3.18.2021
a short story, followed by a long story...
The short story is I've made an alternative meditation album entitled Enchant. It's helped me cope through personal challenges and the pandemic oddity.
I hope it helps you too.
This music is made for people like me who struggle with the process of meditation but are craving new ways to relieve stress, racing thoughts and anxiety. I hope it can help you-
and your support totally helps me - find my way back into defining my music career for the future.
Here's my long story - It's been weird...but I am so optimistic about 2021.
I've been inspired to make new music but not inspired to extend a lot of personal narrative into the chaos that seems to be everywhere. It's all been so intense.
The new album is titled Enchant. It is a pure audio fantasy. It is intended to be a brain massage and a break from reality. It is for deep chilling and escape. Mostly, it is the repetition of a few words in either Aramaic, Sanskrit, Tamil or Hebrew - languages that have no distracting emotional baggage (for me anyway) - it's more about having a therapeutic experience, healing from injury, staving off anxiety and the ever-lurking, waiting in the wings, depression.
The album opens with an ambient mix of the only track that has a typical song structure and closes with a percussive mix of the same song “It’s You I Love." It sounds something like if Cinderella did some shrooms at the ball and landed over the rainbow :) but of course the real story and meaning behind the song is very different. The album has a lush dreamy 90's vibe that I love - like the comic book series Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
I play my nylon string German Lute (Goldeee) on most tracks, and sing of course. I did a little pre-production but the lion's share of production and mastering are handled by the deeply talented SriKala. He has more music in his soul than anyone I have ever met. Violin is also masterfully handled by the gifted Austin Trujillo and I was floored to partner again with Grammy nominated production team Marc Johnson and Eric Klee Johnson to finish out the recording remotely for the track Across the Water, Avalon, once the pandemic was in full bloom (Avalon mastered by Andy Vandette).
I hope you love this album. I hope you can disappear into it, for a little break in the routine.
Whether you chant along or just listen, I hope Enchant takes you out of reality or your own head for just a little bit of time. I hope it might distract you from troubles and anxiety. I wish you health and happiness.
Before the pandemic I had been in physical therapy for over a year to address an injury. My concussion healed quick but my hip and knee injuries, torn hamstring and glute kept me from all of the habits that help me stave off anxiety, stress and the depression that seems to lurk around; no running, hiking, dance, yoga, walking my dogs - no stairs, no high heels and no platform shoes for me. The new me was dull but my family was awesome and supportive. To relieve stress, rather than typical meditation, which is a challenge for me, I decided to expand on a musical chant and guitar practice that I picked up many years ago back in Chicago while experimenting in the Hare Krishna scene with the industrial band Die Warzau.
I took a deep dive into spirituality, meditation and chanting to alleviate stress and along the way - I received a small a grant to do further research into comparative theology and chanting at Loyola Marymount University. Through the process I started feeling really happy and healthy again. I was inspired to record some music and share the musical practice that has gotten me through a long period of adjustment and now the absolute oddity of our pandemic reality. No particular belief system is suggested but many are explored in the musical sense.
Enchant is getting some great reviews already - It's akin to my very first album with Industrial band Die Warzau - Oxygiene 23. It's very different from Comic Book Whore...but stay with me because Comic Book Whore was the follow-up to Oxygiene 23.
I'm really grateful to share music with you all these years. It's a privilege and I know it- so thanks.
xoJane