Informed by their study of Zen Buddhism, Danielle L. Davis and Steven Whiteley create spacious, playful synthesizer melodies that push at the boundaries of what “meditative” music can be.
It was a photograph of a synthesizer that first caught Steven Whiteley’s eye. In 2018, Whiteley, a composer living at New Mexico’s Upaya Zen Center, came across an unusual Instagram post from the Bay Area’s Green Gulch Farm Zen Center: Danielle L. Davis’ modular synthesizer, sitting on the porch of a yurt. Before long, Whiteley traded life in Santa Fe for a residency at the Marin County retreat, bringing along little more than a laptop, MIDI controller, and classical guitar. There, the two musicians bonded over Pauline Oliveros’ philosophy of Deep Listening, which posits drone music as a path to heightened states of consciousness, and jammed in their free time. Eventually, both left Green Gulch for Oregon’s Great Vow Zen Monastery, on the banks of the Columbia River; granted time to pursue creative practice, they zeroed in on their sound, performing free-flowing improvisatory music on piano and electronics for monks and fellow students. In 2019, after their respective residencies ended, Davis and Whiteley moved to Portland, where they used a wealth of acoustic and electronic instruments to bring to fruition ideas that had germinated in the monastic environment.
Despite its genesis, the music on Soundness of Mind, Liila’s debut album, isn’t always serene. Placid electronic tones are offset with pinwheeling synthesizer melodies; thrumming xylophone patterns punctuate breathy choral pads reminiscent of 1980s sampler presets. They summon a rich, unpredictable, and often surprisingly lively sound. On “Nazīr,” a spindly beat of sticks, harp, and bells approximates an arte povera take on a hip-hop rhythm. Whatever the layperson might assume that electronic music grounded in Zen practices ought to sound like, this 28-minute album frequently upends expectations; it is as playful as it is reverent, and the heady results push at the limits of what “meditative” music can be.
New-age sensibilities are at the heart of two of the record’s most captivating tracks. “Not One Not Two” twines droning synth pads with a long, meandering piano fantasia against a chattering backdrop of birdsong. It’s difficult to discern exactly how many elements are in play—synthesizers bleed into bird calls; the piano might be the work of two hands or four. Perhaps that’s the reason for the title, which paraphrases a principle that the influential Sōtō Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi described as “the oneness of duality”: The track teems with disparate yet complementary elements, flickering between buzzing union and gentle discord. “Whale Song for No One” is similarly drifting and even more complex, flecked with robot chirps, virtual choir, and cicada-like buzz. With its pulsing marimba and bells, it feels like a response to Visible Cloaks’ take on Japanese ambient traditions, while the title suggests a winking awareness of new-age cliché.
A few tracks are particularly energetic. A kinetic blast reminiscent of Oneohtrix Point Never’s hyperreal environments, “Osha” is a rock tumbler full of small, staccato sounds—choppy voices, claps, castanets, laser-like rototoms—buffed by reverb to a dull gleam. “Frozen Islands,” one of the album’s highlights, again resembles Visible Cloaks’ pastiches of Eastern electronic styles. What makes the song feel fresh is its sprightly sense of motion, with airy pads, pentatonic scales, and plucky percussive details all firing like the pistons of a cartoon engine.
The opening “Appa Wú Wéi” is the album’s best and most enveloping song, laying out the mesh of chimes, marimba, wordless voices, and spiraling synth leads that give much of the record its billowing shape. The reference points are not particularly new; the rippling mallets recall Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, while the gradually expanding layers suggest a tradition of cosmic electronic music running from the Berlin school through Emeralds. The magic is in the way the music moves: at once calm and invigorating, with animated arpeggios spinning over a measured andante beat. There’s a sense of clarity in its bright harmonics and brisk forward glide. The “wú wéi” of the title is a reference to the principle of “effortless action,” and the song’s development mimics the movements of natural forces like wind and water; it’s easy to envision the landscape of the Marin Headlands, the fog burning off rolling green hills that slope down to the Pacific Ocean, where waves wear away at the rock. The song is radiant and full of joy: the sound of two minds flowing in sync with each other, and with everything around them.
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