Mamiffer - The Brilliant Tabernacle

A Closer Listen

Faith Coloccia’s The Brilliant Tabernacle is a record of positivity and renewed energy. Light swirls out of its musical webbing: vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, flute, and drum.

The birth of Coloccia’s first child was fuel to The Brilliant Tabernacle‘s fire, the birth itself producing a new creation in the conception of the music, producing even more branches of life. It’s also a maternal sound, revealing protective instincts and a dying to the self. She has an inner strength (and with all the sleepless nights, it’s definitely needed), while also uncovering the depths of true, selfless love. Her music is a celebration of life and its inescapable ties with the planet. Spiritual without being religious, Coloccia encompasses the dizzying joy of creation; her music overflows with gratitude.

Coloccia’s partner and collaborator Aaron Turner also joined in on the record, as did a host of other musicians, helping her to construct a ‘guiding light’ over the course of the album. The percussion has a punch, striking hard into the softer, folk-oriented vocals, reminiscent of a horde of warriors going into battle. And they don’t stand a chance when facing off against a mother’s love for her child.

In the past, Coloccia has referred to her Mamiffer project as creating ‘psychedelia without drugs and spirituality without the dogma of religion’. Above all else, her music desires – and demands – unity. Coloccia embraces love, which is central to all religions. But she cuts herself free from the umbilical cord and the weighty anchor of organized religion. Because of that, her music is free to embrace love in all of its glorious forms, giving it away in a practical manner as a mother, and radiating it outwards as a form of energy. Diversity is a strength and not a weakness. Her secular music celebrates this – perhaps more than some in religious circles, who can be more concerned with ‘winning souls’ than loving the broken person. Coloccia’s music has peace on its mind. We are connected; we are one. It’s not natural for us as a species to be divided against one another. In an age where governments and organizations condition the public to fear the outsider or the nationality or the colour of someone’s skin, it only reinforces the madness of it all. We are one.

“Two Hands Together” speaks of rebirth and the cleansing power of water, which is witnessed in the natural world and in baptism, when someone is born again. Echoing the mantra and values of many a religion, Coloccia sings of goodness, mercy, and love; a light of the world.

If you want to see a miracle, look at yourself. Human biology is a miracle. Maybe, when searching for miracles, we should look closer to home.

In Coloccia’s eyes, there’s no need to dress it up with divine involvement, levitating angels dressed in white, or other celestial beings. She doesn’t dismiss religious themes or question whether these beings exist or not: it’s just enough for her to love the miracle of life and creation itself, the ancient seeds of which live on in the human body, generation after generation. There’s fertile soil for the blossoming of life in both the Earth and in the body. She hears the voice of God in her baby’s cry. He is nearer than you think.

“So many problems in the world stem from people who do not love themselves, and have lost a fundamental gift that should be everyone’s birth right: to be loved unconditionally and completely. Much of our conditioning has strived to detach humans from one another, to see difference as threatening instead of as a strength, to separate the bond with the mother and the earth, and this is passed down through the generations”.

“I felt this record was a complete psychic and magical observation of the healing power of true love, of respecting vulnerability, of not wanting to forget where we all come from – how we were all once helpless and all deserving of love. It provides the opportunity to overcome indoctrinated amnesia, to uplift collective strength and allows for the restoration of in-born self-love”, Coloccia says.

“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” (James Catchpole)

Available here