Basking in Gravity Summer Tour 2023: Audio Supplement
Basking in Gravity Summer Tour 2023: Audio Supplement
An auditory postcard from the Inter-Dimensional Music Mobile Soundsystem
The 2023 Basking in Gravity Summer Tour wrapped up at The Alembic in Berkeley with the biggest group and loudest room we’ve experienced so far. Now we’re freshly returned to Cosmic Chambo Studio HQ here on the low-rolling prairie of the East Central Indiana Rust Belt after two weeks of vacation that followed this first trans-continental manifestation of our immersive audiovisual yoga and meditation experience.
It’s a slow emergence, as we process the emotional and spiritual data gathered while forest bathing in the old growth air of the Humboldt County backcountry, submerging in the “f*cking feral”1 geothermal pools of the Idaho Batholith, and from the restorative conversations with so many old and new friends. More stories and images soon come in a full tour debrief, but for now a quick expression of gratitude plus a newsletter-exclusive version of the live mix that we practiced with in Los Angeles and Berkeley. An edited version can also be heard this weekend on the airwaves of WQRT Indianapolis and Marfa Public Radio across West Texas.
The more I let go of trying to control the Basking in Gravity sessions, the more fun I end up having. DJing the soundtrack from my yoga mat has been a revelation as far as that goes. It means I don’t have to choreograph each installation with an unchanging soundtrack (“oh sh¡d the metal part is coming up and I’m still explaining the pose!”) and I can also redline the deluxe soundsystems like those found at Coaxial in Los Angeles or The Alembic in Berkeley with less fear. You can find the full mix here, with annotations and links to the individual artists below.
Inter-Dimensional Music:
Basking in Gravity Summer Tour 2023
stream | download
This 75-minute mix is an abbreviated collection of sounds from those two final dates, mixed live-to-tape at the Kailash Ecovillage in Portland, Oregon. Most – if not all – of these artists can be found in our Bandcamp library. Feel free to tell them where you heard their sounds: Basking in Gravity is increasingly curious about future collaborations!
dj))water)) - the farthest shore
This Svalbard-based2 artist’s fluid ambient music has been our default source of calm-me-down-now vibes for a couple years now. The whole catalogue is fresh but this one takes its name from the great transcendent mantra: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!
timber rattle - the same, yet unliving
Deep cut heavy mellow devotionals from house-favorites timber rattle, this time documenting arid climate existentialism in proto-lingual chanting and acoustic drone.
Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (Part 1)
Vintage pipehorn drone recorded live on February 24, 1974, at Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY. I like to play the early parts of this 54m composition because the audience is still getting settled and there’s a couple people coughing and a baby squeaks once or twice which is a little disorienting.
Luke Stewart - 07
I am consistently interested and invigorated by everything Luke Stewart does but his Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier diptych is a dense masterpiece. It’s a difficult but often transcendent vision informed by Indian music theory, hip-hop production techniques, and canonical avant-garde drone manifested as an auditory monolith.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - M'Bondo (version)
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s back catalog is vast and worthy of deep exploration, but this foray into bass-heavy techno polyrhythms is the one I come back to most often. At least until I can find a high-definition SBD of the OM/Lichens tour from way back when.
Blood Rhythms (aka Arvo Zylo & Leslie Keffer) - Horror Pilation 3A
Encountering Leslie Keffer’s work has been one of the most revelatory audio experiences of the last year, a similarly wide-ranging palette as Lowe’s that encompasses beat-heavy electronics, unsettling digital/organic hybrid ambience, and the six volumes of deeply visceral Blood Rhythms collaboration with Arvo Zylo.
RINUWAT - Suro
RINUWAT’s Javanese metal abstractions seem to change each time I return to their 2021 debut album. The uneasy flow from meditative ambience to clangorous percussion and doom riffing is ever-changing, a collection of sound that one can seemingly never dip into twice: different ear, different sound.
Tzompantli - Eltequi
I’ve written about Tzompantli’s Mesoamerican death metal many times before, and at this point Huey Itztekwanotl o))’s blood-soaked drum circle sound is possibly the most frequently heard metal heard on the Inter-Dimensional Music airwaves. Highest possible recommendation.
The Bug - Is Death a Dream ? ft Ethan Lee McCarthy
More trve dub metal please. There are many worthy guest deejays riding Kevin Richard Martin’s Absent Riddim but Ethan Lee McCarthy’s bellowing was the only voicing that red-lined the soundsystem as often as Martin’s incomprehensibly heavy bass. See also: Primitive Man, Vermin Womb, Many Blessings.
Jasaro People - Suffering
“Got my head on straight / but I’m suffering” is a roots rallying cry as suited to 1977 as 2023.
Zekkereya El-magharbel - daytimes p. 1
We closed out the session with Zekkereya El-magharbel’s gorgeous jazz-based ambience inspired by the artist’s striving “To find freedom for yourself and others, in the unrelenting continued aural genocide of European settler colonialism and its legacy.” The 2023 companion piece Nighttimes also comes highly recommended as an after-hours counterbalance.
Big gratitude to everyone who came out to our IRL Basking in Gravity sessions in Muncie, Indianapolis, Taos, Los Angeles, and Berkeley. Maximum gratitude to our hosts in all of these zones, as well as those dear friends who offered us shelter and camaraderie en route and in-between in Memphis, Pampa, Santa Fe, Jemez Springs, Tucson, Echo Park, Arcata, Orick, Portland, Lowman, Bonneville Springs, Salt Lake City, Sidney, and Des Moines.
And the usual very sincere gratitude to everyone out there who listens to the radio show, lurks on the newsletter website, subscribes for free, or subscribes for money. And special thanks to anyone who unsubscribes if these transmissions have become something less than helpful or enjoyable.
More to come, and soon!
blessing up and blessing down,
Daniel “Cosmic Chambo” Buckmaster-Chamberlin
If you know anyone who might find value or otherwise enjoy Void Contemplation Tactics or Inter-Dimensional Music, please pass it along. It means a lot to me!
Word of mouth is my primary form of promotion. My reach is limited on social media, which I’m increasingly convinced is a good thing. As Dōgen's teacher told him, “You don't have to collect many people like clouds. Having many fake practitioners is inferior to having a few genuine practitioners. Choose a small number of true persons of the way and become friends with them.”
If you’d like to support these projects with a one-time donation, you can also drop some ducats in the tip jar.
Shout-out to our new friend B.N. for christening the hot springs so appropriately, and for helping us find the people who could break into our car within 90-seconds after the keys somehow became locked inside it during a torrential downpour at a backcountry Idaho campground far beyond the reach of cellular phone service.
According to their Bandcamp profile but there’s more worthwhile things to debunk than the mythology behind sublime ambient music selling for three euros.