In The Wire's best of 2015.
David Toop
Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul - Yanomami Shamanism, Songs
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Recordings from 1978 by David Toop of Yanomami ritual songs, shamanistic ceremonies, and rainforest sounds. The voices of spirits and animal familiars, ventriloquial illusions of sound in dark spaces, secret spirit languages, the clap of thunder that links shamanic trance with the sleep language of Finnegans Wake... Out of these passages of the everyday, intensity flares like flames caught by a gust of wind. Skin burns or oozes blood, the wind blows up havoc as the spirits move about. Both double CD and LP include 40-page booklet with text and pictures telling the full story of Toop's fascinating journey in 1978 through the Amazon jungle to meet and record the last Yanomami shamans. CD presented in six-page digipak. LP mixed by Lawrence English.
"Musician, writer and Wire contributor David Toop’s journey to the the Amazon jungle in the late 1970s resulted in an extraordinary set of recordings of shamanic rituals and psychedelic happenings by members of the Yanomami. The openended musicking captured in his recordings raised profound questions regarding personal identity, ecology and the boundaries of music and performance. Erik Davis said: “Toop’s recordings capture far more than song or even voice as the psychedelic Yanomami body is revealed as a collective multidimensional membrane of vibrating flesh.” TheWire Best Albums of 2015
