Holy Prana Open Game by Natalie Rose LeBrecht
Release date: June 9, 2023Label: American Dreams Records
Looking at the album cover by Natalie Rose LeBrecht, and reading its title – Holy Prana Open Game, you just might get the right impression – it is an album that tries to conjure something mystical, spiritual, and meditative.
Quite a bit of those out there these days, but not as many as LeBrecht’s can hit their intended target as well as this composer/instrumentalist vocalist does here.
Part of the reasons for that may lie in the fact that LeBrecht started on that musical road as a teenager, producing 4-track tapes under the moniker Greenpot Bluepot and then spending a few years studying with and assisting La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at their legendary sound-and-light installation, the Dream House.
And yet, there is that inspiration and talent element, because LeBrecht was able to come up with some free-flowing, almost seamless music out of not so usual recording process.
She prepared rough mixes of the songs, and then sent them to the three other musicians involved individually (Australian guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White and woodwind player David Lackner) to record their contributions, often without them hearing each other’s contributions. Finally, LeBrecht arranged and edited the recordings from all four of their homes.
The result is nothing less than amazing, getting that meditative, spiritual feeling LeBrecht was after, turning this album into quite an achievement.
