Junto Project 0323: Music for Meditation

Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.

“Write a poem imagining your conception,” recommends Andrei Codrescu in an essay titled Exercises for Poets. “Use the breath measures that might have been those of your conceivers … [then] write a poem about your birth. The poem itself should be concerned mainly with the journey from the moist darkness of the womb through the birth canal into the light of the world.”

Suss Müsik declines to envision such grotesque imagery, thank you very much. That being said, effective meditation is understood to be something like returning to a womblike state. One concentrates solely on breathing in order to achieve a deep form of relaxation, helping to clear the mind from the cognitive detritus that collects day-to-day.

For this lengthy piece, Suss Müsik began with a simple organ riff that was played through a Moog MF-102 ring modulator. The sound of breathing was sampled and distressed to match the timbre of metallic percussion. You might hear voices and flutes in there as well. A chime enters at the 1-minute mark and repeats just before the final ascension back to consciousness.

The piece is titled Lůno, named after the Czech word for “womb” and dedicated to little Zachary Isaac (who was born this week to good friends of Suss Müsik). The image is magnified cotton.

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