Om
Advaitic Songs

It is known, it is a time of celebrations, solemn liturgies, remarkable romps under warm blankets. These are the days (or rather the day) when, after a year of resounding curses, I accompany my mom to the Cathedral in the center, just to ensure that the 5th-century mosaics in the apse haven't been taken away by the technicians with the Spending Review, once again confirming that the bishop's Christmas homilies, aside from lasting as long as Ben Hur in slow-motion with Polish subtitles, are now as predictable as Allegri's attacking schemes and just slightly less than any solo by Yngwie Malmsteen from 1988 to now. Just a few nights ago, I introduced Om to my dear friend Andrea, while we were experiencing a moment of pure escape from reality at Fra’s house, unaware victims of exorbitant quantities of 'nduja and other reprehensible delicacies bestowed upon us by Bacchus and Tobacco. Venus was not there and, on this note, Fra's neighbor, with all due respect, at most reminds me more of the female (or male?) version of Enzo Paolo Turchi than the imaginative goddess of love. Anyway, collapsed between sofa, bed, and command chair (the one in front of the pc), in our vicious debate on the best bums of 2012 and after reviving ourselves with 40 endless minutes of the legendary Nocturnal Depression, I kindly asked Andrea to look for the Californians in Fra's iTunes library and press play first on "At Giza" and then put on the latest "Advaitic Songs." Thus it happened, and the journey began just a moment before a hint of cosentino bowel movement made me hurry to the toilet. There, seated on that ceramic throne, so herald of suffering yet a healthy bearer of extreme reconciliation, an evocative female voice reciting the Maya Mrityuniaya filled the air, along with the enchanting moments of the initial "Addis." Well, it must have been the warmth of the radiator or perhaps Fra's blueberry grappa chemically reacting with the spicy food, but that insolent voice, that declamatory chant was indeed for me the Mantra of the Great Liberation as from literal translation. And the deluge came... I returned to the living room when the electric shocks of "State of Non-Return" had already run their course. Because... you know how we understand that an album is making our brains explode out of our butts? When among us falls silence, our gazes get lost on the pale white of the walls (or in the ten-euro squalid still lifes taken from the San Lorenzo market) and you can only hear the whistle of some small fart, interspersed with Fra's classic burp like Fantozzi, a first-class wild boar. Therefore, it was completely useless to ask what they thought of the fascinating violin and that symphonic ending, so unusual, or those ritual and spiritual accents, that sort of mystical calvary that the listening of "Gethsemane" conferred, an agonizing melody that leaves you exposed for its dynamism and plump rhythms. There is something that destabilizes and at the same time guides in "Advaitic Songs." There is a carnal nature that is closely intertwined with mysticism, as in "Sinai," its dark drone/ambient, the trails of smoke permeating the bedrooms, the invaluable feeling that everything is in its rightful place, that Jackie Perez Gratz's cello, the keyboards, the tabla, the flutes, Emil Amos’s three-dimensional drums (and clearly Al’s gigantic bass) were brought here by someone to create the perfect balance between matter and transcendence, between noise and introspection. That Om took the trouble to compose exactly the music we needed: an ultrastretched garment of heavy psychedelia. So, when the boundless ethnic and hallucinated expanses of "Haqq Al-Yaqin" tear apart the drab home barriers, it almost seems as if one is witnessing the dawn here in Jerusalem; the silhouettes of minarets and bell towers wrapped in the morning haze, the muezzin roaring peremptorily the adhan, the faithful rushing for the 6 a.m. salat. There it is! The sun has risen! The prayer is the breath of the soul...