Genre: House/Mid-tempo Year: 2003 Country: USA Official Site: Ananda Project Details: Tracks & Audio Label: King Street Sounds
It takes a remarkably incredible sound to impact numbers across the world, but "Cascades of Colour" immediately upon release became the track used to invoke the most emotion out of a set by a world's fair of top DJs including Tenaglia, Digweed, and Deep Dish. Its producer, Atlanta based Chris Brann never intended to create Ananda Project, yet the house community wasn't willing to let such a song be the end to what ended up a beautiful beginning.
I first found Ananda Project on Finnish DJ, Jori Hulkkonen's Helsinki Mix Sessions. There was a track that haunted me with its exquisite assemblage of house, jazz, soul, and tribal, its organic melody staying with me until I fed myself more with their debut Release, which grandly lived up the almost unbearable hype of "Cascades of Colour".
Ananda Project is the type of music that makes a bad stereo system sound good, the type in which people stop to ask you what's playing, it's house music for those who claim no interest in the genre, it's music that makes you dream. The incredibly soulful singers that Brann brings in again on Morning Light, such as Terrence Downs whose smooth vocals encapsulate with eerie reminisce to all that is good in 112, a voice that's in the same room as you with a closing of the eyes. Such a deep sound that he pumps into "The One", a song that you can only wish to reproduce as beautifully in your head. Heather Johnson, a voice that carries an internal rhythm that can stand up to it's accompanying dozen orchestrated melodies. Also bringing in Nicola Hitchcock, (formerly of Mandalay) whose ghostly voice amazingly matches the sharply hypnotic tones in "Can you Find the Heart".
Ananda Project puts forth an engrossing production of thoughtful and sparkling aspects of electronic, house, tribal, jazz, and soul. Meticulously planned clarity that paints a calming and euphoric landscape in your mind, it'll bring you to nature when you're stuck within industrial walls, it'll bring you to peace in times of pressure, it'll soothe you into music-listening oblivion. "It's like comfort, it's like love… it's on an island, it's that explosive thing that gets you…" (Kiss Kiss Kiss), Morning Light puts time in slow motion, an underwater immersion of languid sound, reminding us why emotional connection to music is what reaches our souls via our ears.
Ananda Project Morning Light
