Tenured soundsmith Jefre Cantu-Ledesma produces ambient works that reflect a cosmic mindset, one that reveals our own energies as being integrated with and connected to those of our surroundings. He seeks to reveal our oneness with the universe through sound. Cantu-Ledesma has refined his practice over the decades, collaborating with like-minded sonic practitioners and transitioning from a blown-out sense of the sublime toward a beatific vision bathed in beauty and even more reflective of cosmological unity. Until recently, this exploration of the sacred reached its zenith with 2019’s Tracing Back the Radiance. Keen to continue exploring, Cantu-Ledesma has managed to reach further toward the majestic with Gift Songs, a song suite that is perhaps his most organic and beautiful to date.
This gorgeous and natural sound is immediately apparent as “The Milky Sea” comes into focus. A lush piano line nestles into waves of synth and percussion that stretch out to infinity like the mauve ocean in the third season of Twin Peaks. The song’s gentle yet frothy swells roll over each other with a hypnotic grace, inducing a waking dream. Translucent hallucinations reveal themselves like thin sheets of painted glass stacked in layers: tom rolls and cymbal washes coalesce into a delicate heartbeat; static drips like beads of sweat. And the piano continues to float on top with a pleasant, hazy demeanor.
The three-part “Gift Song” suite is a chord organ and piano revelry. The reedy tone of the organ grounds the music with its earthy aroma as the piano improvises, leaving subtle imprints in the warm pools of fuzz-flecked sound. Gift Songs concludes with the epic drone feast “River That Flows Two Ways.” Cantu-Ledesma is highly skilled at weaving drone threads into ornate rivers of sound, and he demonstrates his mastery of the craft on this lush piece of music. Deep listening reveals the glowing tendrils that wrap around each other in a beautiful dance, conjuring images of long-exposure astronomy photography or the slow descent of firework sparks. It’s a punctuation accentuating the sense of connectedness with the universe and redolent of this famous Carl Sagan quote: “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.”
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
