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| Ta Wil Remember | 
 enlarge | Artist: C.o.t.a.
Category: Music
List Price: $14.49
Buy New: $14.48
You Save: $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
EAN: 4038846700040
ASIN: B000CSUN7A
Release Date: December 13, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: sealed
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| Tracks:
| • | Blood and Soil | | • | Dark Reaction | | • | Ismaeli - C.O.T.A., Khayyam, Omar | | • | Ta' Wil | | • | Song for the Fifth World | | • | Spiritual Warfare |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
music for revolutions
Album Description
Ta'Wil contains 6 tracks that are nothing short of a 100% masterpiece. For this album, the project created an extremely dark mood with mystical atmospheres, and of course, tribal/ritual rhythms. Ta'Wil is an absolutely essential release if you're fond of dark soundscapes!
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| Customer Reviews:
Weird.... but remarkably good. October 3, 2000
I bought this CD on a whim. The case looked cool and there was obviously a lot of time put into it, so I figured it had to be half-good. It's classified in stores as "gothic" but to me sounds very mystical. It's soothing and disturbing at the same time... I like that. Don't buy this CD if you expect heavy-metal thrashings or aggro riffs. It is mostly composed of instrumental sounds that are very melodic, haunting, and peaceful . I give it five stars for being original, talented, and intriguing.
A Quiet Apocalypse March 2, 2005
I'd seen the album described as a "ritualistic and tribal classic" and that was the hook for me, because I'm on the lookout for good dark meditation and/or ritual music and a group with "Apocalypse" in its name whose music is described as "ritualistic and tribal" sounded like one I'd like to hear. And once I heard the samples on the group's web site, I knew I was right.
The album begins by immersing the listener in the sounds of the outdoors. "Blood and Soil" conjures a landscape of birds cackling, flutes oozing gentle songs, half-heard words, a tribal chant, someone slowly strumming an acoustic guitar. It's slow and steady, yet feels solid, as if the recording is taking the listener on a trip down a slow, muddy river. Birds sings in the trees, branches and vines hang down in the water, and voices drift in from the villages.
With "Dark Reaction," the album slides into a different direction, moving somewhere darker, perhaps into the forests. This track features more electronic elements, dark space music, backed with a slow tribal beat that begins like a slow heartbeat or stamping feet, gradually building into a dance. One can easily visualize a group of tribal people dancing around a fire, faster and faster, letting the energy of the universe flow through them and back out again.
"Ismaeli" seems to go to an even darker place. Perhaps it's because it's somewhat hard to completely grasp the heavily-filtered vocal track, clearly a recitation of a poem about "the Garden of Paradise," but the track has a creepy edge to it.
...The garden is well-watered by streams,
Shaded by trees.
It is full of luscious fruit
and sweet-smelling plants...
The words are coming out of the dark, from a place of great power, and that power is not necessarily aimed towards the good. The words of a god or a dark priestess, a prophetess, her voice possessed and unearthly. Eventually the voice fades and the song moves to percussion and sounds of water, almost as if the song is cleansing itself of the dark elements.
The title track, "Ta'wil," is another dark piece, dominated towards the beginning by a deep voice over bells which are decidedly not Jingle Bells. Perhaps the bells are possessed by demons, or simply hanging in a dark place, moved by unclean winds. From here the song moves into an exotic, Middle Eastern flavored instrumental, sounding at first like music to accompany a journey, but towards the end like a medium-tempo, very intense dance.
"Song for the Fifth World" is purely instrumental, with electronic and acoustic instruments creating a sonic landscape that, for someone carrying out a ritual or doing a meditation, can turn into anything. One can picture a harrowing journey up a mountain top or the flight of an eagle over a waterfall. I can easily picture somebody stretching or doing Yoga to this music.
The final track on the album, "Spiritual Warfare" is full of drama, like a movie soundtrack. I picture clashing armies, cities in ruin... perhaps the Apocalypse? (It would fit the band name, after all.) Dark clouds gather, lighting strikes, and there is no mercy as the song lurches forward through mud. In fact in one section of this track, I got the impression the music was dragging and finally realized that in a way, it sounds like either a techno track or a hip hop back beat slowed way down. Later on it speeds up, until at long last, it fades away.
With that Ta'Wil is complete. There are only six tracks, but since they range from seven to fourteen minutes each, the disc definitely constitutes an album. The lengthy tracks are another reason the CD makes such outstanding music for use in rituals and meditation; the tracks are long enough that one can carry out a lengthy visualization or ritual without any abrupt changes in tone. The music is also ideal for such use because it's largely voiceless, human voices confined to droning, chanting, whispering, and reciting bits of poetry, without lyrics to complicate things. One can simply let the mind roam through the worlds of sound.
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