Watch for SEVA's new movie with music from Yoko Treasury Of Jewels~ soon to be released!!
We are receiving incredible feedback about Yoko's first album! People listen while birthing babies, attending dying loved ones, teaching Dharma, teaching yoga classes, and to lighten up the day. Reports of listening all day to this one CD are numerous. And so Yoko's wish to benefit people is a reality. So many look forward to upcoming albums.
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I really liked this CD; Yoko has a lovely clear voice and it was backed up beautifully! You don't need to understand the words to enjoy it!
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The songs that just seem to come together the best are "Medicine Buddha" and "Mahakala". "Mahakala" is excellent--great in every way a song can be. In my opinion, it is definitely the hit on the CD. "Mahakala" seamlessly blends Tibetan culture with Western riffs and chords. Listening to the song, I get the feeling I am watching a joyful, heavy-set man roaming the mountains of Tibet, jocular and full of character, yet revered by everyone for his good attributes. I love how the horns seem to announce the man's coming, then the chorus shows him going about his business. Then, we seem to travel to another town, or another house, where the horns again announce his arrival, and so forth. Classic.

The instrumentation in "Shakyamuni" pulls together an unconventional concept quite well. I'm referring of course to the 9/4 beat. The sample file on this website does not do this song justice: those two beats at the end of the measure, with the falling bass riff, simply don't seem to work here. But, if you listen to the CD itself, this riff is gracefully introduced, and complemented by other instruments. While it may not sound good on the sample, I assure you, it sounds good on the CD.

On the whole, the instrumentation and ambient sounds of the CD work very well. The nature sounds--the creek and the birds--are very appropriate and give a great atmosphere. Also, the drums--being what you would expect from a new age album--work well with the CD's chosen aesthetics. The sound effects are very artful. Yoko's voice and instruments are often drenched in reverb, or completely clean--no effects at all--according to the aesthetics of the song. The album is very well produced.

There are a couple things that seem out of place: the distorted guitar in "Seven Limb" and the crashing cymbals in "Tsong Khapa" in particular. Especially the distorted guitars--probably because distorted guitars carry a lot of cultural baggage in the West, and because the atonality of the distortion clashes with the refined tonality of the other instruments. It's clean meets dirty, and dirty seems to lose. Also, I would have used real violins in "Tara", and the transition seem in that song seems jarring.

I also have personal artistic differences with the treatment of Prajnaparamita in "Prajnaparamita". It seems vast and empty, but empty in the sense of voidness, not so much in the sense of dependent origination. Listening to it, soulful and well-produced as it is, I get the feeling that I am mourning the loss of something precious, or leaving my beloved home and family for a very long time. However, the very next song, "Praise to Prajnaparamita" seems far more like what I would look for in a treatment of the Prajnaparamita concept. It is empty in the sense that it is conspicuously simple, and free of any kind of drama.

The album is a great treat, blending East and West, introducing us to Buddhist chants in a musical, rather than religious way. Primarily, I think, because the lyrics are not in English, new Buddhists or even non-Buddhists have a chance to listen to these prayers as music, or just as beautiful sounds, without feeling they have to agree or disagree. The songs are simply what they are: one person's expression of faith and aesthetics, with no strings attached. This CD is a great addition to the library of anyone interested in Buddhism.
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We are receiving incredible feedback about Yoko's first album! People listen while birthing babies, attending dying loved ones, teaching Dharma, teaching yoga classes, and to lighten up the day. Reports of listening all day to this one CD are numerous. And so Yoko's wish to benefit people is a reality. So many look forward to upcoming albums.
                            Read more...