There’s a kind of minimalist, ambient music that never strays far from a simple two-chord structure, even as it coasts over numerous inner land- and seascapes on pillows of floating clouds. It’s the kind of music that makes you feel safe and glad to be home, while you watch the rain out the window and think about all the places you’ve been and how they’re now a piece of home too. Face it, you’re a wanderer. Even if you have never left home, German instrumentalist Deuter has your number. Born in the small village of Falkenhagen, he’s been wandering the globe, following his musical bliss for decades. In his beautiful, blessedly minimalist Spiritual Healing, Deuter creates emotionally cathartic magic with only a few sparse piano notes and breathing synth drones, patiently layering them, slowly and imperceptibly, to create vast sacred spaces for his flute to fly in, helping tracks like “Warm the New Dawn Sun” deliver the warmth its title implies with rolling melodies echo! ed by the soft clatter of gongs and bells.
The tracks on Spiritual Healing traverse a wide range of territory, as in the rolling beauty of “Lavender Fields,” while staying high enough in the clouds that you never really have to look down if you’re just in the mood to coast on your cloud and soak up the sun. “Dawn Mist” sums up that sense of travel and also landing, making the ephemeral nature of reality apparent and grounding you to something deeper as minimalist minor-key piano notes, gently breathing drones, singing bowls, and the almost subliminal rush of water combine to create a calm and secure space to unravel your tangled layers of self.
In deep meditation, one can sometimes sense the great motion of stillness, the waking from the delusion of permanence to the feeling below your base chakra that you’re on a spinning globe orbiting a fireball as it rockets through nothingness. Deuter’s music works to counter the dizziness this feeling can create, creating a countermotion, allowing us a final look back through the mirror. A mom rocking her child slowly to sleep creates the same countermovement effect, and the way Deuter’s music slows the pulse and gently coaxes our most sacred and vulnerable selves to come out and look around makes Spiritual Healing the next best thing to napping in the arms of a loving giant parent on a bench in the cosmic playground of the spirit, a place in which we are all still infants, resting up before the next leg of our unending journey upward.
Daily OM
