Album Review: Ben Lee - Ayuhausca, Welcome To The Work

Ben Lee has been enlightened. There's this ancient cleansing tea from the South American jungles that, after making you throw up and experience hours of intense hallucination, is meant to impart a spiritual awakening. The tea is made from the “vine of souls” or Ayahuasca: Welcome To The Work is the Sydney-born pop singer's ode to the vine and a musical translation of his mystical experience.

Welcome to the House Of Mystical Death starts off with panting breaths layered into a beat like hyperventilating beat boxers and his experimentation makes this the most exciting track on the cut. After the breathy intro, tension builds up to an explosion of ethereal choirs and a host of post-production hums and dings, perhaps reminiscent of a burst of colourful delirium.

The more lyrical songs on the record are interspersed with cinematic instrumentals like the gentle Meditation On Being Born or the dissonant terror of The Shadow Of The Mind whose repeating piano motif and eerie buzzing distortions leaves you floundering halfway between dream and nightmare.

In The Silence is the closest Lee comes to a standard love song and it features co-creator of the album, Jessica Chapnik Kahn who sings all the female vocals. Lee wonders aloud, “If I open my heart/ where does all my pain go?”, and his voice projects the same indie-pop nuances that we've come to expect. But musically, Ayahuasca is a definite departure from the beaten path and Song For Samael, a traditional-sounding hymn to the angel of death, perfectly encapsulates this new reflective and abstract sound, featuring an explosive hand-drum percussion solo towards the end.

Lee describes “the work” as our constant and ongoing process of self-discovery and for those who haven't experienced Ayahuasca first hand, he delivers a prayer book of devotion from an inspired disciple teetering on the edge of delusional hippy, high on South American tea.