Agartha: Personal Meditation Music
Meredith Young-Sowers
Agartha: Personal Meditation Music
Boomkat Product Review:
A low-key holy grail of new age ambient minimalism, ‘Agartha: Personal Meditation Music’ was released on 7 tapes in 1986 as a longform aid for meditation and alignment, based on the teachings of spiritual teacher and author Meridith Young-Sowers. The seven-part epic picks out apocryphal shapes from the blurriest edges of the subconscious - it’s a long-form, meditative head-melter that’s mandatory listening if you’re into JD Emmanuel, Eliane Radigue, Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, Iasos, Eno.
It’s surprising that with the slew of New Age and Ambient reissues filling shelves for the last couple of decades now, this vital six-and-a-half hour set hasn't re-appeared until now - the material really is of the highest grade. The grip of cassettes was initially released on Young-Sowers' own micro-imprint Stillpoint Publishing, an offshoot of the Stillpoint Foundation, a school and wider spiritual community she co-founded with her husband Errol in New Hampshire. The music was intended to accompany her book 'Agartha: A Journey to the Stars', an account from Young-Sowers of her communications with "Mentor", a spiritual advisor from another world who shared wisdom about enlightenment, healing and the nature of reality. Her contribution to the recordings is more trackable online - she's written a number of more sober books concerned with similar subjects - while the actual composer of the music, Frank Smith, is a much more mysterious figure.
From what we can gather, he was involved with the Phoenix-based private-press new age label Light Unlimited, releasing a slew of meditation tapes with Jon Shore that you can comb thru on YouTube at your leisure. Here, he unbuckles himself from any well-worn conventions; there's no voiceover, just a sequence of lengthy analog synth meditations based around harmonic triads (sets of three notes) that are picked intentionally to reinforce Young-Sowers' messages and to enhance the meditative process. Each album (there are seven in total) takes a theme and runs with it - from love and personal power to intuition and our connection to the earth - and although the pieces were recorded with the same arsenal of synths and the same techniques, it's the tiny shifts and subtle touches that keep us gripped. Using organ-like swells and disorientating tape effects, Smith guides us in with 'Spiritual Questing', 45 minutes of haunted tremolo and faded ambience that immediately highlights what so much contemporary ambient music is lacking.
Smith catches a wave that crashes somewhere between Pauline Oliveros' mystical deep listening, Paddy Kingsland's enduringly eerie 'Logopolis' OST and La Monte Young's Dream House jams. It's gear that's intended for healing, of a sort at least, but swerves the usual aesthetic hallmarks. Firstly, it's not feel-good fluff; by using pre-determined compositional sequences, Smith doesn't get mired in listless major-key improvisation, instead concentrating on hidden sensualities extracted from a pared-down set of options. Using repetition, tonal variation, subharmonics and scant use of effects - he's surprisingly light on reverb and echo - Smith focuses our listening, allowing us to consider not just the sound, but how the vertiginous tones might be affecting our mood. And most surprisingly, the lengthy album doesn't really have any direct comparisons - there's music that sounds broadly similar, for sure, but Smith's fusion of high-minded minimalism, cosmic electronics and lysergic ambience is out there on its own.
Crucial, high-grade listening , one of the best reissues we've heard this year.
View more
Boomkat Product Review:
A low-key holy grail of new age ambient minimalism, ‘Agartha: Personal Meditation Music’ was released on 7 tapes in 1986 as a longform aid for meditation and alignment, based on the teachings of spiritual teacher and author Meridith Young-Sowers. The seven-part epic picks out apocryphal shapes from the blurriest edges of the subconscious - it’s a long-form, meditative head-melter that’s mandatory listening if you’re into JD Emmanuel, Eliane Radigue, Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, Iasos, Eno.
It’s surprising that with the slew of New Age and Ambient reissues filling shelves for the last couple of decades now, this vital six-and-a-half hour set hasn't re-appeared until now - the material really is of the highest grade. The grip of cassettes was initially released on Young-Sowers' own micro-imprint Stillpoint Publishing, an offshoot of the Stillpoint Foundation, a school and wider spiritual community she co-founded with her husband Errol in New Hampshire. The music was intended to accompany her book 'Agartha: A Journey to the Stars', an account from Young-Sowers of her communications with "Mentor", a spiritual advisor from another world who shared wisdom about enlightenment, healing and the nature of reality. Her contribution to the recordings is more trackable online - she's written a number of more sober books concerned with similar subjects - while the actual composer of the music, Frank Smith, is a much more mysterious figure.
From what we can gather, he was involved with the Phoenix-based private-press new age label Light Unlimited, releasing a slew of meditation tapes with Jon Shore that you can comb thru on YouTube at your leisure. Here, he unbuckles himself from any well-worn conventions; there's no voiceover, just a sequence of lengthy analog synth meditations based around harmonic triads (sets of three notes) that are picked intentionally to reinforce Young-Sowers' messages and to enhance the meditative process. Each album (there are seven in total) takes a theme and runs with it - from love and personal power to intuition and our connection to the earth - and although the pieces were recorded with the same arsenal of synths and the same techniques, it's the tiny shifts and subtle touches that keep us gripped. Using organ-like swells and disorientating tape effects, Smith guides us in with 'Spiritual Questing', 45 minutes of haunted tremolo and faded ambience that immediately highlights what so much contemporary ambient music is lacking.
Smith catches a wave that crashes somewhere between Pauline Oliveros' mystical deep listening, Paddy Kingsland's enduringly eerie 'Logopolis' OST and La Monte Young's Dream House jams. It's gear that's intended for healing, of a sort at least, but swerves the usual aesthetic hallmarks. Firstly, it's not feel-good fluff; by using pre-determined compositional sequences, Smith doesn't get mired in listless major-key improvisation, instead concentrating on hidden sensualities extracted from a pared-down set of options. Using repetition, tonal variation, subharmonics and scant use of effects - he's surprisingly light on reverb and echo - Smith focuses our listening, allowing us to consider not just the sound, but how the vertiginous tones might be affecting our mood. And most surprisingly, the lengthy album doesn't really have any direct comparisons - there's music that sounds broadly similar, for sure, but Smith's fusion of high-minded minimalism, cosmic electronics and lysergic ambience is out there on its own.
Crucial, high-grade listening , one of the best reissues we've heard this year.
Boomkat Product Review:
A low-key holy grail of new age ambient minimalism, ‘Agartha: Personal Meditation Music’ was released on 7 tapes in 1986 as a longform aid for meditation and alignment, based on the teachings of spiritual teacher and author Meridith Young-Sowers. The seven-part epic picks out apocryphal shapes from the blurriest edges of the subconscious - it’s a long-form, meditative head-melter that’s mandatory listening if you’re into JD Emmanuel, Eliane Radigue, Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, Iasos, Eno.
It’s surprising that with the slew of New Age and Ambient reissues filling shelves for the last couple of decades now, this vital six-and-a-half hour set hasn't re-appeared until now - the material really is of the highest grade. The grip of cassettes was initially released on Young-Sowers' own micro-imprint Stillpoint Publishing, an offshoot of the Stillpoint Foundation, a school and wider spiritual community she co-founded with her husband Errol in New Hampshire. The music was intended to accompany her book 'Agartha: A Journey to the Stars', an account from Young-Sowers of her communications with "Mentor", a spiritual advisor from another world who shared wisdom about enlightenment, healing and the nature of reality. Her contribution to the recordings is more trackable online - she's written a number of more sober books concerned with similar subjects - while the actual composer of the music, Frank Smith, is a much more mysterious figure.
From what we can gather, he was involved with the Phoenix-based private-press new age label Light Unlimited, releasing a slew of meditation tapes with Jon Shore that you can comb thru on YouTube at your leisure. Here, he unbuckles himself from any well-worn conventions; there's no voiceover, just a sequence of lengthy analog synth meditations based around harmonic triads (sets of three notes) that are picked intentionally to reinforce Young-Sowers' messages and to enhance the meditative process. Each album (there are seven in total) takes a theme and runs with it - from love and personal power to intuition and our connection to the earth - and although the pieces were recorded with the same arsenal of synths and the same techniques, it's the tiny shifts and subtle touches that keep us gripped. Using organ-like swells and disorientating tape effects, Smith guides us in with 'Spiritual Questing', 45 minutes of haunted tremolo and faded ambience that immediately highlights what so much contemporary ambient music is lacking.
Smith catches a wave that crashes somewhere between Pauline Oliveros' mystical deep listening, Paddy Kingsland's enduringly eerie 'Logopolis' OST and La Monte Young's Dream House jams. It's gear that's intended for healing, of a sort at least, but swerves the usual aesthetic hallmarks. Firstly, it's not feel-good fluff; by using pre-determined compositional sequences, Smith doesn't get mired in listless major-key improvisation, instead concentrating on hidden sensualities extracted from a pared-down set of options. Using repetition, tonal variation, subharmonics and scant use of effects - he's surprisingly light on reverb and echo - Smith focuses our listening, allowing us to consider not just the sound, but how the vertiginous tones might be affecting our mood. And most surprisingly, the lengthy album doesn't really have any direct comparisons - there's music that sounds broadly similar, for sure, but Smith's fusion of high-minded minimalism, cosmic electronics and lysergic ambience is out there on its own.
Crucial, high-grade listening , one of the best reissues we've heard this year.
Boomkat Product Review:
A low-key holy grail of new age ambient minimalism, ‘Agartha: Personal Meditation Music’ was released on 7 tapes in 1986 as a longform aid for meditation and alignment, based on the teachings of spiritual teacher and author Meridith Young-Sowers. The seven-part epic picks out apocryphal shapes from the blurriest edges of the subconscious - it’s a long-form, meditative head-melter that’s mandatory listening if you’re into JD Emmanuel, Eliane Radigue, Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, Iasos, Eno.
It’s surprising that with the slew of New Age and Ambient reissues filling shelves for the last couple of decades now, this vital six-and-a-half hour set hasn't re-appeared until now - the material really is of the highest grade. The grip of cassettes was initially released on Young-Sowers' own micro-imprint Stillpoint Publishing, an offshoot of the Stillpoint Foundation, a school and wider spiritual community she co-founded with her husband Errol in New Hampshire. The music was intended to accompany her book 'Agartha: A Journey to the Stars', an account from Young-Sowers of her communications with "Mentor", a spiritual advisor from another world who shared wisdom about enlightenment, healing and the nature of reality. Her contribution to the recordings is more trackable online - she's written a number of more sober books concerned with similar subjects - while the actual composer of the music, Frank Smith, is a much more mysterious figure.
From what we can gather, he was involved with the Phoenix-based private-press new age label Light Unlimited, releasing a slew of meditation tapes with Jon Shore that you can comb thru on YouTube at your leisure. Here, he unbuckles himself from any well-worn conventions; there's no voiceover, just a sequence of lengthy analog synth meditations based around harmonic triads (sets of three notes) that are picked intentionally to reinforce Young-Sowers' messages and to enhance the meditative process. Each album (there are seven in total) takes a theme and runs with it - from love and personal power to intuition and our connection to the earth - and although the pieces were recorded with the same arsenal of synths and the same techniques, it's the tiny shifts and subtle touches that keep us gripped. Using organ-like swells and disorientating tape effects, Smith guides us in with 'Spiritual Questing', 45 minutes of haunted tremolo and faded ambience that immediately highlights what so much contemporary ambient music is lacking.
Smith catches a wave that crashes somewhere between Pauline Oliveros' mystical deep listening, Paddy Kingsland's enduringly eerie 'Logopolis' OST and La Monte Young's Dream House jams. It's gear that's intended for healing, of a sort at least, but swerves the usual aesthetic hallmarks. Firstly, it's not feel-good fluff; by using pre-determined compositional sequences, Smith doesn't get mired in listless major-key improvisation, instead concentrating on hidden sensualities extracted from a pared-down set of options. Using repetition, tonal variation, subharmonics and scant use of effects - he's surprisingly light on reverb and echo - Smith focuses our listening, allowing us to consider not just the sound, but how the vertiginous tones might be affecting our mood. And most surprisingly, the lengthy album doesn't really have any direct comparisons - there's music that sounds broadly similar, for sure, but Smith's fusion of high-minded minimalism, cosmic electronics and lysergic ambience is out there on its own.
Crucial, high-grade listening , one of the best reissues we've heard this year.
In Stock (Ready To Ship)
7CD set based on the 1986 tape edition, each disc individually packaged in replica sleeves, housed in a heavy duty box. Remastered by Jessica Thompson. Liner notes with instructions for use from the original text and an essay by David Hollander.
Boomkat Product Review:
A low-key holy grail of new age ambient minimalism, ‘Agartha: Personal Meditation Music’ was released on 7 tapes in 1986 as a longform aid for meditation and alignment, based on the teachings of spiritual teacher and author Meridith Young-Sowers. The seven-part epic picks out apocryphal shapes from the blurriest edges of the subconscious - it’s a long-form, meditative head-melter that’s mandatory listening if you’re into JD Emmanuel, Eliane Radigue, Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy Kingsland, Iasos, Eno.
It’s surprising that with the slew of New Age and Ambient reissues filling shelves for the last couple of decades now, this vital six-and-a-half hour set hasn't re-appeared until now - the material really is of the highest grade. The grip of cassettes was initially released on Young-Sowers' own micro-imprint Stillpoint Publishing, an offshoot of the Stillpoint Foundation, a school and wider spiritual community she co-founded with her husband Errol in New Hampshire. The music was intended to accompany her book 'Agartha: A Journey to the Stars', an account from Young-Sowers of her communications with "Mentor", a spiritual advisor from another world who shared wisdom about enlightenment, healing and the nature of reality. Her contribution to the recordings is more trackable online - she's written a number of more sober books concerned with similar subjects - while the actual composer of the music, Frank Smith, is a much more mysterious figure.
From what we can gather, he was involved with the Phoenix-based private-press new age label Light Unlimited, releasing a slew of meditation tapes with Jon Shore that you can comb thru on YouTube at your leisure. Here, he unbuckles himself from any well-worn conventions; there's no voiceover, just a sequence of lengthy analog synth meditations based around harmonic triads (sets of three notes) that are picked intentionally to reinforce Young-Sowers' messages and to enhance the meditative process. Each album (there are seven in total) takes a theme and runs with it - from love and personal power to intuition and our connection to the earth - and although the pieces were recorded with the same arsenal of synths and the same techniques, it's the tiny shifts and subtle touches that keep us gripped. Using organ-like swells and disorientating tape effects, Smith guides us in with 'Spiritual Questing', 45 minutes of haunted tremolo and faded ambience that immediately highlights what so much contemporary ambient music is lacking.
Smith catches a wave that crashes somewhere between Pauline Oliveros' mystical deep listening, Paddy Kingsland's enduringly eerie 'Logopolis' OST and La Monte Young's Dream House jams. It's gear that's intended for healing, of a sort at least, but swerves the usual aesthetic hallmarks. Firstly, it's not feel-good fluff; by using pre-determined compositional sequences, Smith doesn't get mired in listless major-key improvisation, instead concentrating on hidden sensualities extracted from a pared-down set of options. Using repetition, tonal variation, subharmonics and scant use of effects - he's surprisingly light on reverb and echo - Smith focuses our listening, allowing us to consider not just the sound, but how the vertiginous tones might be affecting our mood. And most surprisingly, the lengthy album doesn't really have any direct comparisons - there's music that sounds broadly similar, for sure, but Smith's fusion of high-minded minimalism, cosmic electronics and lysergic ambience is out there on its own.
Crucial, high-grade listening , one of the best reissues we've heard this year.
More from Important Records:
-
Harry Bertoia Mechanization 1 & 2 Important Records / Sonambient Dark Ambient / Drone / Metal- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- LP (Black Vinyl)
-
Michael Ranta Transits Volume 1 Important Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 2CD
-
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. Trust Masked Replicants Important Records Dark Ambient / Drone / Metal
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
-
Christina Kubisch & Trondheim Voices Stromsänger Important Records Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLStephen Ruppenthal and Gary R. Weisberg Strange Times Important Records Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- CD
People who bought this also bought:
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLAKIRA RABELAIS À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu Argeïphontes Modern Classical / Ambient
- 4CD
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLLaurel Halo Atlas Awe Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Colour LP + Cassette
-
FM3 Buddha Machine #1 2023 Reissue CVMK Modern Classical / Ambient
- LOOP PLAYER (Red)
- LOOP PLAYER (Orange)
- LOOP PLAYER (Green)
- LOOP PLAYER (Pink)
- LOOP PLAYER (Blue)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLMary Lattimore and Walt McClements Rain on the Road Thrill Jockey Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Colour LP
- LP (Black Vinyl)
- CD
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLJake Muir enmixed enmossed Modern Classical / Ambient
- Cassette
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLFLUXION Vibrant Forms (Reissue) Vibrant Music / Type Recordings Basic Channel / Dub Techno
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLON (Sylvain Chauveau and Steven Hess reworked by Deathprod) Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night Type Recordings Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- CD
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLKing Midas Sound Solitude Cosmo Rhythmatic Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- CD
-
British Murder Boys Fire In The Still Air Downwards Techno / House
- CD
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLFloating Points Crush Ninja Tune Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Deluxe LP
- LP
- CD