Deep Peace
A Review of a remarkable new LP recording, by Frank Perry
This record is a long awaited recording of the meditative percussion music of Frank Perry, whose musical equipment consists of 400-year old Zen Buddhist Densho bells, Ming dynasty Chinese temple bell, various Kyeezees (Burmese meditation gongs, none less than 50 years old), Japanese and Chinese bell trees, Chinese Buddha gongs, Burmese chime bowls, Chinese gongs, Paiste orchestral tuned gongs and symphonic gongs, Paiste sound-plates and sound-discs, Tibetan, Indian, Swiss, Japanese and Chinese bells, Tibetan invocation cymbals and meditation cymbals. Quite an array!
It is impossible to do justice to this ‘music for meditation’ through words, for the experience is in the music itself. Suffice it to say, that on hearing ‘Deep Peace’, it is as if the whole world, and not just the human ear, stops to listen and comes alive to its subtle vibrations. The music conveys the experience of another dimension of reality hidden beyond ‘outer’ form, so that the vibrations of its sound resonate with and invoke a response from the natural vibrations that live around us – the music of the spheres. In the LP’s accompanying booklet, Frank Perry states that “…the Sun and Moon principles, which form the basis of this work, are each dependent one upon the other in their inseparability; being here representative of the Eucharistic Christian Sacraments.”
The cover of the record depicts a beautiful mandala by Frank, representing the planet Jupiter and the title is taken from an old Gaelic prayer: “Deep peace of the running wave to you. Deep peace of the flowing air to you. Deep peace of the quiet earth to you. Deep peace of the shining stars to you. Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.”
So wrote Bill Anderton (editor) Solunar (Mind, Body & Spirit magazine) June 1981