Healing Mantras in True New Age Spirit | Circle of Light
Quickly something: I am very much delighted to start posting my reviews in Musickafe.com with Circle of Light. The reviews published before this date are a copy of my blog posts written for newagevibe.com where I started my music blogging. Not wasting time, am diving into my review on Circle of Light.
Natalia Christianna's feminine, motherly voice starts the album with utmost dedication to Hari Om... the Eternal Divine Sound, setting the mood of the album, which is one of merging with Divine in music. The album features two version of the well known Buddhist mantra Om Mane Padme Hum. I have listened to the Craig Pruess's version of the same mantra in Sacred Chants of Buddha and it's one my favorites, while his approach is more of the traditional Tibetan style, these two versions, try to approach the mantra from the Yin and Yang perspective and by adding a kind 'new thinking'. Particularly the Yang version of the mantra is quite powerful:
This Mantra is a connection with the deep waters that run slow......also reaching, yearning for union.....tantra
Put this Mantra on loop to connect with your deep inner strength of love.... to draw universal love towards you as you in turn radiate love to all
~Notes on Yang version by the artists
The above quote is very true to the word. Om Mane Padme Yang does really very much radiate with love energy.
Lovers of Krishna Dass, will find a few interesting tracks in this album. At first, listening to Radhe Guru Mantra, I mistook it that it was Krishna Dass singing, but it seems, it's actually David Pendragon after reading the album credits. Apart from Shree Krishna Govinda sung by Christianna , Krishna Mahamantra and Radhe Guru Mantra are the two Krishna chants that can keep the Krishna Dass fans spell bound, introducing them David Pendragon's soulful bass voice.
Om Mani Ashram is one of the highly meditative track featured in the album, alongside Santour Mantra. With soft background music, humming and a hardly visible mantra chant that beautifully merges with the silent landscape of meditative experience, Om Mani Ashram is for those who like the new age tranquility rather than new age party-remix versions of mantra.
That being said, the track Om Shiva is one for the latter kind of new agers -- those who want a modern version of the bhajans and satsang to take to the point of losing their 'ego' to identify with divine. The old bhajans were meant for that purpose, and the track Om Shiva in my opinion is well composed to meet the modern taste. Though sounding like a party-remix of the old bhajan, it doesn't destroy the essential quality of bhajan-devotion but I had my friend who listened to it complaining that the tracks distorts the mantra. Opinions vary widely!
To conclude, I'd say this one of the many beautiful new age sacred chants that I listened to. I will keeping going back to listen to this album time and again, though I have a quite a large music library (and like gmail, growning). And that's you count an album's success, you keep listening to it in spite of buying new ones. Though I haven't spoke to the artists featured in this album, at this time, I can feel that they are meditative and have good vibration that they transmit through their music.
No one is perfect and by the same law, no album too.... I did find in some of the tracks, the desire to make the West meet East, ended up with some kind of 'newage-madness' making the East to meet with West, instead. Notably the 'Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram......Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram......' background humming in Radhe Guru Mantra and the fusion of western beats in the title song Circle of Light, which could have been better with the gentle loving voice of Christianna alone. But these are minor things that maybe overlooked, depending upon your personal taste.