don robertson: celestial ascent

If his 1969 debut album, Dawn, offered a magical ethnic sound from an 80-string guitar-zither, American multi-instrumentalist Don Robertson's 1980 follow-up, Celestial Ascent, uses the Austro-Germanic instrument as a viaticum for a timeless journey into the depths of the soul and psyche. The album was originally released as a cassette, and this is its first reissue since then. Traditionally designed to accompany the singing of psalms in religious communities, here the zither is the perfect way to explore the power and the formal purity of the natural pentatonic scales of eastern derivation, investigated by Robertson in New York City at the end of the '60s. According to the same respect for the cosmic rhythms also found in Indian ragas, the album is divided into two parts: the first side ("Oracle of Love") is the music of the day, while the second ("Isis Unveiled") is the sound of the night. "Music for Elevation and Transformation" with an extraordinarily peaceful effect and a holistic and transcendent approach that aligns it with other investigations of the sacred sound, like those of Stephan Micus, Paul Horn, or Deuter.