Tristan Welch has been creating atmospheric post-rock guitar music in the DC area for many years, under his own name, work that is both comforting and disruptive, extravagantly experimental and starkly minimalistic, in line with his exploration into modern life, culture, and even American politics. Recently, it turns out, he has taken a more spiritual turn with his music, focusing now more predominantly on his Buddhist faith, and shedding his government name for the appropriately titled, Sutras, on his perhaps not-so-common quest for enlightenment.
His first release under Sutras, entitled “A Lotus Like Mouth,” doesn’t steer away from his previous work sonically. But though a frame may not affect the painting when it is changed, the title of a song (or a project) significantly alters its feel and the reception, especially with instrumental music, like Welch’s. “Sutras,” it is somewhat common knowledge, are Hindu laws or Buddhist scriptures, Eastern tenets to live by, and the lotus flower is one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism. The sutras (and the lotus flower) are things to meditate upon, in order to transcend, and Welch’s latest piece (the video has burning incense to begin it) are meant to aid you in your meditative practices, he has said leading up to the song’s release.
Buddha was fabled to be born in a lotus flower and, after his death, his relics were stored in a lotus bud. The lotus, which has roots in the mud but has beautiful, unsullied leaves above the water, is a well-known spiritual metaphor for growing through the muck and pain of life into an altered, enlightened state, through the transformation of the mind. Religious practice in Buddhism is often accompanied by a kind of music created by “chakra singing bowls.” The resonant guitar notes in Sutras’ song, for me, recalls this reliance on vibration and sustained tonality, which works to aid the mind’s focus and relaxation.
The music, like the sutra before them, relies on a certain simplicity of character—a distillation of truth, a clarification. Though Welch’s title, in good form, invites a bit more complexity to the picture. How can we enlighten, bring purity, through our mouths, through our words, (or lack of words), it begs the question. As creatures of metaphor, it is an aid to visualization and realization, to equate something “holy” like the lotus with the mouth. In the wonderful track art, the lotus in the mouth looks like something almost alien. How much different must our lives and our speech be, from what we equate with normal, to be walking faithfully in Buddhist tenents?
And so instead of meditating on the exorbitant prices of dental work like on his album Capitalist Teeth, or the weighty expectations or disappointments of our immediate family on his album Ambient Distress, this track guides us into new, decidedly spiritual, meditative territory. I always leave a track from Welch with something to chew on in my mind and feel afresh in my heart. It will be interesting to see where Sutras goes and how the new context for music will affect what and how Welch will communicate. We’re all on a spiritual path, like it or not. Sutras and their new track act as an aid towards a better world and a better version of ourselves.
Prism Reviews 