lest we forget our origins:

so i just realized that 4KS recently had its 5th anniversary. ridiculous. to celebrate the occasion, i wanted to re-post a classic 4KS post regarding our old pal sauce and the boys of astra. enjoy.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

"spiritual harmonics"

the following is taken from the january 26th edition of the flagpole. this excerpt speaks to astra's preternatural apperception of cosmic forces:


Claiming the influences of devotional texts such as Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching as well as those of philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung, Astra embeds a sense of spirituality in its music. "Most of the things I write are meditations on those scriptures, pretty much," says Tracy. "I don't think it's necessary to give everyone in the band those chapters to read for them to understand the song. For me, there's that element. I think we all agree music is a pretty serious thing, it's a kind of alchemy, it's a way to understand yourself, the cosmos and reality."

When the band is practicing or performing, Tracy likes to envision a musical mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit word that represents circle, polygon, community and connection; in Tibetan Buddhism, mandalas are images or pictographs that are to be contemplated during meditation. There are many different ones, each with lessons to teach, and they are the source of much inspiration for Tracy.

"There's always so much detail in the mandalas," he says. "So much energy and information is contained within them that you know you could stare at it for a long time and never fully get everything from it. Sometimes when we're playing and we're playing really well, that's when I feel like we've hit that mandalic transcendental state where we could just play and play for hours without ever getting exhausted."