Chronotope Project: Lotus Rising
Spotted Peccary Music
Jeffrey Ericson Allen returns with another distinguished presentation of Chronotope Project material, Lotus Rising an album-long musical meditation on Zen Buddhism. The Oregonian certainly knows whereof he speaks, having studied and practiced it for thirty years. Of course its immersive, self-illuminating character makes it a natural subject for ambient application and Allen's brand in particular, which is atmospheric, mystical, serene, and soulful. Lotus Rising is but his fourth Chronotope Project release on the Spotted Peccary label, but it feels like the handiwork of someone who's been perfecting his craft for decades.
Though cello, Irish whistle, twenty-four string Harpejji, hand percussion, and field recordings are identified as sound sources, arrangements are dominated by a small core of elements: vibrant synthesizer textures, softly pulsating sequencer patterns, and the soft, hypnotic tones generated by the Hakken Continuum Fingerboard. Allen's music is characterized by many things, but two deserving of special mention are nuance and humanity. Certainly one reason why the music exudes that human quality is attributable to his use of the Hakken device, an exceptionally expressive synthesizer whose patterns assume a vocal-like quality in Allen's hands. More than the standard synthesizer, it enables the user to slide between pitches and mimic the modulations of a person's voice.
“Crossing the Great Water” inaugurates the journey with softly glimmering pulsations, Allen's keyboard patterns dancing gracefully over a bed of radiant washes. After a minute, the Hakken makes its first of many appearances, its sound in this case resembling a flute or even shakuhachi; as trips go, it's clearly more serene than turbulent, even when the addition of percussion nudges the material in a tribal ambient direction. The forward motion of the opener then gives way to a beatific episode of calm and contemplation in the title track, with the breath-like utterances and rising wail of the Hakken appearing amidst soft vocal washes and crystalline textures.
The image of a lotus flower's graceful blossoming comes to mind as “Opening the Hand of Thought” advances, specifically in the way the addition of chimes and ride cymbals to its percolating flow suggests a similar kind of expansion, impressions the track title itself conveys in referring to the flowering of consciousness. At album's end, a controlled ecstasy of sorts is achieved during “Homage to the Three Jewels,” a thirteen-minute opus that retains the overall character of the preceding material but during its middle section amps up the intensity with hand drums and driving rhythms.
In featuring words like crossing, rising, and opening, the track titles emphasize action, the implication being that achieving enlightenment is something that doesn't passively occur but instead requires engagement, and of course the album title alludes to the lotus flower, a familiar Buddhism symbol for the way it rises from murky depths to bloom resplendently on the surface. Allen himself articulates as much in comments accompanying the release; referring to an aspirant's journey of self-actualization, he states, “Zen emphasizes the identity of practice and realization. Practice is not a ‘means' to awakening; it is awakening itself, just as music is not a means to reach the end of a piece, but an evolving expression in time, in which each moment expresses an aspect of the whole.” There's nothing static, in other words, about this seeming state of stillness, and neither is there anything static about this latest fine addition to the Chronotope Project catalogue.January 2019