Tag: new age

Paul Horn – Inside The Great Pyramid, 1976

I’ve been hesitant to share this record because I can’t tell if everyone already knows it—it seems a bit dadcore, and I think it sold a bajillion copies—but it’s something I keep reaching for when fall turns to winter, so maybe y’all will enjoy it. I mentioned Paul Horn in my post about Pauline Oliveros the other week, and have been appreciating it even more in light of her recent passing.

Paul Horn was a legendary jazz flautist, saxophonist, and composer, and considered to be a new age pioneer. Inside The Great Pyramid was part of his “inside” series, in which he recorded site-specific music in places of spiritual significance, oftentimes making him the first person to record music in those locations. In addition to sneaking a tape recorder into the Taj Mahal, he was the first westerner to be granted permission to perform in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, considered to be the spiritual nexus of Tibetan Buddhism. This was the first recording made in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and I think that most or all of it was recorded in the King’s Chamber right at the heart of the pyramid. The story goes that Paul began by hitting the large granite sarcophagus in the center of the room with the flat of his hand, which emits a resonant tone of 438Hz, slightly lower than an A. (You can hear this in the opening track previewed below.) Horn tuned his flute to that and improvised from there.

As you might expect, the natural reverb and room tone is arguably the most interesting part of the record. Horn is an incredible flautist, and he vocalizes a bit too, but the weight and air of the pyramid steal though show, especially given that the pyramid’s strong resonance was a deliberate feature of its architecture.

Raul Lovisoni & Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, 1979

Such a special record. Split between Raul Lovisoni, whose work I don’t know too much about, and Francesco Messina (there’s a track from his very strange and very good Medio Occidentale on this mix). The A-side is a 24 minute long synthesizer bath, with swaths of meandering piano on top (there’s definitely something harp-like happening too, though it’s not listed in the credits). It sounds like a hot spring in the wintertime, with synth pads acting as clouds of rising steam. The B side is two ~10 minute tracks by Lovisoni, both very different from the A-side and from each other. “Hula Om” feels markedly more “indoors” than Messina’s cosmic title track. It’s just a repeating harp motif, though at a few points you can hear bird sounds filtering through a window, something being dropped in the next room, clothing shifting around, and the creak of somebody’s knees, all of which feel fitting given the raw and warm spatial textures that bring three seemingly disparate tracks together. The closer, “Amon Ra,” also a Lovisoni composition, is mostly clear, ringing overtones courtesy of a crystallophone, with some sparse patches of vocal chanting. The embrace of truthful, unedited sound, both across the synthetic landscape of the A-side and the acoustic sparsity of the B-side, makes Prati Bagnati del Monte Analogo feel like a diary or a photo album: these are bare bones, beautiful songs as they happened, where they happened, and that’s more than enough.

Gail Laughton – Harps of the Ancient Temples, 1969

You might already know Gail Laughton from the inclusion of “Pompeii 76 A.D.” in the canonical I Am The Center compilation, or from the same track’s inclusion in the Blade Runner score. Alternately, if you’re big on 1940’s rom-com, you may have heard Laughton’s harp recording pantomimed by Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife—Laughton also instructed Grant in harp-syncing and apparently served as a body double for some close-up shots. Though Laughton worked in Hollywood and played on many cartoon and film soundtracks—John Wayne, Looney Tunes, etc.—Harps of the Ancient Temple was his only solo release, and a radical conceptual departure from his typical work.

Harps uses ancient sacred rituals, each catalogued by year and location, as jumping-off points for his neo-classical and heavily impressionist-influenced interpretations. “Japan 375 A.D.,” for example, seems to mimic a koto played in a Japanese pentatonic scale. Much of the record is exactly as pillowy and perfumey as you might hope for from a harp record that’s regularly slung around by new age devotees. Still, many tracks lean into dissonance and spin out ominously, building to what feels like like an unobstructed fall down a very long spiral staircase in the closing track, “Atlantis 21,000 B.C.” Lots going on here, but happily this works well for both active and passive listening. Fans of Joel Andrews will appreciate this, and similarly it’s cloaked in a dense hiss of room tone.

Osamu Shoji – Night Flight, 1979

Album artwork says it all. Exotica-tinged, phaser-heavy Japanese library music, with a whole lot of new age-inspired arpeggiation and sci-fi synth pads. All credits go to the very prolific Shoji, with a note that the Synthesizer “Space-Sizer 360” was invented and supplied by Noriyasu Fukuda. I can’t find anything about the synth or its inventor anywhere. Shoji put out a cool 39 records between 1971 and 1987, including what appears to be an entire album of Bee Gees covers–does anyone have this? I need it. Shoji also makes an appearance on our OMG Japan mix. For fans of Hiroshi Sato, Tomita, Joël Fajerman.

Joanna Brouk – The Space Between, 1981

My favorite release from the venerable Joann Brouk, considered one of the founders of New Age music, who studied under Terry Riley and Robert Ashley at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, and whose work you’re already familiar with if you’ve listened to the worldbuilding I Am The Center compilation.

Streamlined, super minimal, classically inclined ambient that avoids a lot of the ornamentation and explicit emoting of new age. Just chimes, synth, and piano. Leave it on repeat for a few hours.

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 3

Listen to my third episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio below. Zheng, classical guitar, dilruba, harp, violin, piano, tambura, flute, vibraphone, synth, lots of tabla, a bit of drum machine. Mostly instrumental, and hopefully well-suited for background music while working. Made this while it was raining; I think you can hear it. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Enjoy!

Tracklist:
1. Forrest Fang — Meditation
2. Luis Paniagua — Neptuno
3. David Sylvian & Holger Czukay — Flux (A Big, Bright, Colourful World) (Excerpt)
4. Francesco Messina — Fine Novecento
5. Vincenzo Zitello — Nembo Verso Nord
6. Kate Bush — Watching You Without Me
7. Toshifumi Hinata — Sarah’s Crime
8. Satoshi Ashikawa — Still Park Ensemble
9. Yoichiro Yoshikawa — Nube
10. Sth. Notional — Yawn Yawn Yawn

Forrest Fang – The Wolf At The Ruins, 1989

Big, big record. A Chinese-American violinist, Forrest Fang released this and a slew of other records on his own label, Ominous Thud. The Wolf At The Ruins was out of print for twenty years until it was recently remastered by Robert Rich and rereleased on Projekt Records.

I hesitate to call this an ambient record, as it’s dense and busy. Fang calls it a turning point in his sound, through which he began combining sonic palettes and recording methods in novel ways. Between traditional Chinese music, Balinese gamelan, synthetic textures, violin, zheng, yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer), bells, Terry Riley-esque tape delay techniques, and polyrhythms, there’s a lot going on here. Cosmic, ambitious, and occasionally gridlike à la Steve Reich, this reaches some incredible highs but arguably does not make for passive listening. Don’t sleep on this one.

The reissue includes two bonus tracks which are very, very good and which I’m not including here in hopes that you’ll buy the album directly from Projekt. Worth it.

Elicoide – Elicoide, 1987

The first of two releases from the mysterious Franco Nonni (keyboards) and Paolo Grandi (strings). They released a second album in 1990 with a larger ensemble (does anyone have this lying around?), and then Nonni went on to become a psychiatrist (cool reason to break up a band). This seems to get tossed around in progressive rock and jazz circles, though to me it’s neither. I’d call it squarely fourth world (cringe term), with a dip into murky synth drone (“Interludio con Dedica,” “Linfoceti”) and some moments of brassy baroque-isms (title track). For me, the album peaks at its bookends: “Mitochondria” and “Mitosi” are sublime, drawn-out meditations that build and bubble, leaning heavily on what sounds like a synthetic gamelan ensemble and smoothed out around the edges with strings. Ideal for fans of Jon Hassell, Yas-Kaz, and Hosono’s more ambient works. If it’s for you, it’s definitely for you.

Joel Andrews – The Violet Flame, 1976

As far as new age sound-healing records go, The Violet Flame is bare bones minimalism. No chanting, no reverb, no swirling synth arpeggiations–no synth at all, actually. Just harp and tape crackle. Feels more neo-classical than new age, but no complaints here: this is sprawling and warm, and to me always sounds like gold threads. Surprisingly multipurpose: works just as well by a fireplace as at a picnic, and I once had a really great day at the Cloisters with this. Update: thank you to Eugene for the much better quality rip!

Nobuo Uematsu – Phantasmagoria, 1994

The first (and from what I gather, one of the only) non-Final Fantasy release from legendary Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu. Alternates between candy-sweet synthetic puffs of new age, ominous baroque, and spoken word. The instantly familiar “Dogs on the Beach” belongs on Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast, the title track feels like a very tasteful score for a Tim Burton ballet, and of course, “Final Fantasy” is an even more (!) baroque spin on the video game theme, this time with harpsichord and vocals from the incredible Chinatsu Kuzuu, whom we’ll probably be hearing more from soon. Thanks for the tip on this one Mike!