Penetration Into Substance

Reviews

One of the most pleasant discoveries of 2006

author: World Music Central

One of the most pleasant discoveries of 2006, thanks to social networking site Myspace, is Berlin-based Russian multi-instrumentalist Vladiswar Nadishana. He has released several self-produced CDs on his own label. Penetration into Substance is a solo effort by Vladiswar Nadishana. Using primarily acoustic instruments and a computer, Nadishana overdubs layers of vocals and instruments, achieving an acoustic ensemble sound, with wind and stringed instruments accompanied by frame drums and other percussion instruments. The main influences are Russian, Siberian, Tuvan and Indian.

Go Deeper, Awaken Refreshed

author: Billy Sheppard

"Objectivity has about as much substance as the emperor's new clothes."
~ Connie Miller

"Without a body, how can there be suffering?"
~ A Buddhist Axiom

"Ancient Kuzhebar is an alternative reality which a small network of people are building up with their own lives."
~ Vladiswar Nadishana (From an email to Billy's Bunker.)

Close your eyes when you listen to Vladiswar Nadishana and you will find the alternative reality of Kuzhebar. Time is as insubstantial as incense there and substance no barrier to the heart. In this "Penetration Into Substance," he invokes in the title of this album as a journey to the inside of the outside where intention and action are like hippies playing Had-E-Sac at a picnic for souls scheduled for anywhere all at once.

The Nadishana experience includes a world beneath the surface of music from India, Siberia, Ireland, Africa and all points anywhere played by Mr. V on 200 instruments at least with winds, strings and skins included and a higher ground technical recording technique dubbed "sound microsurgery." There's plenty of craft a skill if that's what you are looking for. While all music works to break through to the heart, the best among musicians are capable of saying, "How in. Let's go for a ride." As a listener in Ohio, I'm taking a trip through unfamiliar territory with Mr. V. The surface reality of what I've heard in the New Age is just a signpost up ahead. Listen deeper without distraction and this is a soulful Twilight Zone. As Rod Serling put it, I am "traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination."

I believe Vladiswar has taken the gauntlet thrown down by those who purport to heal with sounds borrowed politely from other cultures, assembled the worthy among the best of musicians, and taken it where it promised it could take you but lacked the fuel. If you haven't jumped this review to listen at this point, imagine Bela Fleck, Ravi Shankar, Djivan Gasparian, Enigma, Kamazi Washington, Hamza El Din, John Bergamo, and Ian Anderson recording some music for their own enjoyment after a month-long retreat with a Brian Eno in the recording booth. You might not be able to dance to the music they create, but in a relaxed state your heart would find the way. Stuff like that is a spiritual journey. That is a journey to Kuzhebar.

I normally do a song-by-song review, but this is a suite of songs in unfamiliar territory with instruments I can't pronounce. Every review I write is a verbal trick to get the reader to jump to the music. Vladiswar has provided images better and more appropriate than I can create, and music I'd rather feel than describe. Go there and get past the feeling you have come to the New Age. Listen deeper. There are layers to this onion with something to say down the microscopic cornel. You will return to the illusion of reality refreshed. The snapping fingers will be your own.

author: Gerald Van Waes

Nadishana's second release starts with seemingly a few traditionals, ("Intro" & "Song of the Far Lands") as being more recognisably based upon real traditions, in a style recognisable for especially those countries that have that kind of folk music that was basically fusion and a crossover bridge between cultures (like in Turkey,..). The notes describe the music is an experimental fusion of Asian, African, European, Russian, Ancient Kuzhebar traditions mixed with experimental jazz and contemporary sampler surgery. “The recording method for this album was overdubbing”. Instruments used were mandola, dzuddahord, kalyuka, bansuri, zhaleyka, overtone flute, khomus, acoustic guitar, fretless bass, voice, various ethnic flutes and percussion, computer. The dzuddahord holds the middle between a sitar guitar, guitar and a sitar-like sound. There are also vocal experiments like on “Kuo Ke (an ancient Kuzhebar mantra)” combined with one computer deformed voice and a semi-acoustic electronic sound that fits and combines in overtone colour perfectly, highly original! (Kuzhebar refers to "a vanished Siberian tribe" to which Vladiswar often refers, with artwork, musical elements, dance and deeper ideas of movements, of which I don't know how much is scientific, fantasy or some interesting shadow image of an older memory transferred from a trance consciousness of information, with roots to at least real associations with the areas around Siberia, and how much is a great creative idea and how much goes even much deeper and is more harmonizing than that it only brings incomplete dream elements into a pleasant bridging to a complete conscious form in the area of true art on the edge of shamanic lead of deeper blending)°°. "Indian flood in Europe" starts with flamenco guitar, combined with and flute with tabla, and some multiple percussion colouring and moody bass. "Dance in a curved area" is a great mix of a folkdance played with the effect and talent of a jazz group.