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Both
Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger testify, in the liner notes to this
recording, that they have been deeply influenced by the writings of
the late Carlos Castaneda. For those not familiar with this long
series of books, Castaneda, beginning in the '60s, documented his
experiences (whether fictional or "real," no one knows for
sure) with a group of Native American shamans and sorcerers in the
Southwest. Under the tutelage of "Don Juan," a master
shaman, Castaneda takes the sacred psychedelic drugs and eventually
learns to enter into "non-ordinary reality," the weird
inner world of shamanism.
This album is a tribute to
Castaneda, an attempt to embody the atmosphere, imagery, and mood of
these books in sound. The mysterious electronic tones of Stearns'
synthesizers, both sustained and percussive, are mixed with
environmental sounds of birds, animals, insects, wind, thunder, and
other things which feature prominently in the Castaneda books
(especially the cawing of crows, who are magical birds). There are
also passages of Native American chanting, shamanic rattles and drumming.
The feeling throughout the album
is surrealistic and dark, and mostly slow-paced. Except for the last
cut, which features a shamanic song, there is no melody and not many
recognizable chords, either. Stearns, in his work on DESERT
SOLITAIRE, used atonal drones to evoke the heat and desolation of the
Southwest desert, and he uses them again here. In many passages,
though, the special sound-effects take precedence over any musical
material, and it comes to resemble a movie soundtrack where the
listener, whether he/she has read the Castaneda books or not, must
supply both the images and the story.
Hannah
M.G. Shapero 12/9/00 |
