A talented singer from the West who discovered her inner passion for yoga as a young visitor to Mumbai, Padma Previ is the best sort of New Age music artist. Never straying too far into either the earthly or purely spiritual realm, she offers a hand on either side of the veil, mixing down-to-earth vibrancy with crystalline beauty, the music of a true dweller on the threshold, a trickster dancer in the flame who brings earth to sky and sky to earth. Goddess Chants functions as a heart-soothing backdrop to one's earthbound life, organically steering its listeners to their inner centers of calm, while still (sort of) rocking out on occasion.

That rocking out you can hear best in sinuously, slow, and gyrating jams like "Ganairindrasya," a heady mix of Indian, Middle Eastern, and—if you let your headphones take you deep enough—1970s Western rock flavors. Deep bass, psychedelic sitars, crashing cymbals, and fading echoes of Gobi desert winds provide the Bolero-style backdrop for the sexy and mystical vocalizations, which are Previ's unique gift to the world. Under the knowing third eye and ear of producer J. Deere, the sound is full and rich throughout the soundscape. (He got his start producing Australian didgeridoo music, which is renowned for posing challenges in bass reproduction.)

Similarly sexy is the opening track, "Om Shri Rama," which carries Previ's vocals into your speakers on an ornate caravan of moog synths, buzzing tamboura, and drum cymbal thunder. This relatively devotional chanting gives way to a more Westernized melody with "Om Shrim Swaha," which opens on an eerie, childlike melody. Gradually, layers of Previ's vocals slide in as glittering shadows in the dark, and the gongs and cymbals keep crashing, keep breaking up the inertialike accrual of ego and obsession. What Padma Previ has on Goddess Chants is one anklet-adorned foot in the genuine mystic, the raw archetypal energy that precedes symbols and language—and one without. With the help of some friends, she opens the doorway into our own possibility and hangs there, waiting for us to cross over or back when we would like, comforting like a mother, beguiling like a lover, and yearning like a seeker of the truth beyond all these illusory differences.

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"Om Shri Rama" "Om Shrim Swaha" "Ganairindrasya"

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