David Shea - Meditations [Room40 - 2026]In the field of music, you don't have to look very far to find meditations of all kinds; David Shea's Meditations is something else. Taking its cues from the actual IRL act of meditating, grounded in Buddhism and the Heart Sutra in particular, the eight pieces that make up this album are born out of meditating, sometimes even musically, and are designed to accompany or engender that process. I guess that means listening and being attentive to the other performers, like those who round out the album's lengthy roster and their instruments--vibraphones, guitars, ebows, and yes, singing bowls, among others. Most pieces were captured during live sessions, underscoring the immediacy of Shea's method and lending a kind of fragility to the work as a whole.
Things start off as one might expect: a bit of gentle background ambience, which moves along until Shea's voice enters the mix halfway through "Sitting in a Painted Cave". Given the nature of what preceded it, this was jarring and disrupted the meditative vibe. The mixture of chimey yoga soundtrack and guided voice is certainly an acquired taste, to be sure. One question kept gnawing at me: Why does the idea of meditation have to be representational in the end, relying on an already-given concept of the practice, attempting to mimic it? The instrumentalising of music to a specific attitude or activity is clearly a danger.
Fans of such practices will likely find Meditations to carve a quiet and reflective space in which to take part. Others alienated by such ideas, might find there is nothing but the expected acts already laid out for them, an experience we know all too well. For more   Colin Lang
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