The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask "Healing Termina" 14:32

LXE makes a welcomed return with a take on Majora's Mask's "Song of Healing" that is both deeply intimate and stunningly expansive. The artist was initially moved by a sound bath, a psychoacoustic immersion exercise: "I am always fascinated by different musical genres and was recently struck by inspiration after doing a sound bath after a yoga session. I started learning about sound healing [...] I thought that I might be able to tap into that style of sound creation to tell the story of Majora's Mask using the 'Song of Healing' as motif." The artist invites the listener to place themselves in a quiet room and participate in a reverberating journey.

I will say plainly that I adore this. The arrangement here is dynamic to say the least; the artist did a fantastic mastering job. The first and last sections almost make me feel like I'm eavesdropping in a large, candlelit room. There are many sustained notes throughout the track's fourteen minutes that are packed with rich, swirling harmonics. On first and second listen, I caught myself holding my breath more than once, trying to hear as many of these undertones as I could before they dissipated. Feeling waves of sound swell and recede as the timbral qualities of wood, metal, and glass seeped through my headphones was an incredibly engaging experience.

The piece is just as effective thematically. Judge pixelseph writes: "It's not often I get to hear a piece shattered and scattered to the winds and hear it reconstructed in almost-real-time by the places it lands." I share the sentiment. Time and time again, this piece evoked the wordless documentary Baraka in me. In it, director Ron Fricke visits dozens of global locations with no narration and almost no sound beyond composer Michael Stearns' ambient score. LXE, to me, has made a mini-Baraka, touching on the different locales and cultures of Termina using different explorations of Koji Kondo's solemn melody. This will end up on a shortlist for me. Patient, deliberate, and refreshing, this is an invocation. A nuanced, powerful, and truly transcendent piece of art.