CARDINAL is a sonic journey played on the Hindustani slide guitar, featuring percussion, electronic beats and poetry. It is crafted to be listened to from beginning to end, in a progression from original to traditional and back again. The album is a musical livication to the musical traditions of the world, especially Bharat India. The purpose of the recording is to provide encouragement and refuge and that the feelings of ease and wholeness seep outwards into our worlds around us.

Now which way to go? In a time when minutia and detail pulse through fiber optics and saturate the air, we find ourselves retreating to a more easily fortifiable position: the cardinal directions. North, South, East and West. There is an order from which we can again draw our strength and renew ourselves. To wash clean of so much marketing and captive scrolling eyes and face the east in the morning and the west in the evening. To travel back and forth along ancient corridors of movement; invisible to us but still used every day by our furred and feathered co-inhabitants.

Purity is to be reduced to earth and soil again. Corruption is the vain attempt to subvert the cycle. It's not "cut and dry", I know, as I traveled first west to reach the east and in my endless pursuit of good weather driving south landed me north. But this firewood, I cut and it's drying. And these skills I have been honing, these ragas I have been courting and this tradition which has folded me in...

I just have to give thanks. Give thanks to the North. Give thanks to the South. Give thanks to the East. Give thanks to the West.

Most readily, I give thanks to these small birds who allow me to feed them on the porch. A clue to another way of being: can we give and sustain life instead of only taking it away? Can we renew habitat instead of paving? As night gives way to day and again to night, oh great Spirit, wonderful mother Earth, almighty God, so end our ignorance and increase goodness everywhere. credits releases February 7, 2025

Hindustani slide guitar played by Joel 'Veena' Eisenkramer.

All instruments, programming, voices and compositions by Joel Veena EXCEPT:

Track 3, 5 & 6 feature Mir Naqibul Islam on tabla Track 4 features Jasdeep Singh on jori Track 6 features a composition by Pt. Alok Lahiri Track 8 features the voice of Vidhi Salla

All tracks were recorded and mixed by Joel Veena, Root Cellar Sound Vermont USA EXCEPT:

Track 3 recorded at Rift Studios NYC, New York USA Track 4 jori was recorded by Jasdeep Singh, UK Track 5 & 6 recorded by Ken Kuter, Omega Institute, New York USA Track 7 recorded by Matthew Hall, Guilford Sound, Vermont USA

Mastered by Tom Hutten, Bionic Mastering Vermont USA

The album art was painted by Anca Ioana Boștină

With deep gratitude to: Vidhi Salla, Pt. Anirban Dasgupta, Matthew Hall, Wendy Redlinger, Antti Vahteri, Francie Marbury, Stu Fuchs, Peter Eisenkramer, Marcia Hylan, Dan DeWalt, NL Dennis, Mir Naqibul Islam, Jasdeep Singh, Ken Kuter, Kanchan Kalra, Gordon & Jeanne Korstange, Gray Zabriskie.

Produced with generous support from BROC Community Action Vermont's EMBRACE grant program