An Album Review, The Human Experience – Soul Visions (2013)

atm-humanexperience

David Block, who hails originally from Arizona, is a multi instrumentalist, electronic frequency landscape painter, and a whole-hearted believer in the mutual necessity of art and transformation. His main musical project, The Human Experience, has been one of my favorite discoveries of this year.

I first discovered The Human Experience at the beginning of this year at Cosmic Convergence, an incredible transformative festival held on New Year’s on the magical Lake Atitlan, Guatemaya. The sun was waking up to a brand new year as happy smiles were reverberating all across the grounds to music that was encouraging free movement to ooze out of our bodies. Keeping my eyes closed, I saw the vibrations enter my body and open my heart and body into acceptance and flow. As I opened my eyes I saw that everyone was just as elated as I was, traveling in their own world. A Journey we were encouraged to take illuminated by the conscious path created by beautiful compositions so intentional.

Every time I listen to his music, I constantly reenter this space. Wherever I am this music is always on me like a grounding/healing tool. It may be to yoga, to meditation, prancing around at night in the streets, dancing through the jungle, on my bike, at some homies chillin’…We gravitate towards the sound because we feel this fundamental Life frequency, familiar to the sacred geometry that creates us. The energy always becomes more positive, more introspective and more grounding than before. It is the Human Experience.

Since his debut year, 2010, David Block has released four incredible projects: Inaudible Sounds (2010), Harmonic Transformation (2011), Seeing is Believing EP (2011), and The Art of the Way (2012). Today Block will be releasing his fifth project, Soul Visions, in collaboration with a talented multi-instrumentalist duo from New Orleans, Rising Appalachia.

Soul Visions (art by Ryan Johnson)

Soul Visions is an incredible seven track album that continues to express the transformative art ideals mentioned above, but it is also an album that stands apart from all of Block’s previous projects in terms of sound. Block, a multi instrumentalist and primarily live electronic composer, joins forces with Rising Appalachia, a multi instrumentalist group primarily focused on vocal harmonization, traditional/tribal styled instrumentation, and the roots and soul derived from being a New Orleans native. Essentially, Soul Visions is the best of both worlds. Surreptitious snippets of beats placed with sexy basslines alongside beautifully tuned vocals, catchy lyrics, and rhythms created by the first and most ancient beat maker, the drum. Soul Visions is less psychedelic than his previous albums. It offers more pop and folk infused tracks that brings awareness more into the external. Because there are pop, folk, soul, and acoustic elements, there’s an accessibility to this album that wasn’t available before. I think it’s a great step forward, embracing a different formula at an important time of widespread consciousness raising, showcasing the diversity and musical boundary pushing that Block as an artist is able to tap into.

It’s not my favorite album of The Human Experience because I am much more into the psychedelic expressed in his previous works, but “Downtown” off of Soul Visions is definitely my favorite Human Experience track so far. Please go and support The Human Experience! He’s doing an awesome tour mostly at transformative festivals around the world. His Canadian appearances will include being at the Mod Club in Toronto with Vancouver’s Caravan Palace (as his awesome side house-ier project The Cats Pajamas) and at Open Mind Festival in Ontario. Check out his music below and send him some luv (All of his works are by donation) and support for all the good vibrations he’s spreading. Check out some of my fave tracks below. Bless and much luv.

The Human Experience – Mississippi (Soul Visions, 2013)