Eight arrived on August 8, 2008, a date that suits an album with that number for a name. It runs to eight tracks, and the symmetry looks deliberate: a small, contained body of work, released on a day that reads as a pair of eights. Eight is also the shape of the infinity sign standing upright, and for a musician whose life's work is about circling, returning, and slowing down, that is a fitting frame to hold the record in.
John de Kadt is a musician, poet, and storyteller. For more than 25 years he has told ancient myths from indigenous cultures and mystical traditions, approaching story as ritual and ceremony. He calls that practice DrumStory. He is also a founding member of The Rememberers and the creator of BlessFest. Alongside these, he is known as a kirtan leader.
Eight belongs to the musical side of that practice. Released in 2008, it came well into his decades of storytelling, which means it is not the work of a newcomer finding his footing. It reads as the output of someone for whom sound, story, and ceremony were already one continuous activity. Listen to it as one room in a larger house rather than as a standalone statement.
I can't tell you every instrument on the record, and I won't pretend to. What the artist's body of work tells us is that De Kadt plays an array of percussive and melodic instruments from across the globe, and that his guiding impulse is to return listeners to "the tempo of nature." That is the best lens for approaching the album's pacing and mood.
Expect a human-scaled sound rather than a produced spectacle: hand percussion and melodic instruments that breathe, a voice that serves as a storyteller's and a devotional singer's at once, and tempos that invite you to settle rather than push you forward. The mood is meant to be unhurried and attentive. If a track feels slow, that is the point. The record asks you to match its pace instead of asking it to match yours.
I'm not going to name individual tracks here, because I don't have a verified tracklist for Eight, and a guide that invents titles does the listener a disservice. What I can offer is a way to find the signature moments yourself, using the album's eight-track length as a map.
- The opening track. On an album built around slowing down, the first minutes do the most work. Notice how long it takes before you stop waiting for something to happen. That moment of surrender is the album's real entrance.
- The middle of the record (tracks four and five). Here, a compact album tends to deepen. Listen for where the rhythm becomes hypnotic or the voice shifts from singing toward something closer to telling.
- The closing track. A devotional set usually lands its final piece as a release or blessing. Pay attention to how the silence after it feels compared with the silence before you began.
Once you've listened, the tracks that stay with you are your signature tracks.
De Kadt's work sits at the meeting point of several lineages: kirtan and devotional call-and-response, oral storytelling, and the sacred-arts world that BlessFest celebrates. The album is not a strict traditional recording in any one of them. It is better understood as a contemporary practitioner's offering, drawing on devotional forms while rooted in the idea that sound can function as ritual and remembrance. If you know kirtan, you'll recognize the intention: music as a vehicle for presence rather than performance. If you know ambient or meditative music, you'll recognize the patience.
This album is for the listener who is tired in a particular way, the kind of tired that comes from speed rather than from work. It will land for people in transition: after a loss, at the end of a demanding season, or at the start of a practice they want to build. It suits those who already sit with kirtan, yoga, or meditation, and equally anyone who has never done any of that but feels the pull toward quiet. If you need drama, hooks, or momentum, it may feel too still. If you need a place to put your attention down, it may feel like relief.
Listen in the evening, once the day's obligations have genuinely ended. Use headphones or a good speaker in a room with soft light, and put your phone out of reach. Play the album straight through in one sitting; at eight tracks, it is short enough to honor as a single arc. Don't multitask. If you have a ritual practice, such as lighting a candle, journaling, or sitting in meditation, let the record frame it, beginning with the first track and ending when the last one falls silent.
Then stay quiet for a minute before you reach for anything else. That minute is part of the album.
