Breakup record. Concept record. Covers record. Comeback record. As listeners and critics we’ve got an informal list of genres that we use to understand music that go beyond jazz, rap, vaporwave. In light of Radiohead’s recent reissuing of their two post-fame experimental albums Kid A and Amnesiac, let me add one more: Bardo record: an album (or song) that speaks to spiritual wandering between death and rebirth.
What’s the Bardo?: "Bardo" in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is the state of existence between two lives on earth. After you die, your consciousness sheds its physical body, and you pass through different stages of transformation. The Bardo Thodol, commonly known in the west as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, teaches readers how to navigate these stages. The text can be used as either an advanced practice for trained meditators or to support the uninitiated during the death experience. One of the first tracts of Tibetan Buddhist writing to be translated into English, the Bardo Thodol found new relevance during the counterculture movements of the 60’s, where the Leary school took it as the foundation for guiding psychonauts on LSD journeys - you weren’t just on a drug trip, you were on a spiritual quest to higher consciousness.
Takeaway: Death and rebirth can be about your physical body, your mental and emotional state, your spirit, or even your pop music career.
On that note: here’s four musical works for the Bardo file that reflect how artists have navigated fame, power, creativity, and their own inner psychic landscapes in times of spiritual death, wandering, and rebirth.
David Bowie: Low (1977)
The OG alien rock star, Bowie infamously bottomed out in the mid-70s while living to excess in Los Angeles, experiencing a kind of personal and artistic death, and then decamped to Berlin to reimagine his own creative destiny with the help of Iggy Pop, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. Low is the haunting diary of an artist navigating his own Bardo note by note. It’s worth noting that in Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era, an alien visiting earth is a messianic moment, full of ecstasy and possibility. By the time we get to the era of the Berlin Trilogy and Bowie’s starring role in the Man Who Fell to Earth, the figure of the alien lost on a strange planet has become the spiritual wander par excellence—in other words, we’re all aliens here.
Guns N’ Roses: Estranged (1991)
This post was inspired by a stray comment by my good friend Alan Hicks in a convo around an upcoming Sound Machine podcast, namely that Guns N’ Roses’ epic rock mini-opera Estranged was like a song from the bardo, as if Axl was a ghost, dead to the world around him, and seeking transport to another life. More on this on a special upcoming podcast episode on the haunted and haunting inner psychic landscape of William Bruce Bailey, aka Axl Rose.
Radiohead: Kid A Mnesia (2000/2001)
1997’s OK Computer changed popular music, and also forever altered the lives of Radiohead’s five band members. The new trajectory into the celebrity stratosphere wasn’t always a thrill ride: as documented in the tour film Meeting People is Easy, fame became its own sort of soul-deadening prison. Radiohead responded by attempting to jettison the guitar-centered alt rock of OK Computer and set out into the creative unknown across two records worth of material. The songs on Kid A/Amensiac reflect themes of alienation, existential disorientation and paranoia, haunting ballads and electronic emanations from unreal places as Radiohead push forward into strange, foreboding territory without a map. Tracks like How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, In Limbo, and Like Spinning Plates set the stage for 21st century Bardo music.
Kanye West: 808’s and Heartbreak (2008)
In the bardo, you will change, cast aside your earthly form, and pass through deep emotional tumult. You may take on new guises. On 808’s and Heartbreak, in the wake of deep personal loss, Kanye West became a robot—a very sad robot (one should explore further the trope of the sad robot in popular culture). To confront his feelings, Yeezy threw away the sample-heavy backpack rap that made him famous, and took up Autotune to tell the world how he felt, reflecting a truism from the world of theater and performance: sometimes it’s only by wearing a mask that we can truly be ourselves.
Did you miss the launch of the Sound Machine podcast? Don’t worry, it’s right here on Spotify. Hit the follow button to catch upcoming episodes—lots of a great stuff coming soon!
My new piano piece Spirits Calling is now live, backed with ambient piece called For All the Fucked-up Children of Harold Budd—listen to them both here, as well as my lockdown ambient album Eight Postcards.
This week’s rotation: