|
|
""Atma" tells the story of the slow escape of a chrysalis towards a serenity finally reached, an eminently cathartic work for a Sleeping Karma at the top of its art."
|
4/5
|
|
|
|
Honestly and without going as far as to say that we had forgotten about it, the fact is that My Sleeping Karma was starting to become a (too) distant memory, having not spawned anything for seven years and a "Moksha" that many consider the cornerstone of its discography. But while the foundations of its successor are laid in 2017, the band is forced by dramatic events to stop everything. Discreet, he communicates little about what he has to face but the situation mixing illness and death is serious enough that the question of his future is raised.
The fact that the Germans have succeeded in completing this sixth album is both a relief and a blessing. Relief because "Atma" resounds for its authors like a victory on the destiny. Blessing because the opus is a marvel of execution as well as of writing, and we say to ourselves that it would have been regrettable if the tragedy had deprived us of its existence.
The dramas that My Sleeping Karma was forced to face command its darkest work, without sinking into depression or exaggerated affliction, even if a dull melancholy permeates more than usual compositions of an unprecedented gravity. The quartet did not give up its identity recognizable between thousand which is a mix of aerial instrumental rock almost elusive in its diaphanous beauty and a philosophy and the Hindu and Buddhist mythology. But one perceives all along a tension to which it had not accustomed us and each piece constitutes a stage in an interior journey.
Borrowed from Indian philosophy, Atma (or Atman) is a Sanskrit word that designates the "self" or essence of individuals in opposition to the ego and incarnation. Through this concept, the group wished to paint a history of humanity from a spiritual point of view which leads it towards harmony, freed from its mortifying gangue that symbolizes all a selfish and violent arsenal (war, hatred...). The album follows this sliding from the shadow to the light, which dictates its slow instrumental path, deeply melancholic at the beginning ('Maya Shakti'), luminous and soothed at the end ('Ananda').
Thus, because of its evolutionary construction in its sonorities as in its emotions, "Atma" must be approached in its entirety, an introspective journey of a moving purity. Its great strength lies in the way its creators managed to cast a certain darkness in their pulsating and ethereal post-rock, to extract from pain a miraculously positive essence. The four musicians appear in tune with their unique style and in unison with an immersive beauty, at the same time always so pointillist in its softness and enveloping in its dramatic power.
Heavy and stratospheric, rumbling from its arcanes with an invigorating sap, "Atma" tells the tale of the slow escape of a chrysalis towards a serenity finally reached, an eminently cathartic work of which we now hope that its authors have finally turned the page in order to approach a future in a more peaceful way. The future will tell us... - Official website
|
|
|
|
|
TRACK LISTING:
 01. Maya Shakti - 09:13
02. Prema - 07:55
03. Mukti - 06:43
04. Avatara - 09:37
05. Pralaya - 06:57
06. Ananda - 08:17
LINEUP:
-
|
|
| |
|
(0) MIND(S) FROM OUR READERS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top of the page
|
| |
|
|
(0) COMMENT(S)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
READERS
4/5 (1 view(s))
|
STAFF:
4/5 (2 view(s))
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
OTHER REVIEWS
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|