How Tritonal’s PRAANA Created “Musical Medicine” With Their Transformative Debut Album

by Michael Ryan · Published November 21, 2023

PRAANA's debut album has finally arrived, and it’s bound to sweep you away with its celestial sound, a captivating take on progressive house.

PRAANA emerged from a shroud of mystery, revealing themselves as a new artistic endeavor from the minds behind the renowned trance producers Tritonal. The project has taken on a life of its own throughout the past five years, ultimately leading to the release of Supernal Dawn, a big moment for the duo.

Supernal Dawn is a showcase of PRAANA's distinctive blend of melodic complexity and energetic rhythms. Each track embarks on a blissed-out journey, enchanting us with warm, bubbly textures and pensive melodies.

The album's collaborations stand out as highlights, bringing a fresh melange of voices and styles to the forefront. PRAANA have carefully enlisted producers and label-mates like Klur and Modera, as well as a swath of gifted vocalists to help craft the sonic palette of Supernal Dawn, among them Julia Church, Ed Graves, Kuala, Danni Carra, Dolly Rae and Anna-Sophia Henry.

With its mesmerizing sound design and thought-provoking lyricism, Supernal Dawn is a stunner. Tracks like "Sanctuary" and "Breathe In (Rest In Beingness)" are as soothing as they are attention-grabbing. Cuts such as "Mojave" and "In The Blue," on the other hand, are perfectly crafted for cathartic moments on the dancefloor.

PRAANA's transformative Supernal Dawn album marks a new era for the alias as well as the progressive house scene at large. In an exclusive interview with EDM.com, Chad Cisneros of PRAANA discussed their intentions behind the album, creative process and what’s next for the duo.

EDM.com: Can you tell us about the decision to launch PRAANA, given the success you've had as Tritonal?

PRAANA: Totally! First of all, we have a lot of gratitude for the Tritonal project and our journey together there. That being said, creatively we began exploring sounds that were much more subtle, more centered around mindfulness and clarity of mind, softer and vibrational healing.

We wanted an artist project that could be single-pointed around musical medicine and was in total alignment with our paradigms and worldview. Creating a project that was in sympathetic resonance so to speak with our spiritual practices felt artistically authentic and natural. We created PRAANA and it's such an exciting new project!

EDM.com: Can you share some insights into the creative process behind Supernal Dawn? What inspired the album?

PRAANA: Well, the album was inspired by the feeling of Bliss which comes from resting in our most natural state of Beingness. For me personally, I experience this daily in meditation.

Exporting the feeling of deep joy into PRAANA is an absolute pleasure. It's such a flow to work on this sound and creatively exhilarating to create music that can be enjoyed in so many different environments.

Creatively we hosted a few songwriting camps which were catalysts for many of the tracks on the album. During those camps which were hosted in London, we wrote Lullaby, Sanctuary, Breathe In, etc. The instrumentals for this album use analog synths primarily, Dave’s Novation PEAK being a go-to!

EDM.com: Supernal Dawn features a wide array of vocalists and collaborations. What was that collaborative process like, and how did these artists’ own stories influence the album's direction?

PRAANA: Writing with Ed Graves, Julia Church, KUALA and all of the other performers and songwriters not already mentioned was so much fun! Personally, I love songwriting sessions as it gives an opportunity to really dig deep into the essence of what's being transmitted lyrically speaking. This is where PRAANA truly thrives as we’re crystal clear on what our message is overall and what we’d like our music to mean to the dance community as a whole.

EDM.com: How would you describe the progression from enigmatic and mysterious PRAANA to its present form? What led you to reveal yourselves as the artists behind the project?

PRAANA: Well I must say that the first three years of making PRAANA music without anyone knowing it was us was truly a blast! It gave us a space of creative freedom initially that was nurturing to the project.

PRAANA was able to find its musical feet without the glaring critique of Tritonal fans or anyone for that matter who has an opinion about Chad and Dave. This was very healthy for us. We were able to experience what it's like as a new artist again and that was very humbling. It gave me a lot of gratitude for all we’ve achieved and a lot of respect for all of the artists out there right now working extremely hard to make their way in the music business.

After three years of secrecy, we had written quite a bit of music, including Supernal Dawn. We love this sound, we love this music and we want to perform it live for the PRAANA fans. The idea of wearing a mask or attempting to remain secret any longer felt silly. We knew it was time to reveal ourselves and having done that now, it's been quite magical to hear the response to the project and to the album.

EDM.com: The album is rich in emotional themes. Could you shed light on how you interpret its story and the emotions you aimed to convey?

PRAANA: It's rich in emotional themes as well as rich in spiritual and metaphysical overtones! Ha! We truly wrote Supernal Dawn in the spirit of it being musical medicine. By that, I mean that music is a vibrational transmission of emotion and can be used with intentionality as a catalyst for healing and alchemical transformation of trauma and distortions of mind.

Lyrically speaking we use interpersonal relationships as a model for inner healing as well as poetry and metaphor. Musically speaking we wrote chord progressions, bass lines and synth riffs that feel warm, soothing, and hypnotic. We have a tendency to produce records full tilt, habits born from the Tritonal project, so challenging our tool kit and constantly revising things was one aspect of our artistic curriculum with PRAANA. That is still an ongoing challenge, one that we truly love.

EDM.com: You've had several sold-out events already and are gearing up to embark on your first headline tour as PRAANA next year. What can fans expect from your live performances, and how do you plan to bring the Supernal Dawn experience to the stage?

PRAANA: Up to this point, we’ve only ever DJed our music at events. That is going to change with PRAANA. We are knee-deep into conceptualizing and performing the PRAANA set with hardware, synths, MIDI controllers, et cetera. It's a challenge for us as we’ve never performed this way and we’re very hopeful that we’ll be successful in this endeavor. As I type this, it's all still under construction!

EDM.com: With the success of Supernal Dawn, what are your future plans and aspirations for PRAANA, both in terms of music and your impact on the electronic music scene at large?

PRAANA: We’d love to continue writing PRAANA music and we’re also very ambitious to continue to build Colorize Music not only as a label but also in the events space. We’ve been hosting a few Colorize showcases so far and they’ve done great—continuing to build and expand that space for Colorize Artists is important to us.

We’re launching a new arm of PRAANA called PRAANA SHAKTI, which is literally musical medicine. It is meditation music; musical technology that can accelerate one's meditation/pranayama practice into deeper levels of transcendence. We’re using binaural frequencies, solfeggio frequencies and overall just writing very slow, nurturing, meditative music which can sometimes be a type of support used in Dhyana. I’d personally love to see yoga practices such as Asana and Pranayama be an aspect or component of Colorize events in the future alongside teachers, lecturers, philosophers and thought leaders who can supplement the musical aspect with other nourishing modalities of collective synergy.

PRAANA are gearing up to embark on their debut live tour across North America, performing in a dozen cities with support from Estiva, Klur and more. Take a look at the dates below and grab tickets here.