‘There exists in India a secret knowledge based on the study of sounds and the differences of vibratory modality according to the planes of consciousness…’

From Sri Aurobinda or the Adventures of Conciousness by Satprem. From the Sleeve notes of Mantra.

Here is a CD which I found almost unlistenable when I first bought it but after a few plays it worked its way into my Psyche so much that I spent a period where I had to listen to it every day just to survive. It was that Soul Nourishing.

The whole piece of music starts with a harmless enough click on a wood block, which is followed by a seemingly random flourish on the piano. An osicilating piano pattern is accompanied by continual notes on the xylophone. This 30 second opening is the most directly repetitive that the music gets. There then follows one of many periods of silence, this Void is gradually filled with Ring Modulated treated piano. The Ring Modulator is an electronic device which emphasises certain harmonics of a sound and it gives the piano a more metallic, disonant sound. This effect is used subtly and often makes the piano sound other worldly or is sometimes used to make the piano sound metallicly, but smoothly, sweep over the frequency spectrum.

The tempo increases after the treated piano bit. One piano buzzing while another piano punctuates as the sounds go off kilter through electronic treatment. The CD has no track listing other than the track number and the period in time where it appears. Also this peice has no actual beginning, middle or proper resolution.

The sound of the two pianos is excellent. Some people who listen to it would say that it sounds like how they would play piano. i.e. no rhythm or melody, or that it sounds like their pet cat running up and down a keyboard. This is only on first listen though and ideas soon emerge from it after repeated listens. What sounds seemingly random has in fact all been worked out in the mind of Stockhausen and then notated and given to two pianists to play.

Stockhausen said that Mantra is Formula music. I think what he meant by this is that it is an adaption of Serial techniques. Serialism was invented in the early 20th century by Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg wished to ’emancipate the dissonance’ and to do this he made his compositions out of a twelve note row. In this row no note could be repeated until all the other notes where played. This meant that no note was given promonence and no tonal centre was established. Thus old Western music traditions such as keys, and what our ears where used to, went out the window.

Where as Schoenbergs works relyed on dense post-Romantic orchestras producing an atonal wall of disonance, the music of Mantra consists of basically just two treated pianos with the occaisonal wood block and xylophone (and I mean occasional). This sparse music though at first random sounding — you gradually hear underlying ideas running through it and soon blows your mind in a deeply thoughtful and spiritual way.

I know it is a cliche to say but you really have to hear it and I am inadequate to describe the music. Some of Cage’s piano works may be a really rough or clumsy refference of mine to it. Mantra also contains some supreme KrautRock moments. Track 4 is the most chilled out this album gets as the slow other worldly piano reminds me of the treated piano sound of at the start of Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon. Another Tange moment is track 13 where the only vocal sounds on the entire work produce primal chimp like chanting, similair to that bit on Atem. Except this is far more po-faced.

These are only brief episodes in a piece which often ebbs and flows in terms of dynamics and tempo and numbers of notes played. Though the music has no obvious structure there is some overall plan and I prefer listening to it from start to end rather than on CD shuffle — though you could easily listen to it in this way.

The music is often rhythmless but with rhythm (if you can imagine it) and musical voids often develop which are then again punctuated with the two pianos.

This is one Stockhausen CD which is easily and cheaply available. It is from a recording and performance from 1986, though it was first written and performed in the late sixties.

This is music that can be deeply meditational in a non chill out or repetitive way. Music for the head and the soul.

MonkeyBoy