Subhash Prem Giri is a flute player who combines a knowledge of Indian classical ragga with modern experimental arrangements.
Subhash applies, playing and recording solo projects and also in cooperation with other musicians, constantly experimenting and combining various styles and directions. The basic mission of this project - add a stream of meditation and sensibleness in surrounding space.
This album was recorded taking into account the
interests, tastes and needs of people who practice yoga and meditation.
And, without a doubt, it is influenced by the heart stream.
This music is like the rustle of coastal sands caressed by an ocean wave, growing quiet for just a moment to allow the listener to hear absolute soundlessness, then rolling in anew from an enormous depth of being, enveloping us in abstract melodic constructions. This is the sound of "emptiness and filling," born in the hollow bamboo reed between the performer's lips and fingers.
First and foremost, the flute is valued for its emptiness. It is precisely
this idea that Subhash strives to get across to the public.
Filling the emptiness of the flute with living pranic energy, one can hear the sound of one's own heart and enter into unison with the sound of the listener's heart while introducing a stream of meditativeness and awareness of the surrounding space.
The album opens with a double track titled Yamuna Ma that first reveals the smooth and steady flow of the sacred Yamuna river, on whose banks God Krishna used to live, love, play the flute and accomplish great feats thousands of years ago. The second part of this composition features percussions that sound like the steps of a massive Ganesha whirling in an ecstatic dance with Krishna, Radha and Yamuna.
Let's listen to next track Nagamani.
This is a unique reincarnation of the ancient Indian raga in the modern manner, created specifically for practicing Yoga Nidra (yogi sleep). Its structure is virtually unknown in the most common North Indian
music and was found while traveling along the reserved corners of southern India, which has been preserving the most ancient musical Vedic traditions. As Sanskrit scholars know, Naga means snake and Mani means pearl. The name symbolizes a rare natural phenomenon that is rather unpopular and understudied. A real pearl can sometimes form naturally in a cobra's hood. Hypnotizing sounds as well as Naga's look and moves make us fall into a state between sleep and wakefulness, which is a conscious sleep meditation where Naga navigates us through the maze of our subconscious in search of the Divine Self.
Almost without our noticing it, the music leads us smoothly into the new state of track Hand Made Dream. This is a daydream created by a person's own hands, like the little temple among the snowy peaks of the Himalayas in which the track was recorded. Even processing it into CD format in the studio in no way detracted from way the sound is filled with the primordial space, the dream with which the performer imbued it, but rather heightens it.
And we return to the banks of Yamuna again, to the magical city of Vrindavan, whose sound space is accurately rendered by a variation of the Brindabani Sarang raga played by the band during the concert in Saint Petersburg. Shown here is a moment of live improvisation. A bansuri resonating with a sitar and accompanied by a tabla, djembe and percussions, and combined with the ethereal sound of a synthesizer, create a unique meditative sound. As if we were sitting on the steps of the ancient Vrindavan's temple, looking up at the starry sky and comets crossing it. It's the best time to make a wish that will inevitably come true, especially with the help of the rejuvenating female energy of Shakti, which is vividly reflected in the next track of the album Abstract Ambient Shakti, where the abstraction of sound forms (so characteristic of other experiments of the project) reaches its apex. It is here where the singing bowls and the Indian tanpura sound completely unfamiliar, but in a way that, combined with percussions, creates a gateway through which the dancing Shakti enters this world embodied in the sound of the flute.