Atman--Droning Mesmeric Psychedelic World Folk from Poland--

Drunken Fish Records was an excellent recording label way back when that put out a slew of interesting recordings back in the 1990's. Most notably for me they released three Roy Montgomery Cd's, The Harmony of The Spheres compilation, and Peter Jefferies and Jono Lonie's instrumental opus At Swim Two Birds. They also released a few albums by this musical collective from Poland involved in the "deep ecology" movement called Atman. I picked up their album Personal Forest on the basis of the description in the Drunken Fish catalog. Oh, yeah, and I never listened to it. Somehow it got stuck somewhere and spent a lot of time gathering dust. But I did listen to it finally a few years ago. I have to say I liked it so much that I immediately picked up their Tradition album, also released on Drunken Fish.

I hope to listen to it soon. But I can definitely say that Personal Forest is a one of a kind album, a mesmerizing chill out sort of album.

Atman is comprised of Marek Styczynski, on woodwinds, percussion, Tibetan liturgical instruments, jew's harp. Marek Leszczynski on polish dulcimer and percussion. Piotr Kolecki on 12 string guitar, sitar, zither and even more percussion. Some of these instruments include Tibetan singing bowls, the Australian aboriginal
didgeridoo, and the Slovakian fujara (you know, a bass overtone fipple flute!!). Apparently they even build their own instruments. They have a pretty cool organic sound, sometimes with an engaging raga style, and in other cases a more meditative spacious mood. The level of musicianship ship here is excellent. Basically it is new age music that doesn't suck. It is possible to say that the music is so good that it should be called something else. All I am saying is that New Age music seeks to fulfill a certain purpose and fails at it. I had a roomate at college who used to play that Windham Hill stuff all the time and I thought that it was terrible. These guys succeed in a completely admirable way. I just listened to this album and I feel like all the tension in my neck and shoulders vanished. You feel revitalized. And the music never fails to be interesting and creative.

I guess that deep ecology in a very simplified way begins with the concept that the Earth itself is alive and that we have to make radical changes to protect this environment as we are merely a part of everything else. I can see that in a Poland a movement like this could have real resonance. Due to the rapid industrialization imperatives that were perpetrated under their years of Soviet occupation after WWII, Poland was subjected to tremendous environmental devastation. People who have been forced to live in these horrible conditions could not help but be drawn to environmentalism. Not only for what they see around them, but also the effect that it must have on the people's health. Even though it has been twenty years now, these conditions don't just go away.



Just as in global warming. Some people don't think it prudent to act until the day comes when a whole bunch of senior citizens keel over all at once, like those situations we find with birds dropping out of the sky en masse, or dead lobsters washing up on the shores of Long Island.  Not driving our cars for a few days will not clean this mess up. It may seems silly to the rest of the world where people understand this concept. But here in the United States we wait for disasters to unfold before we act, and we are suspicious that the scientific evidence is some form of scam. Now right wingers have a new reason to allow the environment to degrade--we can't afford it. Well I suppose if worse came to worse we could always drop a bomb on global warming internationally and cut taxes on it domestically. That's why we are so good, folks.