Dan Webb, the Australian composer and producer now based in Singapore, completes a line from the Tao Te Ching with “The Self Watches Their Return,” out October 30th. The title comes from the passage about the ten thousand things rising and falling while the Self watches them return, which Webb splits across two consecutive tracks. “Things Rise and Fall” carries the first half, and this single is its resolution. It is an instrumental the press notes describe as calm and meditative, close to spiritual jazz with downtempo psych-rock leanings. A deliberate groove from drummer Clive Deamer (Radiohead, Portishead), bassist Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie’s Blackstar) and percussionist Nate Werth (Snarky Puppy) sits beneath spacey electric keys, while Nicole McCabe (Louis Cole) improvises freely on saxophone. According to the notes, there is no verse, chorus or bridge, only two keys in dialogue from start to finish.
This is the kind of song that begs for a guitar solo, but one that can only be played in one’s imagination. The song invites meditation on abstract concepts, and with how rich its sound is, the stimulation is like a guided trip. This is the kind of song that you will refuse to believe was just three and a half minutes after it’s over, because it contained so much musical nuance. It really is exactly what you would expect from such an amazing all-star cast, but it will also break all of your expectations because it is unlike anything else.
It is the final single before Lion Dance, Webb’s fifth album, arrives on November 13. The record was shaped by his move from Melbourne to Singapore and by Buddhist and Taoist ideas about death and rebirth, and within that cycle this track is meant to be the contemplative calm at the centre of the wheel, the arrival after rebirth. With the album following just two weeks after the single, listeners will not have to wait long to hear how the rest of the story fits around it.
