This release allows me to kill two birds with one stone. First, it’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to review music by Jeff Gburek (one of the several venerable composers who always manage to find a welcome home on these pages), and this is a strikingly quiet and meditative album. Second, I have sampled some of the wares of Muteant Sounds, a fine experimental label out of Florida in the United States, but I believe this might be the first album from that label I’ve had the change to listen to in full.
Jeff explains the concept of this album below:
Diaphragmata are seven vibratory sound portals for disappearance and imminence. The model for these portals is based loosely upon a Vedic concept called shushumah, an alleged space created inside the body of the yogi while chanting sacred seed syllables related to the chakras which activity reverses non-dualistically into a a channel subsuming or surrounding the adept. This is merely a manner of speaking about the how the sense of ego may vanish or appear pointless and no longer allows for the traditional inner and outer distinctions between body and action. The music is suitable for sleep, meditation, sitting, grounding, prayer, bathing. It is not recommended to listen while driving or operating heavy machinery. The sounds are a blend of synthesizer tones, low level speaker feedback, manipulated further by physically placing various objects on the open speaker diaphragms. The microphones are never stationary but instead wander and explore the sound texture. It can therefore be enjoyed both over house systems or with headphones.
I have a prayer rule I’ve stuck to for 11 years thanks to a Romanian priest who kept me focused during a difficult time in my life. As it turns out, this is quite comforting to have humming in the background of a repetition of Kyrie Eleison. Quite a feat.
