Graced by ancient mantras and mult-level harmonies, LOVE IS SPACE glows with an inspiring, heart-centered passion. Deva Premal's voice, like silk, like liquid bliss, is accompanied by Jai Uttal, Miten and Kit Walker's amazing keyboard and rhythm tracks. LOVE IS SPACE, as the title suggests, is a journey into the spacious golden land of chant.
This is amazingly sensual music that is ideal for yoga, meditation, healing work, and, not least of all, slow passionate dancing.
German-born Deva Premal is a certified diva of the new age, having traversed the requisite Eastern spiritual paths, communing in Indian and following the late guru Bhaghwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho. While her last CD, Dakshina, had a bit more of a pop-Enyaesque sensibility, Moola Mantra is a much more meditative affair as Premal sings a single, 15-word Sanskrit mantra over the course of six lushly smooth Indian fusion arrangements. The disc is something of a mantra super session, with kirtan crooner Jai Uttal playing dotar, Nepalese bansuri flute player Manose, pianist Kit Walker, sitarist Peter Van Gelder (who played with Grace Slick and the Great Society) and esraj player Benjy Wertheimer. They're among the ensemble providing the patchouli-scented ornamentations that surround Premal's serene voice. With producer Ben Leinbach's detailed arrangements and Premal's overdubbed vocal choirs, Moola Mantra recalls similar Hindu adaptations by Rasa more than any other Premal CD. Like Rasa's Hans Christian, Leinbach is a capable multi-instrumentalist with a gift for trance grooves that don't tire and evocative instrumental touches like the tremolo guitar bleeding into Uttal's dotar solo on "Part II." The music is a languid float down an endless stream, but the repetition of the mantra, even with inventive melodic variation, can get tiresome. Premal tries to have it both ways, mantra as art and as spiritual practice. --John Diliberto
This top selling New Age/World beat CD is smooth, silky, calming and peaceful. Featuring Deva Premal's transcendant voice, ambient grooves, keyboard and hand percussion, THE ESSENCE invokes the heart healing power of ancient chants and mantras. The Gayatri Mantra, the oldest known to mankind, is the centerpiece of this truly meditative CD. Ideal for yoga, healing work, meditation and dancing.
"This is the music of Earth Angels, listen with your 3rd ear!" Gabrielle Roth
