Priscilla Ermel – Origens Da Luz

Picture the delight of meeting one of the most interesting people you’ve ever encountered, spending an impromptu afternoon with them over a long cup of coffee, picking their brain and exploring the intricacies of their mind. That’s what the first listen of Priscilla Ermel’s Origens Da Luz feels like — but if the coffee is ayahuasca. An all-out immersive trip into the prismatic caverns of Ermel’s psyche, her work between 1986 and 1992 exudes the spirit of vicariously experiencing her travel memories and her affinity with the rainforest.

Raised in São Paulo, Ermel started young with cello and guitar but, yearning for something more than contemporary European classical music could offer, left the concert halls to explore so-called universal music. Also an anthropologist and filmmaker, she spent time living among Brazil’s indigenous populations.

Ermel’s search for knowledge informed and reinforced her compositional craft. Her studies with a Taoist master, for example, is reflected in her music’s pace, which moves with the feel of Tai Chi. Over time she accumulated a deep collection and knowledge of traditional instruments, which she merged with a passion for field recordings and a love of synthesizers and analog sound technology. Origens Da Luz is a compilation drawn from four albums Ermel released between 1986 and 1992. Its textures seem to reflect the natural world, the universal fire within, the bond of tribal togetherness and a collective mystical dream state.

– Lauren Fay Levy

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