Auracle
by Maneki Neko

Auracle is meditation music at it's grandest. Maneki Neko is the name used by Al Mikula, who composed, performed, and engineered all five tracks. There's somethng about this music that goes beyond words. The instrument used is a Computer Based Sound Designer, Sampler. The main influences for this soundscape are Robert Rich, Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, and Steve Reich. You will also be reminded of Patrick O'Hearn and John Serrie, if you are familiar with their works.

Al Mikula was born in Hawaii and has lived in Iceland, Russia, and other European countries. Auracle shows some of these influences, although it may be best to listen and meditate without a pre-defined notion of what to look for. You'll get images, that's for sure. The feeling I have is that there is nothing to look for, just vast experience of more of what we are. This moreness or fullness of being engages our curiousity about what really is to be found beyond words or thoughts. Auracle doesn't encourage us to analyze or compare or define it's dimensions. It does encourage us to see our fear-based experience from an unbounded point of view; to travel on equal ground through cells of our bodies or through anything that we meet in our worlds; to discover an idea of peace, an idea of ourselves that has direct experience to this moment.

Play Auracle with massage, yoga, meditation, eating, tai chi, planting seeds, writing a poem, or walking slowly along a stream in Spring. Heh! No limits. You can hear samples of all the tracks at www.manekinekomusic.com.

~ reviewed by Ron Rudin

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