New Albion Rec.
Somei Satoh : Mandara Trilogy (JAP,rec.1982,1986,1990,pub.1998)****'
Somei Satoh wondered if the Tibertan mandalas who were supposed to lead viewers into the state of Satori when concentrating on them, he wondered if this was about seeing them. Listening seemed like a cognitive variable of this. When he looked at them it reminded him of Lao Tse’s saying “The sound, which is so loud to a point that it goes beyond one’s imagination cannot be heard by a human being”, it seemed that these mandalas had such a loud voice, something beyond our time and space perspective. Thus he could only imagine a voice stretched by his imagination, that goes beyond the point of beauty or ugliness, or in a more primitive sense positive or negative tension. With a desire to use all audible frequencies, he used multitracking to add overtones to the voice, up to 250 times. This resulted to the first piece, Mandara, recorded in 1982. For the piece Mantra, recorded in Japan in 1986 he also used the same technique but added electronic filters for adding emphasis and frequency range. The last piece “Tantra” was produced in another electronic music studio, in the Victoria University of New Zealand, a piece commissioned for a dance company. Here a soprano voice, Jane Kara was combined with his own voice.
The earliest piece gives very much the impression as intended, of a voice coming from the paintings, vibrating deeply, between a voice of vividness and death, movement and silence, breathing a certain inner pulse, with a deep wind of an inner meditative breath, mixed with the “Aum” mantra stretched in time, reaching towards a timeless vision with deep voices and middle toned voices.
“Mantra” starts more ethereal, with high pitched noise, voices that form drones and that come and go and are mixed in, deepening the general sound within a structure of slow waves, but ending again in the high notes noise registers.
The last piece, “Tantra” uses more breathing sounds and we hear the soprano voice participating with a few Gregorian harmony moments. There’s more participation of electronic effects too.
These three well fitting pieces of a more or less equal length could be used as sound meditations.
See also a comparable inspiration by Sainkho Namchylak & Jarrod Cagwin : In Trance reviewed here
