A Closer Listen
Half a foot of snow has fallen overnight. The streets are quiet, the trees draped in blankets of wool. The air is so crisp that one can hear a pine cone crackle in the cold. Tonight the temperature will drop to 10° F, -22° C. After some soft shoveling, I’ve spent the last few hours before twilight rereading Bernd Brunner’s Winterlust: Finding Beauty in the Fiercest Season while playing Chandra Shukla‘s Hima हिम. Venus appears as the sun sets, and the stars seem perfectly aligned.
Hima हिम is the latest release in VISUALS Wine’s ongoing Ceremony of Seasons series, and it’s the one release that almost didn’t happen. On September 28, Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville, NC just prior to a planned musical festival. Since then, the artistic community there has been engaged in efforts to help their neighbors, many of whom lost homes and even loved ones. Burial Beer with VISUALS Wine survived, and has been a hub of hope. But the event also makes this release sound different, as two things are unfolding simultaneously. The music is offering a soundtrack to winter, the vast drones suggesting sparkling tundras of snow, the electric sitar notes like the tentative footsteps of small animals and the prints they leave behind. At the same time, it suggests a spiritual winter, a cold chaos caused by calamity and the efforts to survive. The opening note is harsh, swiftly receding to calmer territory, but the storm is always on the periphery, audibly resurfacing in a static rush at the end of “Samudra Manthana” (“Sea Churning”). Together, rivers and rain can make a sea.
This is also a noteworthy release for Ceremony of Seasons in that the boundaries of the senses continue to expand. This time, what we are calling a Box of Winter includes not only a cassette and aperitif wine, but a lovely container of incense that cannot help but smell like winter, with frankincense and myrrh, nutmeg and cinnamon, juniper berries, orange peel and more. As both the co-founder of record label Erototox Decodings and founder/perfumer of Xambuca Olfactory, Shukla is perfectly poised to produce such a product. The name of the scent is Tapa (Heat), which is meant to offset the Hima (Cold), in the same way that company, a warm fire and a delicious wine can help one to survive the season. As Ceremony of Seasons writes, the wine, Evoke a Tranquil Frost, “aims to warm the body when it most needs it.” In this case, the entire package is a healing balm to a community in need.
Thankfully, because we are tempted to eat the incense, the wine is made with many of the same ingredients. Those winter scents begin to waft across the nose as soon as it is opened. The stars are now illuminated by a half-moon, the snow making the dark seem less like night, just as the music is suited for spiritual illumination. A juniper berry is not actually a berry, although like many of the ingredients, it does have health benefits. Cinnamon is the forward note, with the bayberry and mandarin underneath. Then the first sip, an explosion of taste: now the nutmeg, which sends one back to Christmas and eggnog, to fall and pumpkin spice. “Nirghāta” is playing, the senses are expanding, the drone now seems like the words of a gentle Sufi, taking root in the soul. The track’s last extended blast is both warm and cold, two tones co-expanding, like flavors unwinding in the glass, luxuriating in each other’s company. The finale and standout, “Ashva” (“Horse”), exudes the clearest melody, scoring Asheville’s return to a more stable existence.
While burning the incense, sipping the wine and loopng the cassette, one begins to feel that everything is part of a larger tapestry. The snow outside only adds to the impression. The same water that was once a flood now falls as snow on a quiet earth. The snow will melt into fog, flow into rivers and streams, feed the clouds and return to nourish the land. The same water, tamed by taps, enters our bodies, once again drinkable, and flows through our bloodstreams. Incense and wine, music and snow, all are one, part of the great cycle that feeds the ceremony of seasons. (Richard Allen)
Fri Jan 31 00:01:39 GMT 2025