John Thayer - Winds Gate (Aural Canyon) [New Age]

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's November 26th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

John Thayer has serious TSMM form and I’m always intrigued by what he’s up to, so it’s taken me far too long to properly sink into his latest transmission on the always worth checking Aural Canyon label. Based in New York he’s got an improvisatory bent which he deftly combines with serious studio craft, which must help when he’s engineering albums for others as a day job. He also plays well, and has all sorts of great collaborations to his name, check the dreamy folk vibes he cooked up with Leah Thomas for example, it’s a personal fave. 

Wind Gate sees him on a mission to inject some energy and ideas into the new age vibrations still reverberating from the death throes of the counter-cultural movement (can we do that again sometime soon please?); there’s all sorts of blissful sounds, gongs, rattles, found sounds and wellness improving ambient frequencies floating through the speakers, artfully threaded around gently hypnotic, minimal frameworks.

Vintage drum machines are dusted off, software apes the insect sounds of Monsanto free fields, static prickles and crackles crackle as found sounds melt into the soundscape like warming butter, and there’s even a couple of oddly stately tracks at the end to rouse you from your meditation.

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Playlist Companion

Find Thayer in the New Age of New Age Playlist.