"New Age Music", search and destroy.

Gown Control mixes are amazing (I am through Volume 3 and Sunpath are blowing my mind. Thinking about picking up the two tape set. Loved the Planetary Pleasure track on the first one, downloaded the whole tape and found it a little different (more Christian hippy dippy amateur harmony vocals over Joseph Byrd style experiments than I was expecting) but pretty charming none-the-less.

been listening to those sunpath cassettes on Apple Music ("yasimin and the snowflake dragon" and "sunpath 2") and yes they are marvelous

Sunpath! Where has this been hiding?! Beautiful stuff.

It's weird to me that there isn't a book about this scene--its origins, politics, most famous practitioners--by now. Surely someone is working on one? If one exists, can anyone point me in that direction? A few years ago I had a book from the eighties that was sort of "who's who" of new age, and it was enlightening enough (if dated), but was more a 'guide' in the Trouser Press sense, with an alphabetical listing of artists and short, paragraph-sized spotlights on particular high points of the respective discographies.

This Sunpath stuff, I just want to reiterate, is great, btw. Almost in a too-good-to-be-true way, like it could be a hoax or something. Any way it could be a hoax or something? Kinda weird that the only link on Discogs is to this 2016 "reissue"

There's an interview out there with the guy who made it: https://www.stonesthrow.com/news/2016/05/sunpath

Well, yeah, but that could just be someone's dad or something in that photo! It wouldn't take a great amount of effort to just have someone pose as this guy in phone interviews and then provide a picture of some rando guy who looks the part.

Let me be clear: I am in no way suggesting this is a hoax, only that it would be funny / neat if it was, and would not diminish my enjoyment of it whatsoever. You have to admit, though, the fact that Google turns up no info at all on this guy before 2016 is somewhat suspect, given that even the most obscure shit (even obscuro new age tapes - see the many blogs) has at least some web presence.

"Sonic Seasonings" (1972) by Wendy Carlos must be one of the earliest ambient/new age albums in existence?

sunpath interview is awesome

i'm really digging the sunpath, thanks. esp. the song "gá te", particularly the passage from about 18:00 to 19:30. wow.

i realize it's silly to isolate a brief section from a 30 minute song, but it enters into a true magic zone there

the fact that Google turns up no info at all on this guy before 2016 is somewhat suspect

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ZOsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=%22Jeff+Berry%22+sunpath&source=bl&ots=lR6-kW8oxb&sig=PI-Qk9SV1XRSTW4ykYAktxVGDr4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj036-Zg8HSAhXEg1QKHZrZAuA4ChDoAQg7MAY#v=onepage&q=%22Jeff%20Berry%22%20sunpath&f=false

Whelp I guess that answers that. I find the fake lost recordings phenomenon/marketing to be a little interesting as I'm not sure if most cases the music wouldn't be just as warmly received without it (Unknown Krautrock and Stefano Loprato spring to mind).

I agree. There was a metal band a few years ago called Velvet Cacoon who (iirc) were exposed as some sort of phonies, but the records they made are still great imo. See also: Marvin Pontiac

xp Yeah, good sleuthing! Still, crazy that that's what you turned up. It's crazy that something in this day and age can remain so (almost) completely off the grid.

Wasn't the Jurgen Muller 'lost' album from a few years ago famously a hoax?

Absolutely.

Lovely mix:

https://soundcloud.com/heavybreathingarchive/the-entrance-to-creation-sacred-gems

When I click show all messages in this thread, Chrome blocks the page and warns that www.technodisco.net is an attack site. I'm guessing there's a message with some embedded dodgy code/links? All I wanted were some blissed-out Aquarian vibes...

I put a note in to Mod Request

nice stuff on that mix

http://iasos.com/artists/chandler/
https://www.discogs.com/artist/561784-Geoffrey-Chandler

Word on FB from mutual friends that Geoffrey Chandler has passed. Only one album in his discography but that one helped define the entire genre. We need a cleaned up remaster of it very very badly.

idk about the first track but otherwise SEARCH: Remote Dreaming by The Ghostwriters, from 1986. absolute bliss. basically sounds like the album title + the cover illustration

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zfQ-_EIeWc0/VezZ6hojGnI/AAAAAAAACrw/TMdAO1NlpfI/s640/R-3802176-1352461788-6287.jpeg.jpg

CALM ENERGY CHROME

Mu-Psych Music!

i lived long enough to see this dollar bin record get a fancy new vinyl reissue that will probably cost you about 25 bucks with shipping:

https://www.discogs.com/Jon-Hassell-Dream-Theory-In-Malaya-Fourth-World-Volume-Two/master/33904

also came here to say that this album is awesome and should cost you about five bucks now so don't wait for the 30 dollar reissue in ten years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=275&v=oHgek1ufoJI

when the hell what that a dollar bin album, the early 90s???

what=was

well, yeah. i'm old. i just meant nobody really wanted it until internet era.

ha yeah it's kinda quaint reading the beginning of this thread. "who the hell listens to this stuff? why?"

It’s totally not worth a search but just want to mention that in my city every adult seemed to have only 3 new age artists in their collection and they were always the same: Enya, Spyrogyra and Secret Garden. Era was also huge but that was in the new age revival attempt in the late 90’s. Were “Ameno” and “Misere Mani” as huge in the US or Europe? I know they were also huge in France. Here in Mexico they would play in the hits radio every single day. And both Era 1 and Era 2 were selling like hot bread and would be featured in the top 10 of every fucking music store you entered.

“Misere Mani” is actually a guilty pleasure of mine... I feel it would be an awesome song with better production it makes pop with gregorian chants work better than they should.

spyro gyra are a jazz group, yo!

or like, when jazz-funk started to stink. some of their early stuff is nice, though

Oh you’re right! Tbh I’ve never listened to them I just related them to new age because they were popular around the same time and the same audience as new age consumers.

Re: Ghostwriters, I've been wondering what you can say about Charles Cohen these days. He made some really fantastic synthesiser music. One of those tracks is on the A Retrospective compilation.

new age fans might be into the other spirogyra though. especially first wave new age fans who went from art/prog rock to new age.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkSFlJubQU8

the few obits i've seen for him have definitely been somewhat awkward xp

Xpost is fuzak kind of a suburb of new age? I think it is

ha yeah it's kinda quaint reading the beginning of this thread. "who the hell listens to this stuff? why?"

― brimstead

see also grateful dead thread

UK-centric ILX had some weird blind spots, see also Tom Petty

there was definitely a different more specific ethos going on

not that i'm disparaging this thread! i actually think the early posts in this thread is some of ilm'n at its finest

Pauline Anna Strom compilation on RVNG is fantastic

Björn J:Son Lindh - Transea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xRV0RoBSNE

i'm ticked that peter davison's "glide" (which is a good record) has all sorts of hipster newage cred (though the rest of his extensive discography is completely unknown) while douglas adams' "light rain" languishes in unheard obscurity

Traces from 1985 is nice

(davison album)

I’d be surprised if that one had hip cred because it’s really ummmm 80s Folgers commercial-ish? Idk how exactly to describe it, just a really warm unpretentious un-cosmic vibe.

I’d be surprised if that one had hip cred because it’s really ummmm 80s Folgers commercial-ish? Idk how exactly to describe it, just a really warm unpretentious un-cosmic vibe.

― brimstead

you say "folgers commercial", i think "incest"

William Aura ‘Half Moon Bay’ is a stellar Saturday morning listen

I've been listening to this a lot:

https://soundcloud.com/soundsofthedawn/sounds-of-the-dawn-nts-radio-december-7th-2019

Has anyone heard anything else by Klaus Wiese? He seems to have released a lot of albums.