Prescience, Magical Thinking, and The Uncanny (Excerpt)

Black Mountain School: "Observation"

Transformation Listening

Each piece recorded by Black Mountain School is oriented in such a way as to sustain mood over a length of time through a slowly evolving dynamic series of independent combinations of sounds.

 

These are sounds to be perceived as they are; it is not necessary to "follow" them, especially by the typical means of melody, rhythm, and beat, those being elements that commonly dominate the listener's attention.  While serving as enhancements to the environment, these recordings also exert a subtle influence on one's state of mind, providing atmospheric space in which to think outside the often frenetic pace of things generally given to be "normal". 

What these works are and what they do is unconventional, though accessible to everyone receptive to diverse musical styles and to different ways of listening to music. 

Clarity

Consider the idea that silence may sometimes be as much of a distraction as noise. The mind, like a muddy pool after a rain, does not settle and become clear all in a moment's time. Having grown used to tuning out much that is loud and disconnected, it is not always easy to tune in to an environment conducive to introspection, reading or writing, or simply unwinding.

Atlantis, Avalon, Mu...

Delmarva.


Does it really exist?  Or is it a mythical land of wild ponies and mystical visions, a legend only dimly understood by the National Weather Service as an archetype of human dreams ?

Or The Greatest Good, as Lao Tsu Phrases It

The Celestial Way is Like Water

30 min. excerpt from the new album The Celestial Way.

The Celestial Way, or way of heaven, is of course the Tao, and the way of the sage. Across all cultures it can be thought of as the way of conforming the will to the phenomena of existence, which is how the Stoics put it, or of transcending the ego in general and seeing the world and the human condition more reasonably, being less attached to material things and all that.

The ancient and the state-of-the-art are interwoven cultural themes in contemporary China, as I noticed while spending ten days there recently on what might easily, if archaically, be called a whirlwind tour-- a hectic, though graciously hosted, journey through areas both urban and rural, plainly conceived to leave the visitor with the best possible impressions.  There is indeed much beauty to experience, particularly in the Yangshuo area, with its karst mountains and the Li River, and much of this album was inspired by the environment there.  While the music retains a western perspective, it is nonetheless composed of impressions and aural sketches brought to mind while passing through, and captured briefly in the field recordings of the birds, wind, and water one morning around five am.