PGM 376: HIDDEN SANCTUARY 4

An meditative ethno/tribal/organic ambient mix inspired by indo-pacific panoramas.

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM-EP-SINGLE
00:25 / K Ambient Sounds / Enchanting Atmosphere / Enchanting Atmosphere
10:12 / Jarguna / Garden of the Mantras / Prospettive Animiche
18:08 / Kenneth Hooper / Forest Temple / As the Crow Flies
24:12 / Chronotope Project / Tonglen / Chronology
34:27 / Frore & Shane Morris / Hidden Meaning / Ochre
40:45 / Qeight, Translippers / Invisible Birds / Invisible Birds
46:08 / Kristina Bennett / Beauty Bowls / Shakti
50:00 / Alio Die & Lorenzo Montanà / Crystal Revelation / Dialogue of Water

PGM 363: DESERT VISIONS 3

A spacious organic ambient mix inspired by arid landscapes.

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM
00:25 / ELEON / Dreamcatcher / Hidden Kingdom
06:55 / Frore & Shane Morris / Formations / Ochre
12:35 / Deborah Martin & Erik Wøllo / Kinishba / Kinishba
17:45 / Blue Is Nine / The Echo of Ancient Footsteps / Ubiquity
23:05 / Solitaire / Nocturne / Nocturnes & Fearless
26:30 / Desensitized / Immortals and their Graves [Sacriligonus] / Chaos in Premonition
33:40 / Steve Roach / Australian Dawn (The Quiet Earth Cries Inside) / Dreamtime Return
39:38 / City of Dawn, Sherry Finzer & Karasvana / Walking Within / The Journeying Sun
43:22 / Chronotope Project / Solar Winds (remix) / Chronology
52:12 / Hollan Holmes / Primal Instinct / Sacred Places

PGM 341: BIOTIC WORLDS 5

A luminescent mix of organic ambient electronics.

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM-EP-SINGLE
00:20 / Ascendant / Bioluminescence / Elemental Air
08:00 / Desensitized / Mutations of the Highest Order [MOTHO] / Chaos in Premonition
15:45 / I-One / Persian Coast / Persian Coast
18:55 / jarguna / Spore and Dust / Neogene
25:35 / Frore / Algae Bloom / Biome
34:05 / Isostatic / Deep Roots / The Forest Abides
40:00 / Hinterland / Obsidian / The Glass Shore
45:50 / Alio Die & Lorenzo Montanà / Dark Water Swinging Lights / Dialogue of Water
51:15 / Hollan Holmes / Changing Course / Emerald Waters

Journeyscapes DJ Set: Ancestral Winds 5

An organic ambient chillout mix inspired by relics of the past.

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM-EP-SINGLE
00:20 / Joseph L. Young / Secrets of Stone / Into the Unknown
05:15 / ELEON / Epic Journey / Hidden in Time
11:07 / Michael Stearns / Life in the Gravity Well / Planetary Unfolding
17:39 / Chronotope Project / Eidos, Realm of the Forms / Gnosis
27:46 / I-One / Hypnotizing / Hypnotizing
33:34 / Eguana / Forest Journey / Dialectics
37:36 / Lorenzo Montanà / Bloom Rain / Descent
43:36 / Erik Wøllo / All the Way / North Star
49:35 / Rusty Crutcher / Pythia’s Trance / Oracle of Delphi
55:14 / Meg Bowles / Cave of Secrets / Pilgrimage

Album Review: Connections by Sherry Finzer

Review by Lissette Cascante

Phoenix-based, classically trained flutist Sherry Finzer has received many accolades and awards for her musical contributions primarily in the relaxation/meditation genre. Her branding encompasses the use of a collection of low flutes, including alto, bass, and contrabass flutes, as well as a variety of Native American-style and world flutes. Often wind instruments are mixed with sacred chants, ethereal sounds, natural and other ethnic arrangements to create her soundscapes. Sherry has recorded, toured, and performed with a variety of accomplished artists whose collaboration has also influenced her unique sound and style. She has released over twenty-seven solo and collaborative albums and numerous singles.

Sherry’s latest solo release, Connections, was inspired by the legendary American flautist Paul Horn who was a pioneer of world and contemporary instrumental music as well as a practitioner of transcendental meditation. Sherry is a firm believer in the power of music to aid in the healing process. Connections is a fitting title for this album given the uncertainty of the current times we are living in; many have suffered isolation, illness or tragedy and are yearning for the support and strength which comes from being able to share and connect with others.

After starting to livestream on the Insight Timer Meditation App in 2020, Sherry began connecting with thousands of fans and followers who shared testimonies of just how much her previous recordings, and her livestreams, were helping them through the grieving process, letting go of stress, improve sleep, or aided in lessening their physical pain. She wanted to share her gratitude and have this recording be about her listeners. All songs on the album were either created in memory of loved ones who have passed, or for someone who currently uses Sherry's music as part of their daily therapy or healing regimen. The flutes used were selected by the participants – each person selecting the flute that resonated with them most.

The album’s seventeen tracks take the listener through a continuum of healing sound and light. The first track “Resilience” serves as the impetus to elevate us to that higher place above our cares, and concerns. The song titles speak to us of familiar comforts like nature, water, new days, blessings, peace, journeying, coming home, connecting, and communing with Spirit. With each subsequent song one can cast off all encumbrances, negative energies, and unhealthy emotions.

Caught up in the gentle whirlwind of her flute sounds and melodies, one feels a sense of release and weightlessness, like a boundless floating experience. The experience is so blissful, like the end of a massage therapy or stretch/cool-down session, you’ll wish, as I did, to remain in that state indefinitely. Perhaps why some listeners say they listen to Sherry’s music 24/7. How wonderful that Sherry chooses to use and to share her musical talents with the world as a channel to bring comfort, relief, and much needed healing.

Connections is the third solo flute release in Sherry Finzer's "Naked Flute" series recorded at The Tank. Her music can be heard under her name as well as her groups Majestica and Evenfall on various international radio programming, international airlines, and overhead music channels.

Besides composing and recording, Sherry is the founder and CEO of the Heart Dance Records label featuring musicians from around the world with a mission of creating music for peace and wellness. She is also founder of the Higher Level Media promotions company, as well as one of the three founding members of the Mindful Music Association. Sherry live streams weekly on the Insight Timer meditation app.

~Lissette Cascante for Journeyscapes Radio

For more information please visit Sherry Finzer's website. Connections is also available at Bandcamp, Amazon, and more.

Journeyscapes DJ Set: Cave Light 2

An inner space journey into organic / tribal ambient soundworlds!

TIME / ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM
00:25 / Frore & Shane Morris / Agape (feat. Mark Seelig) / Horizon
10:50 / Jarguna & Ryuzen / Dragon’s Tears / Kitsune
17:05 / Rudy Adrian / Moa Caves / As Dusk Becomes Night
20:35 / Byron Metcalf / Seasons of Shifting Recall (feat. Erik Wøllo) / Rhythms of Remembering
29:10 / Kelly David / Palione / Illusive
38:15 / Brannan Lane / Unknown Origins / Lost Caverns of Thera
42:40 / Chronotope Project / Myth of the Cave / Gnosis
53:45 / Deborah Martin & Jill Haley / Indian Heaven / The Silence of Grace

Journeyscapes DJ Set: Biotic Worlds 4

A luminescent mix of organic ambient electronics!

ARTIST / TRACK TITLE / ALBUM TITLE
The Orb / Valley / Orbvs Terrarvm
Loren Nerell / Return to the Temple of the Frog / The Gong Prophet
Jarguna & Uzbazur / Black Vapor / Sublimation
Jose Padilla / Solito / So Many Colors
Forrest Fang / Tale of the Egret / The Book of Wanderers
Erik Wøllo / The Presence of Future / Recurrence
Biome / Return to the Source / Essence

Album Review: Hemispherica Portalis (Portal of 1000 Years) by Desensitized

Desensitized is the musical duo of Deborah Martin and Dean De Benedictis whose collaborative debut album Hemispherica Portalis (Portal of 1000 Years) was released on the Spotted Peccary Music label in the fall of 2020. Comprised of 7 compositions spanning over 75 minutes, the music is accompanied by one of the most visually stunning and interpretive album artwork designs that I’ve seen in recent memory, courtesy of Daniel Pipitone. Additionally, Hemispherica Portalis was mixed by fellow Spotted Peccary Music resident Matthew Stewart and mastered by Howard Givens at the label’s studio in Portland, Oregon.

As someone who’s enjoyed Deborah’s and Dean’s previous individual and collaborative works with other artists, I was immediately intrigued upon learning sometime back of an upcoming collaboration between the two, particularly since the stylistic flavors of these two artists are quite distinct from each other. Deborah’s sound tends to occupy a more ethereal realm influenced by new age and world music leanings that often explores cultural, mythical and earth-centered themes. By comparison, Dean’s music (which also includes his works under the project name Surface 10) is overall darker, more experimental, industrial and alien with often glitch-like minimalist beats. And yet together these two have created a lushly hypnotic masterwork wherein the signature hallmarks of each artist merge seamlessly to form a new element like perfected alchemy.



Right from the opening title track one is immediately led through a deep exploration of fluidly freeform and blossoming patterns that seem to musically interpret varying biological metamorphosis and photosynthesis from an immersive, microcosmic perspective. Observational yet sensational in nature, familiar yet abstract aural textures paint a surrealistic dream-world that is strangely idyllic and beautifully bizarre. Shaped throughout by bioluminescent soundscapes that are distinctly electronic yet feel very much organic, the compositions move through simultaneously aquatic, biotic and mechanical sound environments that convey a strikingly vivid alternate reality.

Recalling at times the ambient classic Orchid by Ishq, Hemispherica Portalis offers a similar sonic immersion along with the hyperreal imagery it evokes. Easily one of the most stunning albums of the year, it's not only sure to remain a standout on the Spotted Peccary label but hopefully results in more collaborations between these two brilliant minds in the very near future! ~Candice Michelle



Album & artist links:
Bandcamp
Amazon
iTunes 
Spotted Peccary Music
Deborah Martin
Dean De Benedictis

PGM 280: Ancient Travelers 4

Another ambient journey into ancient mysteries & lost civilizations!

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
Tangerine Dream / Machu Picchu / Machu Picchu
Moai System / Skyline / Coded Memories
Erik Wøllo / The Crossing / Gateway
Jos d’Almeida / Puma Punku / Aether
Forrest Fang / Song of the Wanderer / The Book of Wanderers
Andrew Thomas Wilson / Gamelans of Ubud / Oz: Tales from the Blue Ship
Robert Slap / Voices from the Past / Atlantis Trilogy: Brave New World
Brannan Lane & Robert Carty / Eternal Moments (Pt. 2) / Dream Swirl
Jim Ottaway / Second Sight / When Eternity Touches Time
Mark Dwane / The Pleiadian Paradigm / Paradigm Shift

PGM 263: Cavernous Worlds 2

Another organic ambient soundscape inspired by subterranean realms!  

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
Robert Carty & Brannan Lane / Hot Springs / Climatic Infusion
Jarguna / Water Memory / Fusion of Soul
Brannan Lane / Black Air, Pt. 2 / Lost Caverns of Thera
Steve Roach & Jorge Reyes / Spirit, Stone and Bone / The Ancestor Circle
Jarguna & Seetyca / Black Forest / Tales of Millennial Trees
Tom Larson & Brannan Lane / City of Tombs, Part II / Tribal Spirit
Zero Ohms & Brannan Lane / Land of Blue Mist / Soundfall to the Infinite
Sverre Knut Johansen with Robert Rich / Paleozic Era / Precambrian
Steve Roach / Soul Archaeology / Trance Archaeology

PGM 256: Water Retreat

A deeply tranquil and regenerating sound-bath evocative of watery places!

Artist Name / Track Title / Album Title
I-One / Water Springs / Forms of Water
Ishq / Alaya / Natural Born Chillers
Forrest Fang / Microna / Gongland
Noizefilter / Waters Edge / Ambient Road
Suzanne Doucet & Chuck Plaisance / Zen Garden (excerpt) / As It Is Now
Heartistry / Mysterious Alchemy / Inner Sanctum
Sherry Finzer / Ancient Roots / Transcendence
Ambiscend / The Soul’s Calling / Tranquility II: Mind and Soul
Acheloo / Remembrance / Debris of Nostalgia
Paul Adams & Elizabeth Geyer / Evening / Deeper Imaginings

PGM 241: Cave Light

An organic ambient mix with subtle ethno-tribal elements inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

ARTIST – TRACK TITLE – ALBUM TITLE
Chronotope Project – Gateless Gate – Lotus Rising
Crystalline Dream – A Thousand Petals of Light – Seventh Chakra
Alpha Wave Movement – Stellar Mantra – Celestial Chronicles
Jarguna – Sacred Shen – Fusion of Soul
Steve Roach – Opening the Space – Fever Dreams II
Kelly David – Laukoo – Meditation in Green
Robert Rich – Eroding Columns – Tactile Ground
Paul Avgerinos – Gnosis – Gnosis

Album Review: Leaving the Hive by Steve Brand

Returning back to 2016, this year was very busy for Kansan dronescaper Steve Brand, who released several reissues of his older albums in new packaging and two brand new recordings, The Path Of The Heart (May, out on relaxedMachinery) and Leaving The Hive (September, released on Steve's Pioneer Light Music). The first CDr edition of Leaving The Hive, limited to 25 copies, comes in a 5"x7" bi-fold booklet featuring an additional poem card and signed art card. The cover image is stunningly delightful.

Subterranean gossamer flickers and meandering buzz of the bees reveal the title composition, nearly 22 minutes long "Leaving The Hive". The listener is immediately taken into the lushly colorful wild garden, yet surrounded by all mysteries of the natural environment. Then transmuting into calm cascades of longing quietudes, silently peaking vistas and fascinatingly embracing moments of stillness. But intensifyingly mindscaping drone spirals keep on permeating across the mesmerizingly organic stratum. Aural bliss!!! The 20-minute piece, "A Light Spinning In A Valley Somewhere", immerses the ears with a nocturnal symphony, but the stage is quickly stolen by high-pitched twists. Earwarming tranquility is juxtaposed by traversing piquancy, but then hypnotically galloping laid-pack pulses join the scenario, occasionally supported by Miette's meows. And after evanescing through soothingly engulfing contemplative path. Another rewardingly chameleonic composition, a thrilling beauty! The next track, "Simple Things", glides through enigmatically expansive sceneries, where lachrymosely humming blankets commingle with poetic piano glimpses. Ambrosial listening experience awaits here! The closing "Climbing A Mountain That Never Was" gets just over the 22-minute mark. An array of translucently glimmering tinkles persistently interacts with sinuously soaring meridians, balmy natural insignias and intangibly diaphanous hang drum traceries. Meditatively euphonious and intriguingly gratifying conclusion!

74-minute Leaving The Hive is undoubtedly another tour de force recording by Steve Brand, an ambient composer extraordinaire. Leaving The Hive might be a bit more experimental, maybe a bit more unsettling at times, but that's how it reflects the theme about the phenomena of Mother Nature and our presence in it. At the same time, this album is exquisitely transporting, exceptionally profound and significantly guiding with the hallmarking amount of peculiarly authentic mysteries thrown in. A true masterwork indeed!!! And by the way, I am way behind my review schedule, so it's not surprising Steve Brand has released in the meantime a bunch of new albums, for example three chapters of Near Series (all CDrs via Pioneer Light Music during 2017), Spiritual Science 2CD with Ishq (October 2017, reissue) and Near Series: Glow CD (April 2018), both on ...txt recordings or two CD albums on Dutch label Datableom, Upwelling: Emergence (January 2018, a compilation) and Graduated (May 2019). And most recently since August on Pioneer Light Music, the newest Counterintelligence CDr is available. It's quite obvious, all these sonic gems get my highest recommendation!!!

Reviewed by Richard Gürtler (Sep 03, 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia)

Album Review: Alchemy by Crystalline Dream

Alchemy is the third installment of a five-part album series by Crystalline Dream, a musical project conceived and composed by Richard Ross. Incorporating both electronic and indigenous instruments on the album, Alchemy spans styles of ambient, ethno-tribal and electronic-space music variably throughout, as its ten compositions take the listener on an extraordinary journey far-removed from the hustle-and-bustle of daily life.

The album opens with the title track, “Alchemy”, as whistling flutes and ghostly whirling voices are led by echoing electro-tribal drums. Shamanic and ritualistic in nature, the listener is immediately whisked away to an exotic destination – one that I can envision located somewhere deep in the Himalayas. This mood continues into “Pb-Au”, where bubbling synths and buzzing chimes impart a sense of entering a deep cavern encrusted with stalagmites as waters churning below. Electronic sequencing in the style of classic Tangerine Dream takes the foreground on “Enhormonium”, a traveling piece that conveys a notion of traversing the night sky. Kicking things up another notch is “Contrapuntos”, a piece led by a horn-like instrument, which infuses electric guitar and electro-tribal drumming with a bit of psychedelia. The following track, “Aelous”, is quite a stunner and possibly my favorite on the album – once again channeling the spirit of Tangerine Dream (as well as TD protégé Alpha Wave Movement). This classic electronic-space number feels beautifully expansive and majestically nocturnal, with its ethereally melodic chords set upon layers of dreamily rhythmic sequencing. “Musica Universalis” is another particular standout which bears a remarkable similarity to the music of Jonn Serrie. A classic ambient-space piece, it commences with slow-shifting tones and cavernous drones that seem to capture the resplendent mystique of the Aurora Borealis. Ending the album much in the same way it began, the familiar introductory elements return on “Alchemy (Reprise)”. This piece seems to create an impression of venturing through a portal, as if finally having arrived full-circle on our journey to a secret subterranean paradise.

Listening to Alchemy felt like entering another realm, with its otherworldly passages seeming to convey the essence of a culture long past and tapping into its ancient wisdom. In fact, while a couple of tracks on Crystalline Dream’s previous release, Journeyman, inexplicably made me think of the mythical land of Shambhala, such impressions came to mind even more frequently while listening to this album. At times slightly forbidding and consistently trance-inducing, these beautifully sublime compositions seem to have come together quite organically. Immediately becoming my favorite installment thus far in the Crystalline Dream saga, Alchemy is a mesmerizing musical journey simply not to be missed! ~Candice Michelle

For more information please visit Threshold Studios. This album is also available at Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby.