Nissan ‘Innovation for Endurance’ with Tara Stiles
NBC Weekend Today
Fox Business
NY1
EarthRise SoundSystem
Boston Globe
In a rebuff to the New Age soup into which some “yoga music’’ degenerates, these songs subordinate electronic effects to the live instrumentation, which is thick on bass and rich with traditional percussions and complex rhythm schemes that reward repeated listening.
Yoga International
New York studio musicians Derek Beres and Duke Mushroom seamlessly mix Thievery Corporation-style dub beats with original guitar, violin, and tabla recordings into something far beyond the syrupy mess that typically passes for “yoga music.” By deploying traditional Sanskrit chanting alongside Hebrew vocals, they call to mind pioneering world music groups like Dissidenten. Even if you believe that yoga should be done in monastic silence, this is still a great chill-out soundtrack for after practice ends.
Spinner
Let’s face it: For many of us, when paired with “music,” “yoga” is a four-letter word. That smug serenity! That bland New Agey-ness! That indiscriminate, dilettantish plundering of sounds from cultures for the sake of seeming “exotic” and “spiritual!” “Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!” is not an effective mantra. Well, would you feel better with something more like this?
LA Yoga
If you’re looking for an album to aid your Yoga practice, here is something to believe in. The Yoga Sessions, a compilation of tracks inspired on and for the mat, is the integration of Yoga and music in its finest form, especially when considering the track record of the minds behind the creation.
EthnoTechno
Listening to The Yoga Sessions has made me realize that maybe I’m just a stick in the mud and should ease up, let down my guard and accept that anything that gets our fat asses away from the TV and the computer to get down on the ground and stretch is a good thing.
MTV Iggy
Yoga lovers watch out. The music you know, love, and have ‘ohm’ed to will be shaken (not stirred) and revitalized.
Global Noize
Don’t let the fact that Derek Beres & David “Duke Mushroom” Schommer have called their debut album, “the Yoga Sessions” fool you. This beautiful mix of dubby global textures and soulful pop influences may very well be the perfect soundtrack for your Yoga practice (I wouldn’t pretend to know)-but this project certainly transcends any one usage.
Chicago Now
The Yoga Sessions by EarthRise SoundSystem has mastered the balance of being able to go from yoga practice to iPod to chill evening with friends no awkward transitions. From yoga instructor and DJ Derek Beres and producer David “Duke Mushroom” Schommer, The Yoga Sessions is Thievery Corporation’s amazing Mirror Conspiracy album meets dubby electronica and global beats that has something for all your moods.
Perceptive Travel
The production is “light up your headphones” stunning, with a rich fullness that sounds even better on a cranked-up stereo system with real bass. There are real instruments throughout too, not just a bunch of bleeps and beats. This is not the kind of crap your massage therapist puts on to set the mood, or something your hack yoga teacher brings in to try to make you think you’re in Haridwar instead of Houston. This is good music that fits a mood, not mere mood music.
Sound Against Flame: The Process of Yoga and Atheism in America
PopMatters
Given his frequent emphasis on direct, individual experience, Beres would no doubt be delighted to inspire such exploration. After all, he ends his book by reminding us, “When you take full responsibility for your actions and stop letting dreams of cosmic schemes influence decisions made, there is no longer any quest for liberation. No one else can free you from yourself”.
Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music
NPR, Day to Day, 10.12.05
What does the dance club scene have in common with Sanskrit teachings, yoga or the poetry of Rumi? Derek Beres explains in his new book Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music. The book chronicles electronic music from the 19th century through to the present day, and also references writers such as mythologist Joseph Campbell and futurist Alan Watts…Beres points out in the book that the trance-like effect on the dance floor has much in common with ancient music forms such as Sufi Dervish, Native American ceremonial chants and the rhythms of Africa, a spirit Beres wants to return to…With such a diverse subject matter, Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music is not a book about music alone. It’s about a growing worldwide community that’s searching for shared experience without politics or corporate involvement. And it could fill many different slots on the bookshelf.
PRI, The World (12.19.05)
Some call it mashing-up. Others call it remixing. Derek Beres calls it global beat fusion.
Newsday (8.21.05)
This subpopulation of international electronica is the focus of Global Beat Fusion (Outside the Box/iUniverse) a new book by Derek Beres, a music journalist, yoga instructor and deejay. Beres takes a Joseph Campbell-like comparative look at various cultures, then discusses the semi-underground patchwork of musicians who are using this often-sacred music for dancefloor kinetics. He then explains why that combination is not as incongruous as it might seem at first glance…
Global Rhythm (October 2005)
Longtime GLOBAL RHYTHM readers will no doubt recognize author Derek Beres as the former Managing Editor of this very publication, and his first book reads like a culmination of his many years working in the world music realm. Global Beat Fusion is a very personal meditation on the convergence of music, technology and faith in the global marketplace. In his own inimitable style, Beres weaves these divergent strands together through a series of portraits of movers-and-shakers in the world music industry. From interviews with artists like Cheb i Sabbah, Ojos de Brujo and Karsh Kale, Beres posits that electronic musicians worldwide are creating a new global mythology by translating traditional and sacred musical forms into digital formats. His interviews with various managers, publicists and bookers build up a portrait of the industry as it is today, while prognosticating what the future might hold in store, both for world music and, quite possibly, for the music industry as a whole.