Cassette Review // Oren Cantrell "Kobzir" (Séance Centre)

$14 //
Edition of 50 //
https://orencantrell.bandcamp.com/album/kobzir //

A synth drone breathes in and out.   This is meditation.   Not only is there a calm to this, but there is this overall calming effect as well.   It can begin to feel like it is swirling around to some slight extent, but this is just the type of music I like to put on, tune out the rest of the world (which includes turning off my phone) and just getting completely lost within it. 

In some ways I feel like a sitar is in here.   At times, it can feel cosmic.   Sharper whirrs come through now and this can really shake your speakers if you let it.  It has such a force behind it but yet doesn't seem like it would be so powerful based on how you would describe it.   I recently started doing yoga and I'd say that I'd listen to this one in the corpse pose and it would do wonders for the soul.

Behind this all come some haunted type of tones now.   It feels like we've entered another realm entirely.    It seems as it goes on it grows a bit darker, but perhaps it might just be that as I further explore the inner workings of my mind that just happens to be where it take me-- to a dark place.   Don't we all have that dark thing inside of us though?  Isn't that part of what makes us human?

On the flip side we start with a ringing and then there is also this primal type of singing to be heard behind it.   Whirrs come through kind of like a cross between Wall-E and cat calls and then these other alien sort of tones creep in as well.   There is this almost talking sound within here but it feels hollow somehow, like it's echoing within a cave and while listening to it I feel less like I am relaxed as with the first side and more like I'm in a sci-fi movie such as "Phantom Planet".

The next song comes in like a sunrise.   It begins to wind, to hum and to grow.  I imagine this as the soundtrack to a seed becoming a plant.     As we fade out the next song starts with bells and a humming.    There is this almost moaning type of sound as the bells are ringing like Christmas morning.   It has an odd contrast, with the deeper groan in longer waves and the bells in higher pitched, shorter dings.   It works together somehow though, the two making for one sound which is unique and uplifting.