Sheila Chandra, The Zen Kiss

Album of the Week, September 12, 2026 Following Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices, Sheila Chandra continued her exploration of voice and drone, of the interconnections between breath and thought, of voice and listener. She noted in the original liner notes to The Zen Kiss, “My last album … illustrates crossing between different musics within a single vocal line. The Zen Kiss has moved on. The structure of my songs have become more challenging now that those connections have been absorbed into my sub-conscious.” What results on this 1994 album is a set of vocal performances that range from meditative drones to traditional songs to vocal experiments, that range from British folk song to Indian raga to soul music to kannakol vocal percussion, sometimes all in the same performance. Even more than Weaving, the album is a solo performance, with only producer Steve Coe adding drones. As before, Chandra recorded in a Bristol studio and mixed the album at Real World Studios. But with all the…