Mark Seelig: The Disciple's Path
Projekt

Immersive in the extreme, The Disciple's Path draws the listener into its shamanistic lair for four mystical excursions, Mark Seelig your devoted guide. Working with contributions from Loren Nerell (soundscapes and drones) and Max Link (percussion), Seelig drapes his alluring North Indian Bansuri bamboo flute playing across trance-inducing backdrops more akin to traditional Indian Ragas than ambient-electronic soundscapes.

The Disciple's Path is no half-baked exercise in cultural appropriation, as its creator, a self-described student and practitioner of shamanic healing teachings, treats the musical form with sincerity, humility, and respect. As Seelig himself states, his project aspires “to honour life in general and to specifically pay reverence to all people immersed in ancient wisdom traditions of the world.” It's worth noting that in his non-musical life Seelig's a clinical psychotherapist of some thirty years' standing who utilizes music to foster contexts for meditation and healing.

A multi-instrumentalist too, Seelig was classically trained on violin as a boy and taught himself guitar, but then in his early forties decided to take up the Bansuri bamboo flute and studied for ten years with Indian Bansuri maestro R. K. Bikramjit Singh. Much of that comes into play on the recording, with Seelig supplementing his flute playing with dilruba (Indian cello), electronic violin, acoustic guitar, and harmonic chants. It's hardly his debut either: collaborations with Steve Roach, Byron Metcalf, and Nerell have resulted in sixteen albums over a fifteen-year period.

With a tamboura drone firmly in place, “Raga Princess” initiates the release with a reverent setting, its title designed to honour the divine feminine as it manifests in all its forms. Enhancing the lulling atmosphere is Seelig's breath-laden flute, its tone delicate and its effect seductive. Conventional ‘clock time' falls away as the material advances and the meditation deepens. (Listeners familiar with Miles's “He Loved Him Madly” might be reminded of the trumpeter's half-hour Duke tribute as the slow drift of Seelig's own material works its magic.) An exploration of the main themes of Raga Yaman, “Ya-Man” perpetuates the dreamlike drift of the opener, this time with percussive rattlings and synth washes part of the enveloping flute-and-tamboura arrangement.

Even more time-suspending is the oceanic title track, whose thirty-six-minute duration looks excessive on paper but in practice becomes a non-factor when its effect is so powerful. The presentation expands even more in this setting, with the music animated by a lilting percussive pulse and keening string textures added to incantatory flute musings that grow ever more impassioned. Without altering too dramatically the material's Indian raga character, the other elements add a stately elegance reminiscent of ancient ceremonial Chinese music. Three-quarters of the way through, the rhythm elements drop out, allowing the material to settle into a deep-meditation zone for its outward journey. At album's end, “Raga Ayahuasca” distances itself from the other three in merging Bansuri bamboo flute with guitar shadings, tabla, and Seelig's own chanting.

July 2020