The Four Immeasurable Minds is the seventh full-length from Dallas-based songwriter/composer David Karsten Daniels. The title refers to a collection of Buddhist virtues and each track is named after one of these so-called “sublime attitudes – Love, Equanimity, Joy and Compassion. The album has a decidedly meditative quality, utilising droning guitars, looped church organs, wooden flutes and vague, wordless vocals to offer respite form what Daniels refers to as “an increasingly busy and anxious modern world.”
Each song on the album bleeds into its neighbours and, interestingly, the end of the last song runs into the start of the first one, meaning the whole thing forms a continuous loop. The cyclical nature of the album adds to its ruminant nature. Daniels says that the listener could begin to experience time as a cyclical phenomenon, or even percept a deceleration, or even comlplete halting of time. This reflects Daniels’s interest in indigenous ideas of circular time and gives the album a mystical quality, elevating it beyond a simple slice of relaxing ambience. Each track has its own idiosyncrasies, but my current favourite track is the first one. ‘Love’ sounds like the serene and dream-like descent to the bottom of some deep ocean, complete with the cryptic calls of colossal ceteacea hidden somewhere in the blue.
<a href=“http://davidkarstendaniels.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-immeasurable-minds” data-mce-href=“http://davidkarstendaniels.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-immeasurable-minds”>The Four Immeasurable Minds by David Karsten Daniels</a>
Daniels has released The Four Immeasurable Minds on his own Smll Thngs label. Order it via his Bandcamp page. If physical releases are more your thing, you can also get the album on cassette from the super cool French label Carpi Records. Order it here.