Catalog # BAL-25
Format: digital
Release Date: April 19, 2011
File Under: house, dub, broken beat, electronic
Originally released in 2005, this album was the culmination of 2 years in the studio for Rise Ashen between 2003 and 2005. We are proud to re-release it digitally in 2011!
In Rise Ashen’s own words:
This album took me 2 years to create. It corresponds to my re-birth as a dancer, to my detachment from reality as a martial artist, and to my realization that the political system is a sham and our national democracy dead.
I began listening to electronic music when I was around 10 years old in Montreal. The year was 1984 and my good friend Paul Bailey, (who’s dad was a DJ) and I used to break in my driveway to the early electro and hip hop that was coming out of NYC and Europe. Over time, I got into a bunch of different music but it was nu-jazz and house that fascinated me most. I have thousands of records but very few that make me feel the way a song like Let your body be free does. That song is an ode to movement and it is so buck it hurts me every time I listen to it. Atma is like a mystical journey into the depths of our inner cosmos. Yellow and Green has already been released by the Canadian label, “Balanced Records”, on Northern Faction 3. Listen to this CD and try to pick out the textures. I have spent 2 years layering and molding these pieces. Sometimes there are up to two hundred layers of sound in one song. Some tracks are more simple, but they were all wraught by me in a most obsessive fashion. I am the audio architect here, nothing is unintentional.
The craziest of dancing spirits has come down on me. It has blessed me with inner light, and the love of a woman. It has led me towards harmony. In my martial artist’s pursuit of the state of no mindedness, I have glimpsed at the vast, tranquil mirror of the universe. I hope these sounds I have gathered will take you back to the deepest cellular memory that you each have within you… of a time where the world was in balance. In our common past there has been strife, but we have never sunk this far into excess. May we each cultivate every aspect of our life with the deepest respect for all things. All we have is every instant of our time. All we can do is aim to make every breath, every thought and every action as pure as the light which blesses us from the heavens each morning as we awaken. Every element of our world is connected to every other. Nothing is isolated. One must take nothing for granted. Every thought and every action should feel as if it were all you have ever known.
