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Practice Spirituality Wilderness

Chantress Seba

But why restrict yourself to the hip retro New Age music of the eighties?

The algorithm introduced me Chantress Seba, an inheritor of the tradition of Black Vedantists such as Alice Coltrane and Laraaji. Her vocals are technically exquisite, but never emotionally robotic, as such virtuosity is in the hands of the helium divas. Her little Hispanic detours are entrancing.

There’s a distinct West Coast vibe to Finn’s bucolic strumming in their rendition of the Shiva mantra. I like how the image of the duo in the mountains is subtly undercut by the traffic racing along the B road in the distance. The recording of both it and the Ganesh mantra is interesting in itself, closely mic’d, they must also be processing the audio with some reverb. The result has a curiously hallucinatory indoors-while-outdoors quality, evocative of inner meditative spaces.

If you’ve ever been curious about the reality of the stoned high of bhakti, clock these guys’ intoxicated, rapt expressions.