Thanks for listening to SHAMANIC TRANCE DANCE! This is free streaming of the entire album. If you like the album, please purchase the CD here:
byronmetcalf.com or download here:
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SHAMANIC TRANCE DANCE – my first solo album with Sounds True – became the perfect opportunity to explore new sounds, rhythms and sonic landscapes, and to push beyond the boundaries of my own playing and studio skills. It also was an ideal time to work with some new supporting musicians whose extraordinary contributions to this album help bring everything to a dynamic new level of contemporary shamanic trance music.
My intention in making this album was to employ two of my long-time favorite collaborating musicians (Dashmesh Khalsa & Mark Seelig) with some musicians I have not yet worked with. I wanted to exclusively use artists with sensibilities and playing styles that are informed and inspired by shamanic experience and expanded states of consciousness and in this regard, I am thrilled with the outcome!
When indigenous shamans connect to the spirit world, they don’t sit still and let their mind wander—they dance with the spirits and let their power animals dance through them. Today, ecstatic dancers and shamanic practitioners speak of being “transported” by music, carried away in body and soul to an expanded state of being. On Shamanic Trance Dance, world-class trance percussionist and shamanic practitioner Byron Metcalf masterfully blends timeless indigenous sounds of drums, percussion and didgeridoo with driving trance rhythms and foundational electro grooves. The result is an organic sound tapestry that impels you to move—freeing the mind, energizing the body, and opening your spirit to inspiration.
Byron is joined by supporting musicians from Australia, Peru, Germany, Arizona and Colorado. The result is a truly unique synthesis of the primordial and contemporary rhythms and sounds of trance, ritual dance and transformation – authentically informed with shamanic wisdom and practice by all of those involved in Shamanic Trance Dance.
The six tracks on Shamanic Trance Dance invite the listener and the dancer to explore the various landscapes of the shamanic world in a personal and experiential way. Dance and merge with your own inner-wisdom and animal spirits; travel through your inner and outer realities from a totally embodied perspective; play with the rhythms of your breath and body; confront and transcend blocks and barriers that inhibit and stifle your growth and creative energies.
“When I first heard the final mixes for Shamanic Trance Dance streaming from my monitors, my jaw dropped. Each track was deep and full, with a pulse I could feel right in my chest, yet every instrument emerged with crystal clarity. I felt bathed in rhythm, taken deep by the insistent heartbeat of the drums, carried away by the slow drone of the didgeridoo. I had worked with Byron on his previous Sounds True release—The Spirit of Healing, a collection of drum journeys with shamanic practitioner Sandra Ingerman—so I shouldn’t have been surprised at the breath and depth of this sonic tapestry. Yet it took me beyond myself in ways I hadn’t expected. I tried to simply sit and listen. I really did. But within seconds I was rocking to the rhythm, and soon I found myself out of my chair and dancing around the living room, lost in the pure joy of movement. When the music came to a stop, I looked up at the speakers, stunned that an hour had gone by. I was smiling deep inside, as if a heaviness had been washed from me by these pulsing waves of sound.
This album has power—the power to shift your inner landscape and open you to the deeper rhythms of you own life. May your own journey be richer for it. “
Mitchell Clute
Producer, Sounds True