1. Oliver Shanti | Tang Xingqing Park
I was a 10th grader when I first heard this song. At that age I was mainly into hip hop, and this was the song to shake my hip hopish attitudes. Listening to this, I couldn’t tell myself anymore that I was the best, f*ck the rest. It simply functioned as a firewall against pride, jealousy, anger which are so popular emotional fuels over there. This song took me close to what Bruce Lee always told about Be like water, my friend…
2. Moby | Honey
Shortly after High School graduation, and after 1 year of listening only to cultural and meditational music from Africa, Tibet, China, and Middle East, as distinctive as he is, Moby was the first artist to reactivate my appetite for music which was played on MTV in that time. Songs from cultures I didn't knew, with vocal parts sang in languages I didn’t understand activated in me a 100% emotional approach to music. I no longer wanted rationally to form folders in my head, and try to attach to them. And this was the same thing that Moby's Honey was activating: feeling that I can't categorize Moby in one known style, made it easier for the song to reach my feelings, and not my thoughts. Wonderful mental process to witness...
3. Lamb | What Sound
In the following period, I was searching for more known western artists, and Lamb came as the second, after Moby. Her comming was in good timing. I think that if I would have listened to this song 1 year earlier, I wouldn't have understood that much of it. There I was, big hearted 19 year old boy who was for the first time seriously thinking about girls as emotional providers and receivers, and not only as desirable flesh. This song simply enforced the idea of soul mate, and stimulated my mind in such ways that I was dreaming about girls that... Prepare well... Saved me from difficult situations, ha ha!!! My mind sent me so many mating imperatives, that in not even 2 months I've found one girl to form a team with. Saw her on the streets, approached her, and transformed the approach into a 2 and a half year relationship. I’ve never met an artist to express the idea of passionate love, better than Lamb.
4. Afro Celt Sound System | Lovers Of Light
Gone studying Psychology, I thought I need to continue my Kung Fu practice, which began in my home town. As a student I've found Wing Chun, which is an unbelievable max speed martial art which in the same time is also very scientific, exact. I was watching some show on Atomic, some old music programme, and boom, this song hit me. As soon as I bought the CD, I trained hours and hours punching and kicking air in my room, while listening to this song.
5. Lama Gyurme | Offering Chant
When I was 20 years old I got in touch with Buddhism, and started to practice through meditating and reading a lot. This song was recommended to me by an opera singer. The instant I listened to it, I deeply understood the mental construct named compassion.
6. The Music | Getaway
No matter how much fame you want, how attractive you want to be, how many lovers you want to have or how much cash you want to make, in order to have a healthy relationship with these joy-providers, you need to contemplate the idea of impermanence, and in the end death. It's much easier when you're aware of the expiring date, otherwise you’ll drink the sour milk. Buddhism is very rich in describing death, I studied the unavoidable phenomenon with great interrest, and it helped a lot, 'cause when I was 21, my brother lost his body in a car accident. This song was one of the ones I used for getting in meditative mental states where I felt love like electricity, so I could send it to my bodiless brother in order to ease his transition. Very very powerful song, when you think it was written by people which were only kids at that time.
7. Eagle Eye Cherry | Desireless
But one song which made me comfortable with the idea of my own possible death, was Eagle Eye's Desireless. This still is one which I wish to be played when I take off from this life. It gives me the feeling of ease, so that I could imagine leaving all behind in an unattached but grateful way, taking only my luggage with all the experiences saved in my mental data base.
8. Eskmo | Cloudlight
When I first listened to dubstep I wasn’t attracted much, but Eskmo showed me new ways of making it. Just jump into this song, wash your ears with it, it’s fluid, the broken ice sounds, the bubbles, the human breath, the whispers, everything combined takes you back to the primal womb, my friend.
9. Psychofreud | Run For Cover
I like to observe my own mental processes when I listen to music, but I also like to put my body on turbo sometimes. If I had the chance to time travel and bring music to our ancestors, let’s say 30.000 years b.C.... I don’t think that they would feel Beethoven, would they? Not even the annoying sentimental mainstream mating music would they feel. So, when I listened to Psychofreud, I knew: This is it! The Neanderthals would definitely react well to raga drum’n’bass. Go back, just hunt, go gather, go fight for females, mate, raise kids, build houses, somehow this music expresses survival and mating, the 2 main jobs our ancestors had back then.
10. Four Tet | Parks
This guy is a mind lubricator. I mean, I’m also a very sociable person, and like to drink beer, and dance to energetic music along with hundreds of others sharing nothing but joy. If I would hear this song at a party, the before described scenario would feel superficial. It makes me connect with a part of me which feels so timeless, so pure, but so common in the same time, somehow undestructable. As if I was a kid not once, but thousands of times. It makes me go back through my ancestors with unimaginable speed, and wonder how far can I go? Darwinism is one theory, may be the ape, but it may be not. I travel even till the point when the Earth was only forming. This song makes me wonder if this is our planet's first shape, or were it’s main ingredients already grouped in other ways, other planets, with other life? How old are my raw ingredients which form the body I drive? I like to imagine these ingredients dancing in the Universe along with other particles, dusts, lights, where everything is a giant soup, where the basis of this life parties.
