ID Music: Smooth Jazz for Armagideon Times
Pure Flow Sessions is a chance to recharge before we resume cutting through the endless delusions
This second installment of Pure Flow Sessions is a newsletter-exclusive two-hour mix of classic ambient-leaning psychedelic jazz and contemporary jazz-informed sounds. Volume one was a mostly beatless flow of helpful and sometimes very slowly melodious drone from Growing, Sunn O))), Mary Lattimore, and Alice Coltrane. They are both relatively safe for listeners who do not like their mellow interrupted. It’s more dharma rock and less dharma talk, although deep listening is advised. You can find the first Pure Flow here:
The older I get, the less interested I am in proclaiming and reinforcing aesthetic judgements, and the more I prioritize connecting with other people through my work. It doesn't matter if the thing is good or bad, as much as it matters to stay in touch with the people I care about. It gives me an incredible sense of validation when you listen, write, share, and/or subscribe. We are also deeply honored when you sustain the project with a donation, but most of all, thank you for being here.
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Adding jazz to Inter-Dimensional Music's foundation of ambient and New Age music felt as natural as when I realized that metal and other heavyweight yin-facing musics were starting to make themselves at home on our uplifting yang-dominated airwaves. It’s a challenge to make it all fit though, so it feels like a luxury to focus on one strain of ID Music. Which is one way of saying that – while there's no more than a few seconds of skronk – there's zero metal or Live Dead to disrupt the flow.
For more Dead-facing zones, our annual Thanksgiving Muchas Garcias special comes highly recommended:
There are many overlapping aesthetic, spiritual, and political components in the broad spectrum of sound on ID Music. One of the commonalities is a resistance to didacticism. For the purposes of this broadcast, I gravitate to music that doesn't tell us what it is. As the teacher Adyashanti writes, "when we stop naming ourselves, who we think we are disappears until we begin to name ourselves again1." This disappearance is a good thing. It’s a gateway to the place before thinking.
Each episode of our program is an exploration of the present moment, with encouragement to experience the moments contained in the broadcast as they are. If we don't define the music, or assign a name to the sensation that it creates, what is left to experience?
In this case, we have a nearly two-hour mix of jazz and jazz-like sound. Most of it is informed by mindfulness practices ranging from the ascetic to the lysergic, and some of it is just heavyweight jamming that synched with my mood as I mixed this 100% digital selection "live-to-tape" using Serato/Audition here at Cosmic Chambo Studio in beautiful downtown Muncie, Indiana. There’s flubs and edits galore because I was having an absolute ball, as usual.
The mix is book-ended by the opening and closing devotional chants from John Coltrane's 1965 album Om. It's a famously dense and cacophonous session, given greater mythology by the persistent suggestion that Coltrane was in the grip of the dread lysergic throughout its recording. Since this is an ambient-leaning collection, I've left the noisier parts for you to explore on your own. What's left is Coltrane and his collaborators – Pharoah Sanders, Donald Rafael Garrett, Joe Brazil, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones – chanting from the Bhagavad Gita:
Rites that the Vedas ordain, and the rituals taught by the scriptures, all these am I, and the offering made to the ghosts of the fathers, herbs of healing and food. The mantram. The clarified butter. I, the oblation and I, the flame into which it is offered. I am the sire of the world, and this world's mother and grandsire. I am he who awards to each the fruit of his action. I make all things clean. I am Om!
Their invocation is matched at the entrance and the exit with excerpts from "Before," an "exploratory meditation" from Luke Stewart (Blacks' Myths, Irreversible Entanglemets, et al) and Anthony Pirog. "As sound baths go," the band writes, "'Before' rewards repeated listens as subtle tones, loops, and layers combine and morph but never feel stale." The flip side, “After,” is an inversion, and a worthy complement to Coltrane’s raucous Om.
From there we move through Shabaka's cascading flute-forward "Black Meditation," and into gamelan and balafon mindfulness vibes, Rob Mazurek's cornet ambience, and John Hassell live in 2006. This Hassell bootleg is paired with Norman W Long's “Sikan I,” one of the artist’s experiments in "Sounding and Remixing myth, ritual, space/time and personal narrative." All of Long’s work is fascinating and deeply inspiring, but this combination of field recordings and hypnotic rhythmic minimalism is something I come back to on a daily basis, and not only because it’s the current “end of meditation” alarm on my phone.
The hour continues with exceptional collaborations, visionary new works, and devoted re-visionings based in spiritual jazz and non-denominational kosmische traditions. Listen for contributions from Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid, Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer, Chelsea Carmichael, Jamael Dean, Phil Ranelin & Yesterdays New Quintet, Philip Cohran, Bengt Berger & Don Cherry, Santana, Spencer Zahn, Jacob Bergson, Austin Tufts; Shamek Farrah, Tortoise, Creation Rebel, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and Lungfish.
Both Pure Flow video flyers are made with images from my White River, Slow Flow project. The ongoing video series is a collection of highly-manipulated slow-motion footage of the river that runs near our base of operations on the low-rolling grasslands of East Central Indiana.
INTER-DIMENSIONAL MUSIC PURE FLOW SESSIONS:
Smooth Jazz for Armagideon Times
Smooth Jazz for Armagideon Times is the second in our Pure Flow series of newsletter-exclusive mixes. For this volume, it's two hours of heavyweight jazz and jazz-like abstractions informed by mindfulness practices ranging from the ascetic to the lysergic. It's a soundtrack for taking it easy while maintaining awareness, a refuge from harsh ‘20s reality, and a chance to recharge before we resume cutting through all of the endless delusions in these Armagideon Times.
artist - work
Six Six (Anthony Pirog | Luke Stewart) - Before (edit)
John Coltrane - Om, Pt. 1 (edit)
Shabaka - Black Meditation
Contours - Eastern Bells ft Beka Reid & Seth Sutton
Chicago Underground Duo - Hermeto
Jon Hassell - Tonkwave (Maarifa Street Jazzfest, Berlin 2006)
Norman W Long - Sikan I
Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid - We Dream Free (edit)
Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer - Rensenada
Chelsea Carmichael - There Is A Place (It's Not Here)
Jamael Dean - Olokun
Yesterdays New Quintet - Vibes From The Tribe Suite (For Phil) (edit)
Philip Cohran And the Artistic Heritage Ensemble - New Frankiphone Blues
Yesterdays New Quintet - Vibes From The Tribe Suite (For Phil) (edit)
Bengt Berger & Don Cherry - Tongsi
Santana - Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation
Spencer Zahn, Jacob Bergson, Austin Tufts - Mile X
Shamek Farrah - First Impressions
Tortoise - Everglade
Creation Rebel - African Space
Tortoise & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Love Is Love
Six Six (Anthony Pirog | Luke Stewart) - Before (edit)
John Coltrane - Om, Pt. 1 (edit)
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From Adyashanti’s Falling into Grace (2011) which will be the subject of an upcoming series of programs if you want to read ahead.