Includes liner notes by Linda Kohanov.
If you're Steve Roach, and you know the millennium is fast approaching, what better way to quell Y2K mania than to reach back to pre-technological times and resurrect the Sound of the Spirit? In a manner as timely as it was prescient, Roach was visited by the Tibetan monk Pema Lama in 1999, secured him in his recording studio, and proceeded to tape some of the monk's most divine, sacred prayer chants. Roach then spent the opening weeks of 2000 carving out the hallowed soundscapes imbedded on this pivotal slab of silver plastic.
Of course, the base matter he was given--Pema Lama's ages-old prayers--provided more than enough impetus with which to create the magisterial aura of sounds and textures that embrace the monk's chants. Largely devoid of rhythmic anchors, these salient near 'ambient' tonal gestures, ebbing, pulsing, probing, instead augment the sacred chants, erecting an aural chamber where the juxtaposition of soundcurrents flow harmoniously. Partners in both spirit and style, yet with traditions spanning centuries, the 'duo' of Roach and Pema Lama manage to evoke the ancestral center in all of us, captured wondrously in sound.