Transporting Salt by Spiritczualic Enhancement Center

Spiritczualic -- "cz" borrowed from the Polish "tʂ" or hard “tch” -- a word-melange of “ritczualic” and spiritual, reflects upon the ancient practice of musical ritualism. As an idea, it predates the physical occurrence of the Enhancement Center on Christmas in 2017, when an Ottoman building below the Gates of Jerusalem provided itself for a remarkable meeting. They were synchronized by state-of-mind, rather than tune or scale, and began exploring sonic sessions of do-it-yourself mysticism.

Transporting Salt bears the fruits of their first attempt to develop this practice live, imagining the Enhancement Center as an ongoing outer-national collaboration. Drawn from Russia, America, Iran, Israel and Germany, six musicians found themselves hosted in Prague, Berlin, Vienna and Hamburg. For each of these sessions, culminating on the Spring Equinox in 2018, they were joined by a local bass player they hadn’t known before.

Imagine something you might hear accompanying an hallucinatory Paul Bowles story: a spiraling, psychedelic epic from the early-days of electrified jazz. It traverses barren swamps, evaporating amidst asymmetrical waves of guitar and drones of homemade electronic feedback. Full of constant movement and growth, with distorted keys and Zither waiting patiently to appear for their parts. Naive children of Riley and Reich, Spiritczualic Enhancement Center offer a serpentine hike up the “Wisdom of the Idiots” trail, with the gravity of their emerging ritual as its mineral essence.

Featured in Free Form Freakout's Favorite Music of 2020
Staff Pick at the Attic (March 2020)

"Though officially based in Berlin, Spiritczualic Enhancement Center’s home is the globe itself. This transcendental jazz band features members from the U.S., Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Russia, each lending elements of their folk tradition to form a universal sound that defies regional distinction. SEC’s work floats on single-chord drones, weaving spooky threads of melody around syncopated beats. It’s meditative stuff, but more introspective than relaxing. Played in the background of your daily routine, Transporting Salt can make the mundane surreal." -Bandcamp Daily

"Really cool stuff." -The Avant Ghetto

"Really, really strong..." -The FFFoxy Podcast

"A chiller for uncertain times." -Tabs Out Podcast

Drums: Nicolas Sheikholeslami
Percussion: Faani
Qanun: Yael Lavie
Guitar: Æladin
Keys: Omri Shmulewitz
Homemade electronics: Sasha Lee

Bass guitar provided by The Outernational Artist Association...
Hamburg: Carl-John Hoffmann
Praha: Vojta Kubec
Wien: Clemens Miggitsch
Berlin: Yonatan Levi

Artwork: Dima Rabik
Calligraphy: Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson
Layout: Etkin Çekin

All tracks recorded live during the Discourse With A Hermit tour (March 2018) at the following venues:
Golden Pudel, Hamburg (4,6,8,10,11)
Punctum, Praha (9)
Rhiz, Wien (2,3)
Arkaoda, Berlin (1,5,7)

Live mixing...
Hamburg: Kristian Jakob
Praha: Pavel Štěpánek
Wien: John Norman
Berlin: Goh Nakada

Mixing & Mastering: Nicolas Sheikholeslami

Tracklist

1.	On The Way Back From Wadi Rum	6:27

2.	Want Him to Hear That	7:19

3.	Das Ende	4:29

4.	Where Is My Palm Leaf?	4:16

5.	There Was Nothing But The Swamp	5:55

6.	The Impossibility of Trying to Repeat Something Unplanned	5:57

7.	Beware, Trains!	8:20

8.	The Hajj of Mansa Musa	4:33

9.	Dreaming of Miles Davis	6:22

10.	Transporting Salt	10:39

11.	Divide By Two	3:52

Credits

released February 2, 2020

License

CC BY-NC 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.