Selwa

CHOYING DROLMA + STEVE TIBBETTS

Six Degrees

When American guitarist Steve Tibbetts and Tibetan Buddhist nun Choying Drolma released Cho in 1997, they couldn’t have expected that their recording project would take on the life that it did.  Tibbetts’ sense to transform Drolma’s austere but oddly soulful chanting and singing into a mystical bit of ambient pop was a seductive little masterpiece.  And it somehow found an audience, yoga-heads notwithstanding, to merit this follow-up.

            The utter timelessness of Cho begs the question just where might they be able to take this project.  Fortunately, rather than expanding their palette with more electronica, wanky guitar or synthetic beats, they stick to their formula, furthering their cross-cultural dialogue in a suitably subdued fashion that doesn’t betray the purity of sound they’ve already achieved.

            Still employing drones, layered voices, sly, inventive bits of guitar, and hand drumming, Tibbetts and Drolma create an intensely meditative yet sensual musical landscape, their songs again taking the sacred music of north and south Asia as their source material.  And Drolma’s voice – deep and multi-tonal, as if it were from the belly of the earth – is rarely less than captivating.

- Christopher Frey