SIS – “DOUBLE RAPTURE”
A SPILL EXCLUSIVE MUSIC PREMIERE
Sis is singer and multi-instrumentalist Jenny Gillespie Mason. Founder of Native Cat Recordings, which has released albums by Bay Area artists Luke Temple, Brijean, and John Vanderslice, Mason has turned once again to her own music with a new EP called Gnani.
Gnani (January 2022, Native Cat Recordings) arrives at the culmination of a lifelong journey of being a musician, working with collaborators near and far in studios across the country. Most of Gnani, however, was recorded at Masonβs home studio in Berkeley, CA.
The true work behind Gnani was to seek a new wholeness through song. Inspired by the uncompromising spiritual jazz of Alice Coltraneβthe kind of music that seems to wordlessly get at a human lifeβs divine strivingsβMason set out to write a new work to reach that deeper place within herself and to heal. Not only to heal from the wreckage of the collective years 2020-21, but to join together the sometimes fragmented paths as mother, wife, artist, and individual.
Using vintage keyboards such as clavinet, Phillicordia, Rhodes, B3 Hammond organ, Farfisa, and ARP Odyssey, she sought to weave an intimate but vibrant sound that fuses private psychedelic journeys with the more joyful group-calls of electro-pop. Working in Ableton and tapping the endless sound vaults of Omnisphere, and drawing on her longtime admiration of Four Tetβs synthesis of sampling, loops, and heart-centered compositions, furthered these new sonic explorations.
Bringing in the intuitive and fierce playing of Brijean Murphy (congas, bongos, percussion), and Doug Stuart on bass, brought Gnani to its fullest expression. Reading a quote by Nisargadatta MaharajββThe gnani (the one who knows) does not die, because he was never bornβ βcinched the album title for Mason, who had been exploring this idea of a timeless nature within both the self and the flow state of creative process. With an intention to heal the listenerβwhile healing herself through the creation of these songsβSis offers you Gnani.
Artist Quote
“With poem titles like Dirty Sexy Poem and What is the Pineal Gland?, Anna Swir (1909-1984) was a Polish poet who explored the space between animal sensuality and divine transcendence. Before beginning the process of writing Gnani, I’d stumbled upon her poem of two lines, “A Double Rapture”: Because there is no me/and because I feel how much there is no me. For her striking rawness on her own womanhood, Swir remained a muse to me throughout the process of writing the songs on Gnani. I’d been playing around with playing my Rhodes through an Ibanez multimode analog delay, and had also found an insistent yet fragile sounding percussion loop on Omnisphere. The song came together very quickly with these elements at hand, and the lyrics sprung pretty naturally from this idea of a double rapture, losing yourself in union with the Other.”
Sis
Gnani
(Native Cat Recordings)
Release Date: January 2022
Pre-Order Gnani HERE
ArtistΒ Links
Background Photo Credit: Andrew Mason
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