonically pleasing and the sonically pretentious. I know that a road to perfection likely ends with A. Coltrane's Ecstatic Music, but to just arrive at the destination would be like grabbing a copy of Vengeance and saying you're good on North American hardcore...and if you visit this place then it's probably because you want to dig a little deeper than that. So I grab these tapes when I see them, just in case, and I'd say at least half of them are interesting...and maybe half of those are worth keeping. This one from the Eternal Music label in Portland is on the bubble - the title indicates that it's a collection but it sometimes listens like a poorly curated mix - some of the ten tracks are excerpts that fade away just as they are getting me to that place, and the electric guitar in others is admittedly distracting. That said, the fourth track alone with the voice and harmonium simultaneously calling and answering one another. Or the 12+ minute fifth track that sounds like you're actually at Spahn Ranch in 1969, or the slow dirge of the tenth and final selection. It's worth it. And it's why we keep digging. Because there's more.
No comments:
Post a Comment